Duluth 2010

Every year Gretchen and her Parents go to Duluth right around my Birthday. They spend a weekend up there and they are usually kind enough to let me tag along. Here are a few pics from this years trip.

We stayed at "The Inn on Lake Superior". It's the one with the fires and the s'more station.

Ate at one of the usual places... Pizza Luce... SO AWESOME!

A candy shop that sells all the flavors of Jelly Belly Jellybeans INDIVIDUALLY! I got a bag with very cherry, pomegranate, raspberry, and strawberry jelly.... so awesome.

Ate at a little place called BrewHouse. Very awesome and AMAZING beer. Their turkey ruben (shaved turkey, coleslaw, swiss cheese and cranberries) was THE BEST! Awesome sweet potato fries as well.

Flying monkey... I shot it at gretchen a few dozen times...

This creepy muppet looking guy was fun to play with... I dubbed him the "Creepy King" and had a blast messing with gretchen and her dad for about 10 minutes... If you haven't ever played with a muppet, I strongly suggest you do. This one even had the stick attached to his hand so you could move it around.

Look at all the trout... and he wasn't even catching very many of them.

Best sign ever... Swim, but you gunna get MESSED UP! :)

"Autobots, Roll Out"

Birthday

WELL... Another year has come and gone. So I'm 25 now. So many people sent amazing cards and gifts. I thank all of you for everything, you really didn't have to do that but I want you to know that it's MUCH APPRECIATED.

Here are a couple images of things that I got.

LOTS OF CARDS... many with much too generous amounts of money.

Cookies, Pumpkin Bread, and Pecan Pie! Yes the Cookies are half gone, NO the bread isn't half gone, Half had to be put into the fridge for later consumption.

Got a pretty awesome Text Message.

Star Wars Themed Bed Sheets...

And Cookie Cutters.

Very AWESOME Birthday. Gifts, Phone Calls, Cards... Thank You to EVERYONE who made my Birthday SO AWESOME!

More Pics

Here's a couple more pictures from random things earlier this month.

My Parents had their 32nd Wedding Anniversary, so Gretchen and I went out to dinner with them. They insisted.

We went to the Melting Pot. We all had a great time. Especially Joe who filled Gretchen's Glass with water, when she was done, so he could play music... or at least make noise.

Here's another picture from the Chelsey Ride.

Terry took this one from the back of the Trike that her and Kerri rode.

Fun times.

Chelsey Ride

This past Saturday we rode out to Atwater for a benefit ride in Chelsey's name. My dad rented a newer BMW bike and I borrowed my buddies Harley Davidson Softail. It was about 90 miles out there, a 90 mile ride broken up between the starting spot and 3 bars, and then a 90 mile ride back. It was COLD going out and COLD coming home, but the actual ride wasn't bad at all.

We had about 56 motorcycles and about twice as many people. Some people followed in cars and we even had a couple in a semi truck.

This was taken at our first stop.

Just about everyone on my mom's side of the family was there for the ride.

Byron has a new Suzuki, Mitch has a new Harley, my cousin, Kyle, borrowed a bike, my dad rented a bike, and I borrowed a bike.

Even my aunt Kerri rented a trike and Terri rode with her.

Everyone wore a little green for the ride. Gretchen and I wore green bandanas to show our support. Balloons were given out to be released at the start of the ride as well.

Here's another shot of the last bar we stopped at.

With that many bikes, we had quite the line taking up the road. It was really professional and planned perfectly. The "Iron Warriors" group helped block roads and lead the event.

We all had a great time and with a little effort, this will be a yearly get together. Now I just have to work on getting my own cruiser.

State Fair Picture

Incase anyone is wondering what happened to this picture... I have it. And now you can...

If you want the calendar on it to, send me an email and I'll shoot it over.

If you need Carrots, Onions, or Cucumbers... call me.

I have WAY TOO MANY Carrots, Onions, and Cucumbers...

And one of them is WAY TOO BIG!

The onions are awesome... and the carrots are a little gnarly looking but taste AMAZING!

Please call me if you need any of the three... free hugs with every purchase :)

Avatar EXTENDED

In other news... I saw Avatar again... This time it was the extended edition. Was as good as always but the little added things really advanced the story. There was a whole hunting scene added along with extended sex scene and little add ins here and there. But the most memorable, aside from the sex scene and hunting scene, was the Tsu'tey death scene.

Pretty awesome, even it was only an extra 8 minutes added on to 2 hours and 42 minutes.

Still good stuff.

Labor Day Weekend

Last weekend, Gretchen and I went to my grandparent's cabin on Lake Osakis, for Labor Day weekend. We left Saturday morning and came back Monday morning. As soon as we got there we met my grandparents, Terri, Byron, Janaya and Braxton, and we didn't hesitate to start the fun.

It was no sooner than when we got out of the car that Gretchen joined the girls for a shopping trip and I hopped in the boat to go fishing with my grandpa, Byron and Braxton.

We didn't catch much. I think my grandpa caught two keepers and left Byron and me fishless... Braxton started getting antsy so we went in for lunch, dropped him off and headed back for the lake.

This time we hit the sweet spot...

Fish after fish...

We each caught our share... not our limit but it was still good.

After that we headed in. Byron waved goodbye.

I turned around for one last look at the lake.

So far, THAT was the single best fishing experience I've ever had.

Nothing but Sunnies. The biggest being half an ounce shy of a pound. (I think my grandpa caught that one.)

Here we posed with our 26 fish.

The biggest one is in the upper right corner.

We cleaned them and stuck em in the fridge for the next day when we'd have a FISH FRY!

That night, Gretchen and I introduced the game "Bananas" to my family and we all had a blast! Terri and Janaya especially. We also did "Shake a Day" (a bunch of dice games).

The next day we hit the lake again. This time it was BOTH my grandparents, Gretchen and I, even though I had to bait gretchen's hook and take all the fish off that she caught. Bryon hit the lake too, with Terri, Janaya and Braxton, but in his own speedboat. They even stopped by for a couple visits while we fished. They dropped Janaya off at the cabin and she ended up texting me to tell me that my mom drove out... we continued to fish. :)

After we caught about as many as we could, each of us catching our share of keepers, we headed in to clean em and cook em.

Photo opp.

Fred (Grandpa), Byron (Uncle), Braxton (Second Cousin). My grandpa looks so much bigger in these pictures but that's because he was sitting on the cooler while everyone else was on the step.

And here's one with me.

I made sure to wear my BRIGHT ORANGE hunting cap this weekend so the fish would know who's hook to jump onto.

That day we caught 15 Sunnies and a Perch (the only decent one all day).

We started the feast! They even made bacon wrapped shrimp! First grilled, then deep fried... you know, the really healthy stuff...

Bacon wrapped shrimp, coleslaw (home made), veggie kabobs, SOFT soft buns, and TWO KINDS of deep fried Fish, my grandma's traditional recipe, and my OTHER favorite, shore lunch.

BEST... Fishing Trip... EVER!!!

Baseball Last week

Last thrusday, my friend JJ called me up and invited me to a Twins baseball game at the new stadium. Four or five phone calls later michael and I were in the car and headed to Minneapolis to pick up JJ for the game.

We parked about four blocks from the stadium for $5 and made the walk. Even though we lost, the game was awesome. I don't think there's a bad seat in the entire joint. And the seats JJ got us were AMAZING. About 8 rows up, after the reserved seats, behind home plate.

His work has season tickets and I guess they had no one to use them for this game. Worked out great.

JJ, Me, and Michael.

JJ even brought a couple dunnys in, since we picked him up at Robot Love.

ALSO:

Michael found an iPhone 4 when we were walking out of the stadium. On the sidewalk... He picked it up and looked confused for a second, I said, "FO FUKKA KEEP WALKIN!" I wasn't about to let him start flashing around an iphone and saying, "Anyone lose an iphone?"

After some long talks and turning down JJ for all the offers he was making to buy the phone from Michael. I talked him into letting me try to contact the guy who it belonged to.

The phone was password protected so there was nothing we could do right off the bat. Later I found out that you can still access the contacts page without the password but it never came to that. Michael didn't want to wait around for the guy to call so I figured I'd take the responsibility and I took the phone to my place. The next morning the guy called the phone and actually tracked it with his iPad... I told michael the night before that people can do that, so he shouldn't try to sell it or mess with it too much.

But after that the guy came by and to pick it up. He was really excited that I had it and was waiting for him to come pick it up. He was so happy that he offered me all the money he had on him... $25 American and $5 Canadian. I told him I don't need anything but the friend of mine who found it would probably appreciate something. So he gave me the $25 and said he'd give me $100 if he had it on him. Then he said, "I also got $5 Canadian but you probably don't want that." So I explained to him that my friend who found it, Michael, is actually a huge fan of Canada. So he gave it all to me and talked to me for a bit through my screen door, told me how drunk they all were and how his buddy is in jail, then he took off. (When leaving the game we saw a guy with tears down his face, handcuffed, sitting on the ground against a Police car. He looked like he just got maced... I guess that was his friend.)

When I gave the money to Michael later that day, he was SO happy that the guy gave us $5 Canadian. He said it was completely worth it just for that.

So it all worked out. :)

Quick Post

Just got an email from my AWESOMELY AWESOME cousin Chevis Peso.

She made a Scott Pilgrim style character of me...

She's the coolest...

Thanks Chevis!

State Fair Round 2

Yesterday, Chevis, Dan, Gretchen and I went to the MN State Fair for another run through. It was awesome. So much good food. We walked the whole thing once again and we ended up going to a couple other places that we didn't hit the first day.

We hit the art building where they had a station set up for people to play with wooden blocks. I built this...

It was fun.

Probably the most epic thing about the day was sprinting down the main road with dan, five minutes before 9pm when the milk stand closed. Once we got there I got my two glasses from the last trip filled and we quickly emptied our water bottles to fill them with milk... Now I know what you're thinking, crazy... But the reason we did this is because we hadn't gotten Sweet Martha's cookies yet and you can't eat those without milk.

So after filling two water bottles, a HUGE pop cup and both small cups with milk, we headed for cookies. Once we had our fill of cookies and milk, we closed up the bucket and sent it home with Chevis and Dan. Bid them farewell and we headed home.