July 29, 2008

Kacky (and Tony) Got Married!!!!

Posted by Melissa under Friends, Party, Travel | Tags: |
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We had the tremendous privilege of traveling to Beaver Creek, CO to witness two of our best friends  get married.  The entire weekend was awesome.

We started out Thursday morning flying from MSP to Denver with Matt and Michelle Hanson.  After a 2 hour white-knuckled (at least for me) drive, we arrived at Beaver Creek.  We had rented a 4 bedroom condo and were shacking up with the Hansons, Bartletts, Franny, Emily and Ray.  First things first, Michelle and Craig made the snack and beer run to stock our kitchen.  Priorities people…

Thursday and Friday were spent drinking, golfing, shopping and eating.  The rehearsal dinner was held at the Dusty Boot and was an amazing showing of the people who love Kacky and Tony.  Lots of great food, toasts, and pictures.  Saturday morning we all laid around reading magazines and just hanging out.  I headed to lunch with the boys and listened to them giggle like 13 year old girls at a slumber party.

In the evening we met the wedding party for drinks before the ceremony and walked to the chapel.  The wedding was perfect.  The sounds of Lez Zeppelin drifting through the windows from a nearby festival.  That’s right kids… Lez Zeppelin.  Apparently a lesbian Led Zeppelin cover band.  Awesome.

Kacky looked beautiful.  The ceremony was perfect and the reception was more fun than I’ve had since, well Kacky’s bachelorette party.  We danced the night away and headed back to the condo for a late night snack of Totinos Party Pizzas, Wheat Thins and Easy Cheese.  All in all a perfect night.

Kacky and Tony, your friendship means the world to us.  We are so happy you found each other and look forward to creating more great memories with you in the future.  Congratulations and may God bless you with many, many happy years!!!

 

 

July 21, 2008

R.I.P. Chester Thomas May 1998 - July 21, 2008

Posted by Melissa under Family | Tags: |
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It is with a very heavy heart that I write this…  We had to say goodbye to our little buddy this afternoon.  He got really really sick over the weekend and unfortunately we had to make a decision to let him go.  Zach and I are both heartbroken.  Our condo feels empty without him following us around and begging for treats. 

In two short months he firmly cemented himself as in charge around here.  He napped where he damned well pleased, he licked your beard if he wanted attention (especially at 3am), and he gave you a head bonk as a seal of approval. 

I’m going to miss hearing him purr in my ear before we fell asleep at night and chasing him down the hall as he made his daily escape attempt.

You were a really great cat buddy.  We loved coming home to you everyday.  

Thanks for letting us be your mom and dad the last couple of months.  We won’t be the same without you.

Doing what he did best.

Doing what he did best.

p.s. Tell Buddy we said hi.  You guys will have a fun time together up there.  Make sure he shares some Kix with you.

 

We want to send a special thank you to the City Cat Clinic in St. Louis Park for helping make Chester comfortable and helping us through a difficult decision.

 

July 1, 2008

We be Jammin’ / Jam Club

Posted by Melissa under Food, Misc | Tags: , |
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Sunday afternoon one of my internet friends, justacoolcat, invited a few folks over to pick some strawberries out of his awesome garden.  The berry picking was top notch, but the highlight were the DeRusha boys.  Seth and I quickly buddied up for some exploring around the yard and two awesome games he invented called Stick Break and Stick Stop Hop. 

Stick Break is pretty much what it sounds like.  You find a stick and then you break it.  Stick Stop Hop required a little more finesse.  First, find a stick.  Key here is to find a stick a little smaller in size.  As soon as you find said stick, immediately run up to a group of people and yell “STICK STOP!!”. Here’s where it gets tricky…  you have to throw the stick up in the air (hence the reason for picking a smaller stick) and then immediately yell “HOP!!!” and jump in the air.  Pretty soon this all becomes one fluid movement and that’s when the fun really begins.  At least it seemed so to a three year old.  Seth and his little brother Sam were super fun. 

Now on to the jam… 

 I’ve never made jam before and was a little nervous.  Luckily JACC’s wonderful wife sent me out the door with jars, lids, and a box of pectin.  (yeah, I don’t really know what pectin is either).  Monday night I got to work slicing, dicing and mashing…

 

Zach offered to help…

Needed to make sure the berries were ripe…

This is where I started getting nervous. It seemed really watery for jam.

I boiled it down, dispensed into jars and gave a water bath to seal the lids.  This morning when I got up each jar looked like syrup.  Needless to say, I was a little disappointed.  The good news was when I got home from work everything seemed to have firmed up nicely.  Now there are 8 jars of homemade jam in my fridge.

The kicker here is I hate strawberries.

 

June 22, 2008

New Addition to the Floyd Household

Posted by Melissa under Misc | Tags: |
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Don’t get too excited… it isn’t that kind of addition. 

When I was younger and living on my own I had two awesome cats named Malcolm and Chester Thomas.  When I moved back to Michigan a few years ago they set up temporary quarters at my childhood home.  Well, temporary should say permanent. 

Malcolm passed away from old age awhile ago, but Chester has been living and ruling the roost at my sister’s house ever since.  In his old age he was getting a little cranky and not following the rules so I told her that he could come home with me when I went back to visit last week.  I failed to mention that very small fact to Zach. 

A few discussions later he agreed to give it a try.  I’d say they’re getting along all right, would you agree?

 

June 7, 2008

Sweet

Posted by Melissa under Family | Tags: , |
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I just found out Quinn has Guitar Hero and Wii Sports.  This is going to be the best vacation ever.  We’ll more than likely be on a blogging hiatus while here, but taking tons of pictures to post next week.  Hope everybody (all 3 of you reading) has a great week!!

 

June 3, 2008

Minnesota Weather

Posted by Melissa under Misc, Uncategorized | Tags: |
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So in between coming home from Flutter on Saturday afternoon and leaving for my friend Emily’s bachelorette party Saturday evening I heard an odd noise.  Keep in mind it was BEAUTIFUL outside.  Sun, barely any clouds, warm temps (finally)…  Really a great Minnesota early summer afternoon.  Back to the noise…   tornado sirens.  I was in the bathroom curling my hair when they started to go off.  Looked out the window and it was still sunny out so I figured they were testing or something.  My friend Sarah comes over and as I let her in I notice the sky has clouded over.  5 minutes later this starts…

Ok, so we’re getting a little hail and a storm.  We turn on the tv and the warnings are flying all over the place.  Then the tink, tink, tink noise the hail had been making turns into a sound I have never heard before…

The sound of the wind, thunder and hail was so loud we were having to raise our voices to hear each other.  Sarah, Zach and I just stood there kind of amazed at what we were watching.  After a minute I started to get a little scared that maybe we should head down to the garage to hide out from the hail stones that seemed intent on busting through our windows.  Sarah tried to open our sliding door to take a picture and she literally got blown back from the wind.  Everything came to a stop 5 or 10 minutes later.   This is what it looked like…

 

The next day there was still hail in the streets that had yet to melt.  By far one of the craziest storms I have ever seen.

 

May 27, 2008

Beers, Babies and BBQs

Posted by Zach under Party | Tags: |
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We headed down to lovely Kasson, MN for Memorial Day weekend to hang out with our good friends Broc, Laura and their little girl Ava.  Friday night we hung at the house and then Saturday afternoon went to watch Broc coach the Kasson-Mantorville Komets in the baseball playoffs.  Unfortunately the Komets got knocked off by Stewartville but we managed to keep our spirits up. 

**Quick sidenote-in Stewartville there’s a shop called “Pure Pleasure” that had a specially made sign stating “Sexy Internet Access Now Available Here”.  I’m curious as to what the difference is between regular internet access and “sexy” internet access. 

Sexy Internet

 

 

 

Went back to Broc and Laura’s for a BBQ with their friends Ben, new mother Kim, and new parents Ryan and Holly.  We brought Coors Light and Kim, Ryan and Holly brought some babies.  Broc manned the grill and we had a nice assortment of delicious dead animals to choose from.  After dinner Melissa managed to convince me to hold Ryan and Holly’s 4 week old daughter Maryan.  Normally I wouldn’t come close to a baby that young but I gave it a shot.  She’s a cutie.  There’s some pics in our flickr account of me looking monumentally uncomfortable while holding her.  The night ended in the garage with Broc, Laura and I sharing River Falls stories about stealing pink flamingos and nunchuck-wielding freshman named Walter. 

 Uh, what now?

Sunday night we headed over to Laura’s parents’ house in Mantorville.  It was basically a Huntoon family reunion with us tagging along.  The 4 Huntoon girls, husbands, daughters, mom and dad, and grandpa and grandma.  The menu consisted of ribs, smoked chicken, cheesy potatoes, Jim Beam, and smores.  We closed out the evening with a bonfire.  Thanks a ton to the Huntoons for having us over.  Really good time.

Whole lotta Huntoons

Some random highlights from the weekend, in no particular order:

-Ava laughing at mom doing her 80s dance

-Laura pantsing her brother-in-law Nick (twice-revealing each “side”)

-Ryan Radke drinking a can of Coke in 4.8 seconds

-Monday morning mini-marathon of the Sopranos final 3 episodes

-Eliza swinging and hitting Laura with a bag of dogshit

-Just Ava in general

So all in all a really great weekend.  We love hanging out with Broc and Laura (and especially Ava).  We were kind of bummed to head home on Monday.  For some reason hanging out with friends, eating cheddarwursts and drinking beers is more fun than going to work. 

 

May 19, 2008

Oh Trader Joe’s… How I love thee.

Posted by Melissa under Food | Tags: |
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So we’re trying to eat healthier (never mind that I just had a piece of chocolate eclair dessert).  Even my husband, or Captain Chip Face as I like to call him, is getting into veggies, fruit, etc.  Lately we’ve been on a big fish kick.  It’s easy, fast and usually tastes pretty good. 

Trader Joe’s is 2 blocks from our house (again never mind that we usually drive there) and is quickly becoming my go to for dinner.  We bought a bunch of frozen mahi mahi and I tell you it is dee-lish-us.  I bought a few pieces that were marinated in the package so all it needed was a few minutes on each side in a hot pan.  It looked like this…

Delishy

Shortly there after Zach and I both joined the clean plate club.  The veggies were from TJ’s too as was the lovely lemon I used to make the rice and garnish.  About $5 a plate total.

Yes mom, I eat fish now.

 

 

May 8, 2008

Big Fat Party Animal

Posted by Zach under Party
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There’s an episode of the Simpsons where Homer is afraid that Bart is “turning” gay because he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt.  Homer observes, “There’s only 2 kinds of guys that wear Hawaiian shirts-gay guys and big fat party animals.  And Bart’s not a big fat party animal.” 

This guy isn’t wearing a Hawaiian shirt, but I don’t think there’s any doubt he’s a big fat party animal.  Melissa captured this picture during our jaunt to Brainerd a couple weeks ago.  We were at a bar called Zorbaz in Brainerd ($3 PBR tall boys with a FREE PBR tall boy can coozy-I challenge anyone to find a better deal) and this guy was really going for it. 

 

4 key elements-

1.  Beer in hand, almost ready for another

2.  Tongue hanging out, partying

3.  Shirt almost completely unbuttoned, ready to be wrapped around the head at any moment

4.  Shades on, at night, inside a bar

Good luck partying harder than this guy.  It’s never been done. 

                      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 5, 2008

Ah love…

Posted by Melissa under Family | Tags: |
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Happy Anniversary to my husband.  One year ago today you made my life complete. 

I may give you a hard time, but the truth is I have never had it so good.  I am blessed to have found someone who compliments my craziness and moodiness with stability and support.  You are the funniest person I have ever met and have never failed to put a smile on my face every single day I have known you.  You do the dishes and pick up after me, which is no small feat.  You give great gifts at really unexpected times letting me know that you are thinking of me.  You do a mean jig on demand.  You suck at sharing the covers but always apologize about it the next morning.  You have never gotten mad at a midnight phone call asking for a ride home after happy hour lasted one too many.  You always dance with my friends at the bar.  I love that you have turned “couch beers” into an art form.  

I am excited to see where our lives go from here because I know no matter what path we choose it will be great with you by my side. 

Thank you for making me a better person.  I love you.

   Just Married!

-your wife

 

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