A Busy Start to the New Year

An episode of COPS right in our own backyard! I was startled awake by a strange noise on the night of January 27th to find the police and an assortment of other first responders combing the neighborhood. It turns out a driver lost control of his/her car and ran into the deck of a house across the way and proceeded to flee the scene which resulted in the fanfare. Check out the KSTP and Rosemount news stories on this - SUV Crash . Excitement in a small town!

Other than that we've had a great time seeing friends and family when we have time. It's been busy with activities for Mark, Keira and me. One such activity included having Keira's buddies (aka her husband and her boyfriend) over to play. They were all so well behaved I was actually able to take a 20-minute snooze while they played in the other room. Mark was awake and present, but he never had to do anything. What great kids!

Great lunch and great conversation

Tyler ate like a champ

Keira did pretty well too - must be the influence of her friends

Will had fun with his Oreo

Showing off their chocolate teeth

Keira tried to stuff her mouth too

This Sunday is my birthday. Yes, I will be 29 - again. Mark took me to dinner at Kincaid's where I enjoyed a lovely halibut dinner followed by Lion King at the Orpheum. It's been a great start to the birthday weekend. Tonight is dinner with the family and I've got some other outings planned with friends throughout the month. It's going to be a busy, but fun-filled month.

2012 Resolutions

Ha! I don't make new year's resolutions because I know I will break them. For example, I was going to not gossip at work anymore. Well, that lasted until 9:30am yesterday morning. Everyone was back in the office and I got the latest on which divorced folks in the office who shall remain nameless were suspected of canoodling through the holidays. I like to be in the know and is it really gossiping if I'm just listening? (That's a rhetorical question. I don't want a lecture on why I shouldn't gossip.) I was also going to go "no popcorn" for the month of January because I totally gorged on the stuff throughout December - even made myself sick a couple of times. Anyway, I've made it the entire 4 days of January so far! However, I just found out that I qualify for an upcoming online research study about kettle corn. It requires me to sample kettle corn and provide feedback. For my time, I get popcorn samples and a $75 Amazon gift card. Yep, that's worth breaking that resolution. I think I've made my point.

One real resolution I'm going to try to keep is updating this blog. I don't know who's reading and I just might be talking to myself, but hey, it's fun and an easy way to keep a record of bits and pieces of my life, events, thoughts, etc. I'm shooting for at least once a month. Anything beyond that would be a bonus.

And, how rude of me...Happy New Year to anyone reading this!! I hope your 2012 is filled with happiness, good health and all that your heart desires!

One quick photo of Keira and Santa. It's such a fun event now that she doesn't scream at Santa. The curve ball she threw was telling Santa she wanted a jack-in-the-box for Christmas. Well, that was definitely not on my list of "Santa's gifts to Keira". Thank goodness for Amazon.com!

Family Photos

We just received some of the family photos we took with photographer, Shelly Mosman, a couple of days ago. We're really happy with them. It's too bad we were pressed for time or we would've headed outside for some outdoor shots. Still, the studio shots are great and we had so much fun. Keira enjoyed hamming it up. Here's a small sampling of the photos.