Merry Christmas 2009!

Merry Christmas!

Once again we kept with the Christmas photo card tradition.  Shannon got a little more creative this year with the multiple photos and I think they look great!  The past years can be seen here: 2008, 2007, and 2006.  I like looking back as the past years and seeing how much our lives have changed and how thankful I really am!

So, from our family to yours, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

PS.  PLEASE do not join the massive amount of people going to the Mall of America tomorrow to return gifts, and if you do, DRIVE NORMAL!

Christmas Lights!

When we bought our house in April of 2006, we didn't get a chance to get Christmas lights put up that winter. In 2007, I bought some white icicle style and got those hung and they looked pretty good, as you can see HERE. In 2008, with us just painting the house and the damage caused to the white Christmas light when I took them down, we didn't put any up. However for the 2009 season, I wanted to redeem myself.

Maeve has been OBSESSED with Christmas lights ever since she started seeing them up on hoses this year. Since I wanted something new and fun, I decided to go with C7 size, multi-colored LED lights this year. I also wanted a clean, neat, professional looking appearance, so I also bought some Quik Klips (my Dad has used these for years and they work GREAT!) and mounted those on the soffits and fascia. I think I bought the last couple rolls of lights at Home Depot, but I had more than enough. Over the period of a couple days in November, Dad and I got the lights hung. The weather was very mild so the installation went well, the only thing that slowed us up this year was installing the Quik Klips, but I am just happy we only have to do that once! I have the Christmas lights installed on a switched outlet I put in the soffit a couple years ago, so every night when it gets dark, Maeve flips the switch, looks outside, and say "So beautiful!" That alone made it worth putting them up this year!

We Got Some Snow!!!

We got our first major snow fall on December 9th this year.  The Twin Cities, specifically Bloomington, got about six to eight inches of snow which was followed by very cold temperatures and high winds.  We had some drifts in our driveway over a foot tall!  Then about 5 days later, we got another three inches.  So, we will have a very nice white yard for Christmas this year.  I have the first Front Yard and Back Yard pictures for the year:

So far the snow removal has gone very well, the snowblower fired right up and worked great.  The recoil on the pull rope is sticking quite a bit, so before the next major snowfall, I need to take it apart and clean it.  Maeve joined the snow removal team again this year and has been having fun while Dad shovels snow!

Pheasant Hunting 2009 - Trip #1

November 21, 2009

As I have said in a few of my earlier posts, hunting this year kind of got put on the back burner between Will arriving and my work schedule, I just didn't have a ton a spare time to get out.

However, I did manage to squeeze in a day trip hunting pheasant.  A gal my sister-in-law know from bording thier horses together has a 40 acre hobby farm just outside Lonsdale, MN and had a pheasant problem.  It turns out a good number of pheasants roost on her property and cause some damage to her house, yard, and crops.  She had mentioned such to my borther and he was more than willing to help her with her problem.

My Dad, brother, my brother's friend Ryan (who we duck hunted with earlier in the year), and myself all headed down early on a Saturday morning.  It was a very nice day, sunny, cool, and crisp.  The land we would be hunting was about half harvested corn and half grasses, with a few wooded tree lines at the end of the property.  We started walking in from the road with the help of both my brother's dog Tanner and Ryan's dog Diamond.  We hunted down the field, around the grasses and into the wooded areas and didn't see anything.  We didn't even hear a pheasant cackle.  With the opening time for pheasant hunting in Minnesota at 0900 hours, we were thinking the pheasants were probably in the HUGE grassy area across the road soaking up the sun.

Needless to say, we didn't end up with any roosters.  The trip was still good fun and I got some exercise too!  I had to get home early, but my brother, Dad, and Ryan ended up walking some other public hunting reserves in the area, but didn't have any luck either.  Hopefully next year, I will have more of a productive hunting season because my freezer is empty!