CHRISTMAS VACATION

Happy Holidays!! Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I know we sure did. We spent the day with my family on Christams Eve and then we went to David's mom's for Christmas Day. We had a blast at both places. And of course we ate way too much. But it wouldn't be the holidays if you didn't eat too much.

Isn't she just adorable?? That is David's little neice. She is getting so big. I stole her that day. I held her for hours!! She is just so dang cute. I can't believe that she is already 6 months old. I definitely wish that his mom's side of the family lived a lot closer. It has been so nice to see them a few times these past couple of months. We miss them. Just wish they didn't live 3 hours away. It was a lot of fun to be there with the kids on Christmas and see them filled with excitment.

So the day after christmas we decided to go for a LONG ride. We ended up going from Rush City all the way to Princeton. We stopped at a cousin's place and let them ride the snowmobile. It was such a pretty ride. We couldn't have asked for a better day to go. It was snowing a little. There was snow sticking to the tree branches and it was so pretty back in the woods on the trails. On the way back it was getting dark and we saw a bunch of deer on the trail too. It was so cool. Better than taking the car!


HOPE EVERYONE HAS A SAFE AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

HAPPY WINTER!

Winter is officially here!! Yay!! I don't know about you, but I just love winter. It is actually my favorite time of year. I can find more to do in the winter and usually enjoy activities in the winter more. Ok....so I don't like those -40 degree days....those are just a little too chilly for me!

So I'm sure you are all wondering what has been going on with us. Sorry about being a poor blogger.....I guess one of my new year's resolutions should be to be a better blogger. I will try my hardest.

Since my last post (back in October) we have both completed a semester at Rasmussen. The even better part is that we both got A's in all of our classes! Yay for us!! I am really enjoying the time off of school. I enjoy being in school but you do need a break every once in a while. It can be very overwhelming at times. We get 3 weeks off and then start back up on January 7th.

So in our spare time since we got that foot of snow, we have been out riding snowmobile. Fun times! I haven't yet remembered to bring the camera with us once. (I'm afraid of what my memory will be like when I get old!) But I will get some pictures of the snowmobile in snow before the winter is over.

Oh here is a funny story....well I think it is funny but David doesn't think so. We were reupholstering a chair that dad found for us. We barrowed dad's electric staple gun to make sure that we got the staples in good and tight. David was a little tired and just wanted to get it done. He ended up stapling right into the palm of his hand! OUCH!! The bad thing was that it was a 1/2" staple too. So I ran him up to the clinic and they had fun trying to get that out. Everyone was kind of laughing at the whole thing when we were there.....you could even tell the doctor thought it was amusing. Poor David! He didn't find it funny at all. So he now has another battle scar to add to his list. He was just lucky he didn't hit any tendons or nerves!! I'm sure that story will be talked about at Christmas!! I just wished I had a picture of it....it was narly...there was no blood or anything....just a staple in his hand! LOL....hopefully we can make it through the rest of the year with no more injuries.

Happy Halloween!! I can't believe that it is already halloween! Where has the year gone?? These are our pumpkins that we carved this past weekend. Not bad eh?

This is my pumpkin. It took over an hour to do. And yes I was a little frustrated by the time I was done. It was the hardest one I have ever done. But it was worth it....I think!

This is David's pumpkin. I think he is cute!! This is the first pumpkin he has carved all by himslef. I guess he wasn't into doing them when he was younger. Not bad for a first timer!!

Anyways.....I hope everyone has a safe and happy halloween!!!

Creativity or Boredom??

So, I attempted the haunted gingerbread house. Let's just say that was the most stressful thing ever. I just don't have the patients for that. I was decorating it and everything but then my one side came crashing down onto the floor, shattering into little bitty pieces. Thoughts were running through my head. David just looked at me wondering if I was going to spaz or cry. I just threw my hands up in the air and said get a picture of the good side and then throw it. I'm not cut out for that I guess.

Then after this stressful event we made a cake that turned out way better than the house. Plus it tastes better.

PUMPKINS!!!

Today we went in search of the perfect pumpkin. We ended up going up to Dunsmore Farm just north of town. They had the perfect pumpkins up there. I totally recommend going there to anyone that is looking for a good carving pumpkin. Or if you are looking for pie pumpkins they also have a lot. They have almost any type that you can think of....plus they have squash and gords.....little pumpkins and really big pumpkins!!! The really big pumpkins were only $7 and I'm talking BIG pumpkins. In the spring they have amazing strawberries too.

So we have found our pumpkins to carve for halloween. To bad we have to wait so long. I'm going to make a haunted mansion gingerbread house. That should be interesting!! I'll post pictures of it when it's all said and done.

So to all that are reading....HAVE AN AWESOME FALL WEEK!!

UPDATE

So it's been a while since we updated our blog. So here is what has been going on.

We have officially started school. We are both taking 3 courses online. This makes things so much easier. I'm so happy that I don't have to commute to school 3 days a week. Things are going really good. For those of you that think that you don't have to do much in online courses or those that think you can do it whenever you want......you're wrong. There is actually more to do in online classes than having class once a week....or so it seems. There are at least 3 assignements due randomly during the week. But so far so good.

A couple of weekends ago, we went to the apple orchards around the state. I definitely recommend the Pine Tree Apple Orchard. There is a lot to do there. There was a corn maze, a pumpkin patch, and lots of other cool things to do. Let's not forget all the apple goodies. There was apple everything....lots of turnovers and pastries.....yummy!!! We are definitely going to that one again.

Other than that there is not much going on or new. All is well with us!!

Too much time on His hands

So last night I knew that David would be coming home early because work has been slow for him. So I decided to do something fun for when he got home. I whipped up a batch of sugar cookies and had them in the refrigerator ready to roll out and cut whne he got home. After we baked them we then frosted them. I think he ate more dough than there are cookies!!

As you can see, he started making funny looking ....this is his alien!!

This is the finished product. Not too many cookies. Think I'm going to have to double the reciepe next time!! Or keep David out of the kitchen until they are done and ready to decorate!!

GRND MARAIS

This past weekend we went up to Grand Marais. It was Kyle, Pam, David and me. We rented a cabin up there. It was so pretty. We couldn't have asked for better weather up there. I was expecting it to be cold and windy. It really wasn't that bad.

We found this ice cream shop that was opened for it's last day for the summer. Everything was half off! SCORE!! We loaded up on ice cream there.

We went to Cascade State Park.. We went to the waterfalls and then walked up to Look out Mountain. That was a never ending hike! A lot of up hill climbing.

The nights were kind of cool but we had an indoor fireplace to roast our marshmallow in.

We are looking forward to going up there again. It was well worth it. So much to see and do. Never a dull moment!!

FISHIES

I'm sooo sorry for not updating this sooner. Things have just been hectic around here. So here is a little bleep about what has been going on in our lives lately.
David has enrolled at Rasmussen College. He will be starting on Oct 1st. He is going into Computer Networking. He can do most of this online. There are only 2 classes that he will have to drive to campus to take. He is sooo happy to be finally going to school.

I, on the other hand, ran into some problems with ARCC. Lets just say that I will not be going there any longer. I just feel like they didn't have a good realtion with the students. They just seemed to not want to help the students put when they needed it. They were giving me the run around with things. However, I was able to apply at Rasmussen (like David) and get signed up with them. I will be able to start on Oct 1st as well. The funny thing is that David and I will be going into the same type of program. So I can take all of my classes online but 2. And those 2 classes will be with David so we can ride together. The other advantage is that we can help each other out with homework. I'm just hoping my credits transfer from ARCC.

Enough about school. We just recently bought a fish tank. So we went and got all kinds of fancy things for it. Well we bought some fish to put in there. We have mollies and platties (small tropical fish). I think that out of the 6 original fish that we bought, we only have 1 still living. The others are all replacements of the 5 that died!! LOL...we're beginners!! You think that is bad, wait til you hear this.

We were all proud of setting up our tank. We were sitthing there watching the fish swim in their new environment. When all of the sudden we saw this little orange thing zip across the front of the tank. We thought we were halucinating!! Then it happened again. Turns out one of our orange platties had babies. Well there were five of them. So I was telling mom and dad about it and they had a smaller tank to put the babies in so that they wouldn't get eaten by the other fish. (Why do fish eat other fish?? I don't understand that!!)

So here we are with 2 tanks going. We went and bought some other fish to replace the ones that died. We got a black molly and a silver molly. They were doing just fine in our big tank. I went to feed them one morning and to my suprise I found litle black babies and little white babies!! (You want to know the funniest thing about this is?? We have all female fish!!!! Tell me how that works! =)

So we started fishing out the babies to put into the little tank with the little orange babies. I was counting to see how many we had. We hit the number 30 and I just stopped counting. Way too many fishies!!! So about 12 or so took a little ride down the toilet. At least if any more of them die we have replacements.

If anyone wants any fish.....let us know.....we have lots. In fact I wouldn't be suprised if we had more in the future!! CRAZY FISH!!!

BUSY FUN FILLED WEEKEND

This weekend was busy and VERY fun! Friday after I got off work, we headed down to the county fair. We walked around and enjoyed the fair food and animals. But we are glad that it is over because it is only a block away from our house and it gets crazy around here then.

Saturday we got up early and headed to Grantsburg, Wisconsin for the water skips. For those of you who do not know what this is, it is snowmobile racing done on water. Very fun!! It was a beautiful day for it. Not too hot or humid. But I did get a little too much sun....yes I got sunburned. My shoulders look like lobsters!! LOL!! Oh well at least we had fun.

These are just a few of the pictures that we have. If the snowmobile sinks in the water and they cut the engine before it actually goes under, the snowmobile can be up and running in a new race within 10 minutes. Amazing!! Looks like a lot of fun out there. They definitely stayed cool out there. We plan to go to this again next kyear. Maybe even catch another one later on this year. The pros were even there. It was just amazing what they were doing out there.

As if that wasn't enough excitment for the weekend. After we got back into town, Kyle and Pam came over and we went to the Mora parade. That was pretty fun. Not as fun as when we were kids though.

Another adventure added to the summer!!

Life's Little Miracles

David's older sister, Sherri, just had her baby on June 30th. So this weekend we drove to Benson, MN to see the new addition to the family!!This is Angel Marie Helmbrecht. She is sooo adorable.

David was feeding her a bottle and told me that I was going to burp her because he didn't want her to spit up on him. So he fed her and fed her and fed her. Well you can imagine what happened when I got her. Yep, she spit up all over me. I hadn't had her more than 2 minutes. But babies will be babies. I'm sure that since there is a little one now that we will be visiting family out there much more often.

AWWH!!!!

We also got a chance to go and see David's mom. She just bought a new house there in Benson.

David certainly looks like his mom. She was showing us some pictures of when he was a baby. Such a cute little boy he was!!

Well there is another adventure that we did this summer. Add that to the list!!

Never A Dull Moment

Wednesday night was quite the night. Now you may ask what is wrong with this xray. Actually nothing is wrong. But what happened before the xray was a different story. David dislocated his shoulder last night. He was not a happy camper. Luckily for us it is under Work Comp. I was woke up at 12:30 by a phone call from him saying to go pick him up from the ER in Princeton. That was the beginning of a long night. He didn't get discharged from there until almost 4 that morning. I had to leave the house to go to work at 7:20. You do the math! So it looks like this weekend will be spent taking it easy.
This is not the first time this has happened to this shoulder either. Not good. But hey, at least he seems to be his old self so I won't argue!!

Camping in Banning

This weekend we went camping up at Banning State Park. We had a blast up there. A lot of hiking to do. There was so much to see and not a whole lot of time to see it all in. We went up there Friday night and stayed through Saturday. We were going to stay up there through Sunday but it was too hot out. We were literally sweating like pigs. YUCK!!

This is our campsite that we satyed at. Not too shabby if you ask me. Rather quite nice. The bathrooms and the showers were right behind us.

This is the other campsite that we got. Kevin, Emma, and Andi stayed at this one.

How many gummy bears can a chipmunk put in his mouth??

The answer is 5.

This was our visitor that we had. He was always around somewhere. He was eating bread, graham crackers, and if you haven't guessed gummy bears!!

Here is everyone taking a breather on one of our hikes. The park is by an old quarry area so it is very rocky.

This is an old building that is over 100 years old. There used to be a train that ran right along side it.

I've never been this close to a deer before in the wild. She really didn't even care that we were there. CRAZY!

Everyone lounging at the waterfall. We all thought it was going to be bigger than what it actaually was.

There is a porcupine up in this tree. It was hard to get a good picture of him since he was so far away. This is the only alive on that I've seen outside of a zoo. I have seen on dead on the side of the road.

That is our camping adventure. We had so much fun that we think we might do that again real soon!! We enjoy being outside and sitting by the campfire at night telling stories.

Our Trip to Utah!!!

We went to Utah for Grandma Johnson's birthday. She turned 80 this year so they threw her a big party. We took lots of neat pictures along the way.

We even saw snow....lots and lots of it. David always seemed to want to eat it. So while driving though Wyoming he stopped and had a handful.

The mountains were gorgeous!! I love the look of them when they still have snow on the peaks. Never get sick of seing that.

This is us going down Parley's Canyon. I didin't think Dacid was going to make it there for a while. He kept saying that his head was going to exploed from all the pressure. It is a very steep canyone if you're not used to it. Let's just say I think it was a good thing that I was driving!!

This is the Great Salt Lake. If anyone has ever seen it before, you'll know that it is not one of it's best days. It was kind of cloudy and hard to see it. But it really is a big lake. Some days it is really cool to look at.

This is Charlie, Libby, and Keaton. They are all Sharie's Kids (don't know how to spell her name). We had the opportunity to go horse back riding. David decided to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground!!

Uncle Erb took us for a ride up the canyon. We went all the way to the top to look at Kenakot Copper. The world's largest copper mine. Gets bigger and bigger every time I see it!!

Would you look at that?? David with some more snow!! Now he can say he also ate some Utah snow!!

The guys studying the landscape.

Would you look at that?? Cowboys really do exist!! I think there will always be one in this family. Just seems to get passed down from generation to generation. So who ever said there were no more cowboys was obviously wrong. They never met Uncle Erb!!

We started our journey back home and David passed out!

We crossed the Continental Divide so many times. This is just one of the times. I don't have a picture of it but at this point, once again, David ate more snow. So add Colorado to the list!!

We went to Rocky Mountain National Park. That was definifely one of the coolest places on earth to go there. Strongly recommend going there sometime.

There were lots of Elk there.

This was one of the many snow run offs that we can acrossed. Cool looking!!

We acually climbed up this high. That was a work out. I didn't think I was going to make it. I felt like there was no air up there. They said it is equivalent to the Artic Tundra. Pretty cool.

One of our final stops was The Great Platte River Road Archway Monument in Kearny, Nebraska. That was cool to see how they traveled the Oregon and Mormon Trails. Learned a lot there too. Recommend going there also!!

This should do for awhile. I will be getting more pictures from the trip thsi weekend and will probably post more later. There is our trip in a nut shell.

Memorial Day Weekend

This weekend we spent a lot of time at David's dad's place. We got his old dirt bike that he used to ride when he was a kid going. Walter and David worked on the dirt bike and another motorcyle most of the day. I even learned how to ride a dirt bike!!! This is a picture of the old Honda XR75. NICE!!!

This is a picture of the old motorcycle they were working on!! It a YAMAHA something. We couldn't get that one going because we didn't have a bettery that worked. But the guys sure tried to get it started. Walter sat on the bike and had David push him around the yard to see if it would start that way. It was the funniest thing ever. Then the dog was chasing them....it was soooo funny. Wish I had a picture of that!!

Here's David riding the dirt bike. He rode that thing for hours. I had a blast learning how to ride!! Definitely looking forward to going back and riding again sometime. I figure if I can master the little one then maybe we can get a bigger dirt bike!!