Twins vs White Sox 9.25.08
Oh….My….Gosh! That game Thursday night was AMAZING! I think it might have been the most fun game I’ve ever been at…even better than the last game of 2006. I was sitting almost dead center, upper deck, with Chris, Josh & Andy and we had a blast. I can’t believe the Twins swept the White Sox!

Twins vs Royals 9.27.08
Josh & I were at this game courtesy of the Twins. I had organized enough groups this year to be invited to a Fan Appreciation event and that part was awesome. We got unlimited free food & beverages from the Field Fare stand outside section 109…and no one outside of our group was able to use that stand. Yep…NO LINES! I think total we got: 3 dome dogs, 1 hot dog, nachos, pretzel & cheese, 2 malt cups, peanuts, cracker jack, 5 beers & 1 pop. The game was totally frustrating, especially after Thursday’s game, but I guess you can’t win em all. After the game Josh & I headed to Triple Rock to see Why? perform an all ages show.

Twins vs Royals 9.28.08
For the last home game of the regular season (or so we thought) I got together a group of 35 people and we all sat in section 221 (same as my season tix last year!) to cheer on the Twins. And celebrate my Brthday! I had wanted to get face paint all season & finally did on this exciting day. We had a good time cheering the Twins on to victory (Yay Scott Baker!) and watching the White Sox beat Cleveland to force a couple more games. Thank you to everyone who came out to cheer the Twins on to a Birthday victory!

It ain’t over yet
So…the Twins remained 1/2 game up on the White Sox after Sunday’s games which forced the Tigers to travel to Chicago to play a make up game. If anything had happened differently to allow the Twins to be 1 full game up that wouldn’t have been necessary, but it was and Monday afternoon (after a rain delay that seemed like forever) the Tigers & White Sox played a game and unfortunately the White Sox dominated which means there is a TIE for the AL Central lead.

That means…for only the 5th time in AL history there is a ONE GAME playoff! Yikes. And, to make matters worse, our Twins have to travel to Chicago to play…which was decided weeks ago with a COIN TOSS. Seriously - we won the season series…why can’t we have home field advantage? Ugh. So…all of Twins Territory will be eyes glued to the TV tonight at 6:30CDT cheering our boys to what will likely be a hard fought battle for the title. GO TWINS!!

Well, I can cross one more thing off of my wedding to-do list.  We selected a hotel and signed a contract with them to reserve some rooms for our out of town guests the weekend of March 27th!  Yay!  The reception hall gave us a great list to start with and after talking to a couple different places we choose this one.  For one thing Chris knows it is nice inside, but also they offer a shuttle 7 days a week until 11pm and we can extend that for our guests on Saturday night if we’d like.  Additionally there is a wide selection of shopping & restaurants not too far from there so hopefully this will all work out.  The information will be on our Wedding page once I mark it public, but in case anyone just can’t wait to know, we choose the Radisson Hotel Roseville. 

Registering, on the other hand, is not complete. I’m sure it’s not something I should complain about but Chris & I really do have everything we need and that is making registering a bit tricky. We’ve even been trying to get rid of a lot of stuff to de-clutter our lives a bit since moving all my stuff into Chris’s house. I would say that this year alone we have taken 5-7 car loads of stuff to Saver’s, Half Price Books or Bridging or had Arc come pick it up. So, as we start to wander the stores with the magic scanning machine we have had a difficult time picking items that we don’t already have or don’t need an upgrade on. I’m not really sure what most people register for because I always bring a gift to showers (which means I just pick something I like without really LOOKING because everything is still available) and give cash for weddings so the fact that I’ve been to my fair share of weddings doesn’t make this any easier.

The other thing is that we aren’t getting married & having a reception so we can get bunches of new things. We’re getting married because we love each other and want to be together forever and we’re having a reception because we want our family & friends to celebrate with us! However, I realize that people want to bring gifts to a wedding, and I truly do appreciate that, so we’re going to do our best to come up with a list of items that would make our house more “ours” and maybe a little fancier. I’ve also heard of people registering for honeymoon gifts but until we pick where we’re going that’s not really an option. I wonder if you can register for “Kitchen Kash” or “Backyard Bucks” (I’m so clever, aren’t I?!?) or something like that somewhere?

I REALLY don’t want to sound ungrateful or unappreciative for any gift that may be purchased for us so I hope this didn’t come across that way. I am just wondering what other “already settled” people did. If anyone has insight please let me know! Meanwhile I’ll be hunting down the perfect pillowcase to register for.

I have been looking for the We’re Gonna Win Twins song to use as a ring tone for a LONG time. I would go to Verizon’s site, I would google it, I thought I had tried everything. Today I decided to try again and this time I found it! YAY!

More from thetomlin2 at Myxer

If you have Verizon like I do, you probably won’t be able to send it straight to your phone but you save the file and email it to yourself and then when you get the PIX text message you save it as a ring tone. Just fill out the phone number field and they magically know what service provider you have. Ok, seriously…THIS IS AWESOME! I’m not sure if I can ever set my phone back to vibrate again.

This is a neat photo I found when searching Creative Commons photos for “Hearts.” I had to make it smaller to fit into the puzzle but to see the whole thing you can click here.

Original:


Puzzle (click to play):


Courtesy of cuorhome via Creative Commons.

I could think of multiple titles for this post…
1. Morneau beats Monkey Boy (surpases Cordova in doubles)
2. I <3 Back 2 Back Home Runs! (Yay Kubel & Young)
3. Inconsiderate Fans Piss Me Off (is it really THAT hard to wait for an at bat to finish? so RUDE!)
4. Chris really ISN’T Bad Luck (phew…I would hate to have to call off the engagement!)

But, while those are actually some pretty good stories, I think I’m just going to be happy that we got to see a good, fun game of baseball & AJ didn’t get a hit.

TWINS WIN!!

Did you know Save The Date’s are supposed to go out six months before your wedding?! Wow. We only got engaged just over seven months before our big day so that doesn’t allow much time! Thankfully we had engagement photos taken last week and we found a photo in that batch that works perfectly as the cover to our save the dates! (Honestly, many of them would have worked…I narrowed it down to 3 and Chris picked his favorite.) I had previously scoped out the price on Snapfish for postcards and we decided to go with that as a cost effective way to get the word out to our family & friends.

I work in the print industry (indirectly) so I know all about proofing an order before placing it so of course I was uber paranoid and double checked spelling myself before having Chris take a look at it. We placed the order this afternoon so I hope it’s all a-okay! I guess I’ll find out in a week or so.

A quick tip to save some moolah…before submitting my order I did a Google search for “snapfish postcard coupon” and was lucky enough to click on a link for Retail Me Not. This site has a Snapfish specific area and that is where I found coupon code 123SITE08 which is good for 30% off any order over $30! What a great deal!! I saved $28.13 plus tax which is will help with the wedding budget. It’s definitely worth taking a couple minutes to search online for coupons when making purchases.
Gosh, I suppose once the postcards are sent out there’s no turning back, huh?!

Engagement photos are definitely not required in the whole scheme of getting married but it’s a fun idea and when my friend (and co-worker) Jeff mentioned that he would like to take some photos for us I jumped at the opportunity! Jeff originally started taking photos as a hobby but that has transformed into a side job that he is passionate about and Chris & I were both looking forward to working with him on this photo shoot. Check out City of Lakes Photography to see more of his work!

So we all met at the beach where Chris proposed to me to take some pictures last Tuesday (yes…just one day after I bought my dress!). It’s a little awkward to stand on the beach in a totally public place and pose…staring into each others eyes, kissing, hugging, etc…but I think we did a decent job ignoring everyone else and Jeff said that were were photogenic enough because at least we didn’t have one of us with our eyes closed in every picture!

We took some photos on the beach near where the proposal took place and then moved on down the walking trail to take a couple “ring” shots, the “walking” pictures and then some standard portraits on a staircase that wasn’t too far away. Jeff had an idea to take some photos by the Light Rail Station so we met up with him later that same night to take a few more and I’m glad we did because a couple of them turned out really cute! Here is a sample of some of the photos for your viewing enjoyment. Jeff took hundreds of photos in the course of an hour but then touched up about 20 for us so if you want to see more than what I included in this post, click here. (Josh - there are kissing photos if you click that link…you’ve been warned!)

Chris & I agree that Jeff did a great job with our engagement photos & would recommend him to anyone so if you’re in our area and are looking for a photographer be sure to check out his website!

P.S. As we’re going through this wedding planning process I’m learning even more that I LOVE CHRIS!!

Chris & I hosted our first ever Helmet Sundae Party this September and it was a B-L-A-S-T! First he grilled up some delicious hot dogs which were enjoyed with some peanuts, cracker jack, and nachos. Then we watched the Twins game in HD on our super awesome (huge) TV and enjoyed some ice cream sundaes in mini Twins helmets. Really…what more could you ask for?!

Here is a picture of our youngest & oldest attendees (me & Drew):

And some others in attendance:

In the end the Twins won & I think everyone had a good time!! You can see all my pictures from the night here. I will do a better job taking photos if we have another party next year!

Last Saturday morning (in a lucky break from the rain) Chris & I set up our lawn chairs right in our front yard and enjoyed the candy throwing, bread giving, music making people in the parade that closed our street. It was so fun! This parade was part of a weekend long festival.

The parade wasn’t more than a half hour long but we really enjoyed it. Almost every car or group that went by was throwing candy and the kids were loving it! The first treat we had was some mini donuts from the Scandia Bake Shop up the street. I’ve never had anything from there before but now that I hear that they have amazing cookies I’m trying to find a reason to get some! Next, we saw someone handing out bread and Chris thought “why not” and walked down to the curb. Little did he know that he would come back to our section with 4 bags of bread! Seriously…he got 2 packages of hot dog buns, a package of hamburger buns and a loaf of bread. Yikes.

When it was over we headed inside because I was expecting the ladies for scrapbooking weekend. It was a fun way to start the day! If you’re interested, click to see a short video of the bagpipes or drum corps that were in the parade.

This was the 25th year and I hope it continues on for 25 more!

Yikes…do it yourself car work can be troublesome! I needed new struts and my friend Ross offered to come over & replace them if I got the parts (and some steaks & beer). Since it saved hundreds of dollars I took him up on the offer! Well, last night was the night of car repair and let’s just say it didn’t go as easily as Ross had anticipated.

To start out the events, Honda chooses to use parts that most car parts shops don’t carry. I went to THREE before I found what I was looking for…thankfully the guys at the first 2 shops were very willing to suggest another place to try or else I would have ended up at Honda paying $5 rather than $0.70.

Ross brought Corey with him to help (I think because he figured I wouldn’t be much assistance!) and the four of us got working on the car as soon as they arrived. Turns out it isn’t as easy as expected. Taking the old ones off wasn’t a problem so much as putting the new ones back on. Thankfully Ross & Corey ROCK and with some creative collaboration everything ended up back on the car and it survived a test drive before we called it a night.

THANK YOU GUYS!