The Big 4-0

M's birthday was Sunday, January 5th. He turned 40 years young. M didn't want anything big for his birthday. In fact, the only thing he really wanted to do was to have a meal and watch football. Sounded perfect to me.

The morning of M's birthday was super cold.

We went to Pinstripes in Edina for brunch. M had never been there for brunch before but he enjoyed it. I don't know know why it but it felt very adult to be celebrating a birthday over brunch. We had a great table right next to the window overlooking some of the trees that are a part of Centennial Lakes. In the tree, there was a cardinal right next to us and he looked so beautiful with the green and white background.

There's the birthday boy!

Afterwards, we went home, got back into our cozies and watched football all day long. A low-key birthday but exactly what he wanted. Happpy Birthday, Michael. You were 30 when we started dating and look, you're 10 years older and we're still dating. Just kidding, Nietzsche. Love you!

 

 

 

 

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Vikings vs. Eagles

Sunday, December 16th was very cold.  Like minus 2 degrees cold.  Despite the weather, we tailgated in our usual lot one more time before our big tailgate party, The Cherrie Jones Tailgate Party which is tomorrow and will be even colder.

We spent a lot of time in the car warming up but we still spent time outside and cooked our food on the grill which took a long time.  Our menu was BBQ pulled beef and mashed potatoes.  Yum.

Construction taking place where the new stadium will be, just east of Gate B and C

It was much warmer inside the dome.  Adrian Peterson didn't play.  Toby Gerhart didn't play.  A barely known running back named Matt Asiata scored 3 touchdowns throughout the game.  Cassel also passed a nice 57 yarder for a  touchdown to Greg Jennings in the first quarter and would pass another Cordarrelle Patterson for a touchdown and Cassel would run another in himself.  I did not think this game was winnable for us going into the game but we ended up winning, in fact, destroying the Eagles 48-30.  

Like my impressions of the cartoon Viking and Viktor?

                         

At halftime, they had a ceremony for the All-Metrodome Team.  This was a team comprised of players throughout the entire 32 seasons of football in the Metrodome, as voted by the fans.  Many of the players voted on this team were in attendance and announced in front of us including Jared Allen, Joey Browner, Anthony Carter, Daunte Culpepper, Chris Doleman, Chad Greenway, Robert Griffith, Steve Hutchinson, Steve Jordan, Chris Kluwe, Ryan Longwell, Randall McDaniel, Adrian Peterson, John Randle, Robert Smith, Scott Studwell, Chris Walsh and Kevin Williams.  Others that were voted to the team but could not attend was Matt Birk, Cris Carter, Dennis Green, Percy Harvin, Tim Irwin, Carl Lee, Ed McDaniel, Randy Moss, Antoine Winfield and Gary Zimmerman. That's to the best of my knowledge...there may have been one or two that I named in attendance that wasn't there or vice versa.   

First of the Year

Friday, April 26th was the first time we were able to get out our bicycles and cruise around a bit.  We just took a leisurely 5 mile bike ride around the neighborhoods around our house.  The temperature was in the low 70's and we skipped having a high in the 60's and went right to the 70's at this point.  (Us Minnesotans know it was short-lived and we'd have more snow (and cold) after this point.)

Wednesday looked nice

There is a cardinal on the ground--Right in front of dat der snow patch 

What a beautiful contrast, huh?

Taking a break for photo on the road

Vikings vs. Bears

M and I went to see the Vikings play the Chicago Bears on Sunday, December 9th.  Due to a bye and two weeks the Vikings were on the road, we hadn't attended a Vikings game since November 11th, the Cherrie Jones Tailgate Party.

We knew snow was coming that weekend and we decided to see what we woke up with.  We probably had 6 inches so in lieu of tailgating, we shoveled the driveway instead.  After a quick shower and no makeup, we headed out to the game.  It wasn't the best conditions driving there but fortunately, we were able to find a pretty good spot on the street.  Prepared in our boots and other winter gear, we took our time walking to the dome, frolicking in the snow and admiring the beauty of the new and continuing snowfall.

Remember the alien that M received as a gift?  He came to life that day and made his Vikings game day debut.  Well, at least he hung out with us for the car ride and quick picture.  His name is Frank, a brother of the original, Fred. 

The dome was sold out, something that we were able to say each and every game for about 10 years prior to this year.  It wouldn't have been sold out if it weren't for those pesky Bears fans.  I bet 30% of the crowd was Bears fans. 

Adrian Peterson started the game on the very first play with a 51 yard gain. The Vikings dominated the first quarter with two Adrian Peterson touchdowns making the score 14-0, the second one thanks to an interception by rookie Josh Robinson which was a 49 yard run originally ruled as a touchdown but was called back and ended up on the 5 yard line after a challenge due to Robinson stepping out of bounds.  AP would have 154 yards by the end of the game.  Rookie safety Harrison Smith intercepted (Smokin') Jay Cutler for a 56 yard pick six!  Vikings win 21-14.  As a coach, it was Leslie Frazier's FIRST time winning against Chicago.  Oh, I should mention that Christian Ponder was there too.  He had an impressive 17 attempts, of which 11 he completed for 91 yards plus an interception.

We were able to get out of Minneapolis pretty quickly despite the heavy snow covering our car. We drove back into our driveway, which looked like it hadn't been shoveled at all.  By the end of the weekend, we had 16 inches of snow at our house. 



Perfect snowflake placement under my nose, right?

 



Minnesota Weather

It's been a fabulous week weather-wise here in Minnesota.  Of the last seven days, I think we've broken five records for temperature, some broken by 20 degrees or more.  Our normal high temperature should be 41 degrees and we've been hovering right around 80 degrees for several days, even rivaling Fort Myers.  This is Minnesota's March Madness!

Saturday-3/10

Sunday- 3/11

Tuesday-3/13

Wednesday-3/15

Friday 3/16

 

Saturday 3/17

Sunday 3/18

  

I Love Today!

Even though I sat in an office all day, I still appreciate the fact it was beautiful outside today.  The only not beautiful thing about warmer weather is the ultra-melt going on in our driveway which creates a flood.  Our neighbors driveway is the same way.  I'll put up with it though for higher temps.  Spring is around the corner!

Burgers, No Government and Rain

M and I went out to dinner on Friday, July 1st.  We wanted to go to Red Robin but when we got there it was beyond packed with a 30 minute wait so we took off and headed to downtown St. Paul.  We settled on Burger Moe's.  This was the second time we had been there and we didn't have the best experience the first time.  The service was really slow and food was just ok but we decided to have another try and again, the same bad experience.  The service was very slow again and M ordered a Kobe beef burger, which he's had many times before but never from here.  When he bit into it, it tasted nasty.  He took a couple more little bites and realized he just needed to send this back.  The server was apologetic and took his food away and M decided not to order anything more.  The server came back a couple of minutes later and told us that they had several complaints about the Kobe burger that same night!  They said they had just changed suppliers so she said that might have been part of the issue.  She probably shouldn't have offered that information about having multiple complaints that same evening but it did make M feel a little bit better that it wasn't just him with the issue.  After two terrible experiences, we will not be going back to Burger Moe's again!

When we left the restaurant, the sky was very dark.  We drove up by the Cathedral and just admired the ominous sky.  The rain started in huge drops right as we made our way back to our car and we experienced a down pour but no severe weather.  It was very fun to see the sky like that.  The pictures do not do justice to how black, exciting and scary the sky was. 

At the time of this writing, the government is still shut down!

Weird Weather

This week has completely been extremely hot and then not so much.  On Monday, we broke a record with the high temperature reaching 97 degrees, breaking the old record of 95 degrees from back in 1987.  And then on Tuesday, here's what the temperature was...remember, I'm in Minnesota!

Needless to say, we broke a record with Tuesday's 103 degrees, breaking that same day record of 96 degrees back in 2004. In addition, it hadn't been 103 degrees MN since 1988, which sadly I'm old enough to  remember. 

And now it's Friday and the temp was in the low 60's today.  How about something in between like 80 or so?

Have a great weekend, my peeps!   

Snowy April

The weather has been less than cooperative this spring.  We have barely even had a spring to talk about.  And this morning, I woke up to this:

It was all melted and sunny by the end of the work day.  It's hard to believe it was 76 degrees just a couple of Sundays ago.  Hopefully Mother Nature will get her act together and give us Minnesotans a real spring soon.  

I don't normally blog out of order but I wanted to show the picture above so I thought I might as well talk about my night tonight.  M and I went out with my Grandpa to Yarusso's tonight for dinner.  We've been making a habit of going out with him for dinner every couple of weeks or so.  It's good for him and it's good for us.  On the way to eat, we stopped at the cemetery that my Gramma is buried in.  The headstone he ordered came in a couple of days ago and the cemetery told him it would be in before Easter so we decided to take a look.  It was in the ground.  Sad, but the final chapter of the death saga.

As for this past weekend, I'll blog about it soon!