Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Holidazzle

Last Saturday, we FINALLY went to the Holidazzle parade. This is a parade that is done every Christmas. I think it runs from Thanksgiving to Christmas and it a small parade that runs down Nicollet Ave in downtown Minneapolis. From what we hear it is the same every.single.year but we had yet to go until now. It was rather exciting since we've never been... but also rather cold, lol. They just have a bunch of floats that are all lit up:
pinocio

This one was cool, it was Peter Pan - Captain Hook was on the ship:
peterpan float

And the alligator was following:
alligator

There was even a city bus all decked out
bus

These were my absolute FAVORITE!!!!
walking christmas lights
Walking Christmas Lights! I so want one of these for a halloween costume! LOL

After the parade, we went with our group (we were doing this as a Newly Married group from church) we went up to the 8th floor of Macy's for their annual holiday decor walk-through. We actually went to this the first Christmas we were here. That year it was The Nutcracker. Well since then they changed it to A Day In the Life of an Elf and haven't changed it since. So pretty everyone we were with had seen this same display days before. But it was still fun. There was a super long line to get to it since it's tradition for most people to go up to the 8th floor after the holidazzle. Luckily the first year Kyle and I went we just went on a week night and there wasn't really anyone else there. That's what I would do again :-)

kyle daisy

Merry Christmas!!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Dome is down.

You must have heard that our Mpls Vikings dome collapsed about 5am this morning. There is some amazing footage through one of our local news channels: Fox 9. Hope this video works, but if it doesn't I'll put the links right below.

So after hearing our overall snow totals, I wanted to share some things we learned.

Yesterday we got a total of 17.1 inches.

Some history snowfall:
in 1991: the great Halloween snow storm wins first place with 28.4"
second biggest snowfall was in 1985 with 21.1" falling in January
1982 takes third and fourth place with snow falls of 20" one day and 17.4" the NEXT Can you imagine 37.4" in two days!!!!!


You can see some photos from this weekends snow storm here:http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/weather/mn-snow-blizzard-photos-dec-11-2010
I like the door photo, when they open their front door and the wind blew a snow drive up to midway and you can see the grooves of the door in the snow, lol!

We left the house!!!

Well we manage to get out and about today. We needed to run to Home Depot as well as pick up a few things from the grocery store.

We got up early to shovel back by the garage because Kyle had a study group that was suppose to meet at 10am. They ended up doing it over the phone, but at least we had the shoveling done early. We had to finish the front, and I even made a little trail for Harpo in the back. Although he hasn't been to thrilled to use it. I brought my little pocket camera along while we were out in case I saw anything exciting. I didn't really find much exciting, but I did snap a lot of pictures to show just how much snow we got.

I'll start with our shoveling this morning. I started off in the front (we had to RE-SHOVEL everything we had done last night because it was so windy and kept coming down that it just blew back into where we had cleared a path before!) I started toward the front road, Kyle went back toward the garage again. Here is the front as I make my way to the front sidewalk, yes it is up there somewhere, lol.
front sidewalk

I didn't get too far in the front before I went in the back to help kyle out with the part in front of the garage:
cleaning in front of garage

We did as much as we could for the time being and decided it was time for a break. (This first round was probably about 9 or 9:30)
side of house

Once we found out Kyle wasn't going to be going downtown for his study group, we took a little longer of a break. I went back out front to work our way toward the street. Once I got to the front sidewalk, Kyle came out and helped go one way, while I went the other! Sucess! I am standing in the street in this shot:
front of house

So fast forward a few hours and then we go back out. We decide we'll run to Home Depot and the grocery store. Oh another side story & the reason for the HD trip. We got this new little toilet button thing to install in our tank. Well turns out it didn't' fit, our tank is too shallow. But in the process of installing the part we thought would work, we broke the current toilet knob. So we've been manually pulling up the plug since last night. We did find a replacement knob, the cheapest being $10!! Oiy yi-yi!

Okay so we decided we were going to get out. Kyle went back to finish clearing in front of the garage and I worked on getting a path for Harpo in the back yard. He has been a good boy about holding it in. He does NOT like going out when he sinks in, lol. It's kinda funny. Here is his path I made him
harpo loop

It's kinda hard to see the path so I drew it out for you:
harpo loop drawn

Once I got a little path I went back to help Kyle finish up the garage area.

Here you can see Kyle standing up in the alley way. This was after we finished off clearing in front of the garage. You can see all the piles of snow cuz you gotta put it somewhere when you shovel, lol.
kyle in alley

Garage was all cleared and we were ready for take off
open garage

Here is a shot as we went down our alley
our alley

Here is a neighbor (one of the few) that has yet to get out and clear off their car/driveway
snowed in neighbor

This is what it looked like looking down the side walks. This house closest to me in the picture hasn't shoveled their sidewalk yet.
not plowed sidewalk

So many people out getting their shoveling done. A guy with his snow blower:
snowblower

I was excited to be out of the house and ended up taking pictures of everything, lol. Here is a truck with their plow on the front! This isn't the state plow truck but just some civilian driving around.
snow plow truck

These two guys: Although their camo doesn't work quite as well in the snow, I can clearly see them!
people shoveling

Here we are turning back down our road. Someone walking with their snowblower.
our road

And here's our house!
front of house in car

After we got home I wanted to go outside and play with Harpo. I put his boots on again, hoping that would help him trott through the snow.
harpo in boots

He wasn't happy. I think he might do better without the boots next time. He had just went number one and number two earlier when I was making his path so he was giving me the dirty glare of "why are we out here again?" the entire time. I had to pick him up and put him on the other side of the loop just to get him to go around. lol.
harpo on path

He got a treat after this for being such a sport and letting me mess with him. But it's so funny watching him walk in the path because he's like a little pac-man stuck in a maze!


Saturday, December 11, 2010

Ugly Sweater Party {Dec 4th}

Last Saturday we went to a friend's 'Ugly Christmas Sweater Party'. We were going to go to a second hand shop in uptown on Saturday to find two ugly sweaters, but the night before we were over at another party and were talking about needing to look for ugly sweaters. Luckily they had two that we could borrow!!! Although we still need to find one for Kyle to wear this Friday, at least our problems were solved for that evening. We look like big dorks, but so did everyone else at the party, so that makes it okay.
ugly sweater

I can't believe I'm even posting this, I look like such a dork!

um yup more snow

okay what was I saying about snow??

We just attempted to go out and do a little shoveling... which I don't think we got very far. I shoveled a path, then turned around and had to shovel my way back.
kyle shovel

I also attempted to measure again (only an hour later from my first/last measure). This is a 15 inch ruler:
ruler in snow

BUT we did make way to the front door. While I went toward the front of the house Kyle made a path to the garage.
clearing a path

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

"Ohhhhh the weather outside is frightful..."
side door windows

Last night they were calling for us to get 13.8" of snow. We weren't sure whether or not to believe them because well, the weather people aren't always 'right'. But we knew it was going to at least snow when they call for that much!

Just the other day I was talking to Kyle about how much I love snow!! And how I really enjoy living in Minnesota because we get snow EVERY winter. We have a WINTER! I could never see myself living somewhere that doesn't get snow or doesn't have a guaranteed white Christmas every year. And with that... we woke up to just a little bit out on the back deck. Harpo didn't want to go out after breakfast. But I decided I'd go out with him, take a few pictures and then shovel off the deck then go out front and do the same. The snow doesn't really seem that bad from the 'backyard' perspective. Oh I should also add, the wind is blowing a LOT and there are snow drifts EVERYWHERE so I knew going into this that I was going to have an inaccurate depiction of exactly how much snow has fallen.

So here was what our back deck has looked like all morning. It hasn't really changed since the wind is blowing, it's keeping it pretty low.
backdoor
(Oh that big pile you see toward the back, that is the pile from the old snow, we only shovel a path from the door to the stairs for Harpo.)

Oh I forgot to mention our new shovel! We had two shovels before, but one was like this and the other was an old straight handled rusty hoss. We much prefer the wavy handled ones so decided to get another so we could each shovel at the same time and get it done faster.
newshovel new shovel2

Harpo went outside with me, but didn't seem to like what he saw. But he knew it was time. He had been holding it all morning. (oh btw it's noon when all these pictures were taken)
Harpo on the deck

He got right in and started to plow himself a path:
harpo plowing a path

Every winter he gets a little ring going around the back yard, which he usually stays in. The past snows weren't as deep so he somewhat had the path started but would still trample through the middle of the yard every once in a while. This morning he decided about 6 feet was a big enough track.
harpos had enough

Of course the whole time he's working on his path I'm saying "Harpo, Harpo! Look at me" because I wanted a picture he finally did with the look of "WHAT do you want? Can't you see I'm busy!" LOL About 30 seconds after that above picture he found a good spot to pee. I could tell he didn't want to go where he ended up going, but you could also tell that he was not in the mood to plow more track. lol.

After those pictures above, Harpo and my camera came back inside and I shoveled off the deck and stairs. Easy task... so I thought it's not to bad. Now I'll go out the side door, measure the snow and maybe just get an area shoveled off around the side door. I opened the side door:
side door

Hmm there is much more over on this side of the house. I stuck the ruler down in the snow. It measured 10".
noon 10inches side door step side step

Again I'll place the disclaimer that the wind is REALLY blowing and there are lots of snow drifts, although our whole front yard looks like a big snow drift.


I trampled down the side stairs to get another reading on the sidewalk next to the house. This one read 12 inches.
noon 12inches southside walkway side of house

This was the point I thought "Crap, we have a lot of snow" It got all in my boots and up my snow pants! You can see by my trail.
trail footsteps

This is when I decided I'll poke my head around the side of the house to get a picture of the front:
front of house

Because I can't open the front door from the inside.
front door

Monday, December 6, 2010

Second snow {Friday, December 3, 2010}

I'm WAY behind on blogging, this I know. We've been go-go-going, and honestly since I haven't been taking a 'picture-a-day' I feel like there's not much to blog about.


Thanksgiving we did go home to Missouri, but I've been so busy I haven't made it through those pictures, so that will be another post.

dec snow_filtered
I last blogged about our first snow (which fell on November 13th). We usually don't consider this our first 'here to stay' snow because it usually melts before the real stuff in mid-December. Well this year it's giving us a little turn of events, because that first snow never melted. We got our second BIG snow that we know for sure is HERE TO STAY, on December 3rd. I'm not sure how much WE got because we shoveled Friday night before heading to a friends house, shoveled a little when we got home, and had to shovel again in the morning, so there wasn't a spot I could measure that was a complete accurate read. The news stations were saying we got around 10 inches. I believe it!

Saturday we also made the yearly trip to Home Depot to get the filter for the furnace and a new shovel. We had two, one we always used and one we hated to use with a straight handle and a rusty blade. So now we have two 'ergonomically correct' handles that we can use at the same time. MUCH better than the straight handled ones.

Since Saturday, it has still been slightly snowing and they say we have another big dump this weekend. I LOVE SNOW!!! Bring on cross-country ski season (and hopefully with that more blogging) :-)
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