William O'Brien State Park

Today we went hiking at another state park about an hour and fifteen minutes north east of our house. That's 3 state parks we've been to, we're camping at another one next weekend so after that we'll have 4 down and 62 to go :-) j/k we probably won't ever make it to ALL of them. But last year we purchased an annual parking pass (which we were camping for 3 days parking is $5 dollars a day for $25 for an annual pass) so we've definitely got our moneys out of it.

First off, Harpo L-O-V-E-S to have his head out the window! Here we are when we first got to the park (we weren't really going that fast so I was able to hang out a little to get a cute picture of him) it's really funny when we're going a little faster because his hair flies everywhere!!


This state park is also along the St. Croix River (the last one we went to happen to be south of there about an hour):


We first did a 1.6 mile walk that went along the river a bit and around the campsite areas, the most interesting thing we saw was a snapping turtle!


After that loop we got in our car and drove over to another parking lot area to hike the longer trails - away from the water. First we had lunch:


Then I captured some Harpo Bokeh!! (bokeh is a photography word I've found I just love, it's when the background is a little blurry)


Then we ventured through the prairie land, wet land area and through some wooded area. We ended up walking for four hours, totalling about 7.3 miles.



Toward the end, every bench Harpo would spot he would go over to and try and lay down. I think he was trying to tell us he was tired and it was time to rest. We did sit down a little here and there, but not as often as he would have liked :-P Of course he crashed in the jeep on the way home. He'll sleep good tonight!!


And so will we!


Good Night!!

Museum, Sculpture Garden, Uptown, Lake Harriet

It rained this morning, so we got a little stir crazy this afternoon and decided to go to the Minnesota Institute of Art (the good art museum here)... well we arrived about 4:30 and they closed at 5:00 so we really didn't have much time there, we have been before so we were just going to wonder around. We did get to ride the cool old elevator though!




Then we headed to the sculpture garden since it was nice out and we were still looking for something to do.


Here we are playing around with some of the art there and with the mirror I'm able to show off my new camera :-)

They recently re-painted the cherry so it is nice and red again! It was removed from about March to May. And now there is water that comes out of the top of the cherry stem... it was rather interesting. Not sure if that always happened and they just didn't have it on when we have been there in the past, or if it is new since the re-painting.


After the sculpture garden we went to uptown to grab a bit to eat and walked around there a bit. We didn't eat here, but this is one of the places we LOVE to go! Chino Latinos: (update... this is the second time I have miss spelled Latinos, lol)


When I saw this bike I had a vision for a black and white with just the red showing... I like how it turned out :-)



Kyle pointed this out


After uptown we went and walked around Lake Harriet a bit. It's just south of Lake Calhoun (the one we run around) Harriet is a bit smaller, 2.7 miles I think. We didn't walk the whole thing. But we got some good sun set shots and got to see some ducks, geese, dragonflies, and even an otter (which was too fast for me to get a picture of).

Turtle Derby!!!! June 25th, 2009

This was the 23rd Annual Turtle Derby at the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital (here's an article and video that talks about it). It is a fundraiser that helps to raise more than $20,000 for the Child Family Life Department and other pediatric programs for the hospital. (the clinic I work out is affiliated with the Children's Hospital - my boss is the CFL manager - luckily I did not have clinic this morning so I was able to go and help out with the event!)

People sponsor turtles ahead of time and then come and cheer on 'their' turtle. There were a total of 28 heats, with 8 turtles in each heat. There were not that many turtles used. the turtles would get re-used from heat to heat... there were probably 30 or so turtles there. The sponsors were anyone from a unit in the hospital, to the CFL department, to a group of physicians, to a single person or in honor of someone.

At the start of each heat, color marker were placed on the 8 participating turtles backs, and each turtle would be announced who they were representing in the heat and placed in the middle circle.



Then the circle would be lifted and the turtles would RUN! to the outside. Everyone would cheer, if there was a group of sponsor's there, they would yell especially loud for their turtle. Each sponsor had a name for the turtles - here are some of the names (and their sponsors):

Buzz Light Turtle (Pediatric Surgery)
John Wayne Turtle (MN Medical Foundation)
Code Brown (University Emergency Department)
Turtlemodulation (Clinical Neuroscience Admin Center)
Hurry Up and Wait (Unit 2A)
Derby Dude-a-licious (CFL)
R2D Turtle (Pediatric Surgery)
The Tumor-nator (Masonic cancer center clinical trials office)
Sir Turtlot (Boynton Health Services)

I could go on and on... anyway here they are running to the finish:



And they were fast too! The volunteers would have to run to catch them before they fell off the platform:



Child Family Life was pretty much running the show. Here is Sarah and Anne leading the TV show that airs on the hospital channel throughout the inpatient floors: (can you tell Anne's pregnant?)


I was a runner, which meant me and another gal (Melissa) would run up to the pediatric unites (5A, 5B, 5C, & 5D) and collect 'messages' that kids or staff would write. These messages would be announced by the show hosts on air so the patients watching could here. A lot of patients were able to make it down to join the festivities, while some were not able to but watched from their rooms.

It was a lot of fun, hot day, but lots of fun! It was so fun watching those turtles run!!

PS: if you haven't noticed, I've finally linked my photos to my flickr account. So if you click on the photos it'll take you to my albums where I have them all (or going to start having them) together.

Golfing: Kate Haven

Happy FATHER'S Day!

We spent our father's day golfing =) After church we headed to Kate Haven Golf Course, which is a 9 hole Par 30 course about 30 miles north of us. We have a happenings book which has many coupons around the twin cities. There are quite a few golf coupons so we said this summer we're going to USE them!! There are quite a few of them south west of the city, but since we go to church up north a little ways we decided to stick our clubs in the car and hit a place after church. Here we are eating at this little family owned restaurant (which we had a coupon for in the Happenings book... SCORE!)

Kyle is saying "why do you keep taking pictures of me?" hee hee

So I let him take one of me too!


Here are some shots around the golf course.

It's a little course so we didn't bother calling ahead to reserve a tee time, but when we got there they had one available with these two other guys or we'd have to wait a while. Love their attire? I don't understand why we always follow the rules "boys in collard shirts" when everytime we show up somewhere there are people in cut off shorts and tank tops... oh well, it was fun.

We did alright considering that we haven't' played a round of golf in over a year and a half. We expected not to hit very well. We were both hitting decent except for the chipping and putting. Kyle did well and even got one par =) and there were only two balls lost (kyle's first ball he hit and one of mine).

Non neon glow view

Minneapolis skyline - neonglow

I still haven't figured out how i can blog pictures from flickr but beable to write more.

!!YAY!! With the help of Miz Booshay I have figured out how to get my photos blogged through Flickr!!

Anywho - this is another photo I played around with :-)

I promise this is the last (for today) hee hee

playing around again...

Alright now that I've played around with TWO photos... I'm trying to figure out how to post my pictures through flickr so I don't have to keep uploading them to my blog posts.... hmmmm okay I was hoping to figure it out but I just can't right now. We gotta get going with our grocery shopping.

For this photo I used Pioneer Woman's Hard Light concept... do you like how it turned out? It's not much different than the original I just sharped it a bit...

Isn't this fun? Well it is for me :-)

ahhh the editing life

I edited my first photo in Photoshop Elements today. [okay I actually came back a few days later and fixed it after learning a few more things... it looks a little better now =) ] If you have never heard of the Pioneer Woman's blog, you should REALLY check it out, it's my absolute favorite at the moment. Lots of great info on photography and cooking, and home and garden just all sorts of wonderful girly stuff :-)

New Plants/Flowers

My boss was thinning out his garden again (I think this is an annual thing) and had some plants to get rid of which is great for us cuz we don't really have much of anything!!


In the front bed I added these 'lilly of the valley' along the front.




In the back I added "yellow irises" to the left and "stella d'oro lilies" to the right!

Our Garden

We got some new herbs!! And of course Harpo had to get in his own shot.

Workin' in the Yard

We did a lot of yard work today, mowed, weed-eat, swept the side walks, killed more ants. We also changed the light fixture that was on the back of the garage (facing the back of our house).

Here Kyle is taking the old one out. When we moved in the outer part was all busted on the ground and the bulb was busted. Last fall we went about bought a new light ($25!!) and put it in, it ended up being SUPER bright and we didn't like it. So we took the bulb back and just planned on changing out the fixture eventually. Well we picked one up the other day and today was the day! Although after getting the light off we realized we might need a junction box, ran to home depot (trying to make it back by noon for when a guy was coming to give us a quote about putting fencing up - we want to take down the fence that's cutting in the middle of the yard, to open up the yard and just put two sections up: one by the house w/ gate and one by the garage with double gate)

Okay so we made it back from home depot the fence guy was here, did that, then back to the light ended up NOT needing the junction box but we got it up!

Old Light:

New Light:

I also picked up some more fertilizer while at home depot and feed my hydrangeas which are looking MUCH better since having been watered :-) They almost died because I was afraid to 'over water them' like the tag warned me.... but I was in fact killing them. But now they look great and are growing fine. We also have 4 budding tomatoes popping up (lots of yellow flowers) but only 4 green balls that I can see so far! YIPEE it's so exciting! Can't wait to eat them!

New Windows!!

We got our three new windows today! Two in the dining room and one in the front bedroom. Now we just have three more windows on the main level to get, which we hope to do in maybe 6 months before the bitter winter.

here is the one bedroom window before and after:

Not sure if you remember what the front used to look like (I searched for a picture but I don't have it with me right now) If you look at our halloween decor post you can see it.. We did have shutters - which we'll probably put back up, but since once was broken we just told the window guys to go ahead and leave them off. Don't they look much better than the ones with the ugly silver storm windows on them?

Here's the outside of the other dining room window. (on the south side of the house)

Driving Range 5-31-09

We went down south/west to Halla Green Golf Course (in Chanhassen) and hit some balls at their driving range (thanks to our coupon from the happenings book!) We're already a step ahead of last year... now we're ready for the course. I forgot I had my camera with me until we were leaving so this is the only picture I got =)