Sledding

Ryan Sledding from jvtubbs on Vimeo.

This was Ryan going down the hill. Only he and Christine were able to make it to the hill with us, but it was a BLAST. Then we warmed up at our house with spicy hot chocolate, while others trickled in.

Mad Men style

For Halloween this year, we dressed as Greg and Joan Harris of my favorite show Mad Men.

While Josh is Away...

I'm going out with my friends! I asked my good friend Jen to the Hot Chip/LCD Soundsystem concert last Saturday. This is a picture of the HUGE disco ball LCD used for a couple songs.

This video is my favorite song of LCD Soundsystem's called Dance Yrself Clean. They're an electronic band and even have a guy on stage that syncs the lights with the music. We had an awesome time, it was a great show!

The Wedding (Behind the Scenes)

The Great Minnesota Get-Together

After 2 summers of being in California, we were finally able to go the the State Fair again. The worst thing was that they don't even know what chesse curds are in California!

So I obviously had to get some. They were excellent. Josh and I also decided to try something new this year, so we went with...

The Deep-Fried Snickers. Healthy right?

Relay for Life

Friday night and into Saturday morning Josh and I participated in our first Relay for Life at the Fairgrounds in Albert Lea. As a team of 14 or 15, we spent the night walking in shifts.

Since Friday's forecast included a chance for rain, all the luminaries were set up in one of the barns and the effect was very powerful. You can see them completely lighting up the barn, and it made it quite warm in there too. They were glowing all night long.

I hope we have a chance to participate again!

Rock the Garden

In the whirlwind of moving in, Josh and I attended Rock the Garden on Saturday the 19th. The show was put on by The Walker Art Center and The Current, the radio station we listen to, in the sculpture garden next to The Walker.

We were able to ride our bikes up to the show, but we ended up not using our tickets. As you can see there were about 10,000 people attending. We found a great spot in the shade, on the grass, across the street where we could still see the stage. 

The bands playing were Retribution Gospel Choir, Ok Go!, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and MGMT and we had a great time seeing them.

Doggie Birthday!

Yesterday was Lucy's 4th Birthday and we celebrated by treating her to a Poodle Puff from Lulu & Luigi and I made her a special dinner of rice, ground beef and shredded carrot. She thoroughly enjoyed both!

Easter Games

After missing the Easter celebration last year, we were glad to be back. The weather was fantastic and the boys started off the day deciding they should shoot at pop cans in the woods. Then we ate a lot of really good food.

Instead of the traditional Easter Egg hunt we usually have, Steve and Deb organized games based on the NBC show Minute to Win It. We all had a super fun time playing a total of 16 games like Bucket Head, Separation Anxiety, Penny Hose, and Bobble Head.

A Christmas Hiatus.

We had an unusual Christmas this year.

When we got to SFO and checked in for our flight home, we were delayed to the point that we were going to miss our connection in Denver, so we ended up rescheduling for December 26 out of Sacramento. After a couple hours of sitting at home alone on Christmas Eve, we decided to make it special by heading up the South Lake Tahoe for the night. We had dinner, went to church and the casino that night, and on Christmas, we went tubing at Heavenly.

We finally made it to Minnesota on the 26th and had a great time. While it was amazingly cold, we still enjoyed seeing everyone and making up for the Christmas' we missed.

Day 500.

Today is Josh and my 500th day in California. Here's looking back to some other memorable days:

Day 33: Our first visitors Matt & Brie.
Day 67: Steve, Deb and Christine make their way out.
Day 113: We went to Bodega Bay.
Day 123: Our first trip back to the homeland.
Day 166: Back again for Christmas.
Day 183: I finally went back to work at Wolfe.
Day 223: Watched Lance's comeback.
Day 261: Wayne, Sue and Logan roadtrip to see us.
Day 283: Matt and I surprise Josh.
Day 321: Our third trip to Minnesota.
Day 341: We met Christine and company in LA.
Day 365: Our 2nd Anny.
Day 366: 1 year in California.
Day 411: A Soda Springs Weekend.
Day 438: Steve and Deb visit again.
Day 459: Matt arrives for some more golf.

We've spent...
40 days with visitors
37 days in Minnesota
21 days in San Francisco
9 days in Tahoe/Sierra
7 days in Monterey
3 days in LA.

Large Straight

Sometimes I do things that remind me that I'm my father's son. This happens to be a great example...getting excited about hitting a milestone on an odometer. Last night Janelle, Matt and I took a 12 mile joyride to hit our target. We celebrated afterwords by going to Jamba Juice for smoothies.

A Busy September

I can't believe that September has already nearly passed. After seeing Andy and Tine we got unfortunate news that my grandpa had passed away and we flew home for 2 days to see family, and attend the visitation and funeral. While Josh and I were heading back to Minnesota, Steve and Deb were on there way out for a visit, so we hurried back to spend some much needed fun times with them.

Last Friday we drove down to Santa Cruz and Josh and Steve tried surfing. They were pretty good and had a great time.

Then Saturday we spend the day driving. First the 17-Mile Drive, then we continued down the coast and got as far as Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. The scenery was gorgeous.

Sunday, we finished up our adventure with a trip to the aquarium. My favorite were the otters, but we also saw seahorses, jellies, birds, sharks, starfish and other various sea life.

Weekend Activities

I had been hearing about the California State Garage Sale (the actual state government) so Friday I decided to check it out. They were selling mostly old wooden furniture from the 70s, repo cars and older computers. While I was snooping through some of the drawers of cabinets I found this little card catalog. There wasn't a sticker so I got it for only $3!

Then, Saturday we spend nearly all day at the United Way Golf Tournament that General Mills was sponsoring. Josh played and I volunteered.

Today we packed up or bikes and headed up to the American River. There are 22 miles of path going from Downtown Sac all the way out to Folsom. No, we didn't ride the whole path.

Mmm...Garlic

Yesterday, Lisa and I went down to Gilroy to the Garlic Festival. Gilroy is just south of San Jose and they produce 90% of the country's garlic. They had everything from garlic salt to garlic chocolate.

We also wanted to see Fabio and Jamie from the last season of Top Chef. Fabio was the MC and Jamie participated in a cooking challenge. They had to use garlic and a secret ingredient that was revealed right before the challenge started which was heirloom tomatoes. I wish we could have seen more of their cooking, but it was still fun to see them in person.

A Year in Review.

Yesterday was our year anniversary of living in California. We can't believe that it's already been a year. We've had some really bad times (us freaking out), but we've also had some of the best experiences of our lives. Above is when Josh and I drove up to Tahoe the first time on Hwy 88. Here's looking back to some of our other favorite moments...

Having Matt and Brie out was really fun. This was at Sterling in Calistoga.

Here are Josh, Christine and I at Stinson Beach. Although my favorite moment when Steve, Deb and Christine were here was going over the hill on Divisadero Street and Christine screaming like we were on a roller coaster!

We waited until my parents got here to go out to Alcatraz and it was worth the wait. It was so gorgeous out there with everything blooming in the spring.

Then Matt and I planned to surprise Josh in April. We got him good. And I think they had a really great time in Monterey together golfing.

And most recently was our road trip down to see Christine, Anna and Ryan in LA. It was so fun to see familiar faces and a whole new city.

We can't wait to see what the next year has in store for us, and we're so excited to have more adventures in California and hopefully back in Minnesota!

Independence Day Weekend

Friday Night, Laura asked us to go to the Sacramento Capitals match in Roseville. They are a professional tennis team, and that day the captain called Laura and asked her to be an alternate, so she sat courtside with the team. They play 5 sets, men and women's singles, men's and women's doubles, and mixed doubles. The Capitals beat Washington 2o games to 18.

Yesterday we headed down to San Francisco to watch fireworks. My good friend Leah was also visiting SF with her husband, so we met up with them for a couple hours. It was so good to see Leah and finally meet her husband Brandon.

We got to Berkeley Marina just in time to see sunset. We got a really great secluded spot next to the water. From our location we could see multiple cites' displays.

First, San Francisco's started going off at 9:30. They hadsome crazy shapes; we saw jellyfish, smily faces, green cubes and red hearts. We could also see some of Sausalito's over Angel Island, and some of Oakland's over the restaurant in the marina.

Berkeley's show started at 9:35. They shot them off at the end of the pier so they were pretty close. We've always been in AL for the 4th, so it was fun to see fireworks in a different city.

Like Kings and the Kings game.

Kyan (Josh's golf buddy from work) got the General Mills tickets for the Kings game last friday night and he and his wife Lisa invited us to go with them. We were super excited because they were playing Cleveland and Lebron James was playing!

We got a special parking spot. The attendant had to move a cone for us to park. Only that Trail Blazer was closer than us to the arena.

Our seats were awesome! They were in row AA (now that's close!) and we only had 2 other rows in front of us (AAA and BBB). We were also in the section that waiters would take your orders so you didn't have to walk ALL THE WAY UP to the concessions. 

And we also were right in front of Lebron James when he did the chalk thing at the beginning of the game, but we didn't get a good picture. We had a lot of other good opportunities though!

Tour of California

Today we went downtown to check out the Tour of California. It's a professional cycle race throughout the state. Today they had the prologue in Sacramento which is time trials, so you get to see each of the riders separately on a set 2.4 mile course. All the top cyclists were here including Lance Armstrong (his first race since coming out of retirement), Levi Leipheimer, Fabian Cancellara, and Floyd Landis.

Before it started we walked around and found the Bissel team warming up.

This is Fabian Cancellara. He is the current gold medalist and won the prologue in 4:32.

I was so excited to see Lance Armstrong! He's riding so fast he's a little blurry! You can see all the people in the background trying to get pictures.

"Winter" Events

Thursday night was the annual holiday light parade in Lodi. Janelle and I helped put together General Mills' float. The parade was made up of over 80 floats made by businesses and local organizations. There was an estimated 50,000 people along the parade route.


Tonight I did something that I never thought possible.... played golf, at night, in December. I went to the local driving range at 6:00 and hit a bucket of balls, chipped and putted. It was 46* which may explain why I was the only person on the range. I plan on going to the driving range at least once a week over the winter. Matt, Andy, Jones, Fors, watch out next year!