Fun Times!

Turns out...turning 30 isn't so bad after all! :)

On Saturday evening this past weekend we went to Midway Lanes for my birthday party. It was a blast! We found out a few of us are probably some of the worst bowlers in...well...all the land...but it still was fun. I had Missy on my team so I wasn't really worried! Good times were had by all! I would like to thank everyone for coming out & helping me celebrate! It meant a lot that you all were there!

Here are a few pictures from that night...

The cake (Missy had a lady she knows make it). Delicious & so cute! :)

Chris, Mike & Jay

Me & Missy

Lyns & Me

Carrie & Me (finally a good picture of us together!)

Val & Me

Val & Stace

(There are more pictures...just didn't want to post them all)...

Sunday night we went to my parents' house along with my Grandma Gerhardt and Tom & Candace and the kids. We made some quesadillas which were awesome!

But my birthday celebration wasn't just this past weekend...Nope it started LAST weekend with a weekend getaway to Grand Forks for me & Jay to go to a Sioux hockey game. Why not celebrate for over a week, right? It's a running joke in our family that my mom finds ways to stretch her birthday celebrations on for MONTHS - so we like to joke that I'm learning from her how to prolong my birthday celebration!

Some live action photos from the game (they played Bemidji State)

Playing some "D"

The goalie (he didn't get a lot of action - UND dominated)

The Sioux won 5-1! Our seats were 6 rows up so you could really get into the action & almost "taste" the ice! It was great - I really miss going to those games all the time like I did when I was up there for law school.

OK I'll stop blabbing on and on about MY birthday! WE are doing well and are getting closer & closer each day to being in our first HOUSE (oh yes the countdown is officially ON). We continue to work on details of the floor plan and have started on some ideas for both the interior and exterior of the house. So far, so good & it's pretty fun getting to pick everything out!

Other than that, we continue to keep busy with work but also find time for play (as you can tell from above). Jay's working on rehabbing his knee and gets out ice fishing every once in awhile. I have been jogging (thinking about trying to run in the Fargo half-marathon in May) as well as playing in b-ball and v-ball leagues. Our puppies are doing well too - although they did get into a little "fight" with each other last night over some food (go figure). They worked it out however and are back to their normal merry little beagle-rific selves. I have been taking them with me jogging a few times a week (weather permitting) but yes, they are still chubby! We're working on it!

Tomorrow is Payton & Sydney's 4th Birthday! Can't believe they are already 4 - time really does fly! We also have Sandy's birthday coming up this weekend...and hopefully get to see the whole Gerving clan this weekend.

Have a great rest of the week and a great weekend!

Sara Turns 30

Happy Birthday goes out today to Sara for turning the big Three-Oh.

Jay hopes to sign

As everyone I am sure is aware Feb 29th is the official start of free agency in the NFL and with rosters getting shuffled I hope to sign a free agent contract at that time with a team. So as exciting as the news is below about signing there is hopefully still one more big signing in our future.

We signed!!

Well we met with our builder (Hallmark Homes) last night and officially signed the contract for them to build our house!! I don't know whether to be excited or nervous - or both! A house is such a huge investment but we think we are as ready as we can be to "take the plunge."

We have approximately 253 more days until our tentative closing date - but who's counting?? We are already going over lots of little details in the house plan.

Let the shopping (and saving up) begin!

Happy Valentine's Day!

First off just want to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day!! We don't have much planned but that's OK - it's too COLD here to get out and do much anyway!!

It was a big week for Beagles!! For the first time in the Westminster Dog Show history, a Beagle won "Best in Show"! It was pretty fun to watch! It will be one of those "where were you" moments - OK maybe just for us! ;) First the Giants beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl and now the Beagle beats 325-1 odds to win at Westminster! 2008 is looking to be the year of the underdog!! The winner - Uno the Beagle

Other than that, it continues to be just another work week with nothing too exciting going on...Jay and some guys are going to be in an ice-fishing tourney on Saturday - hopefully he brings home some fish!!

Next week we may be signing a contract with the builder for our future house to be built this year! It's exciting but we also know that it will be a long process & they probably won't even start digging until mid-April or so. Oh well hopefully time will go fast and in the end it will be worth it to be in our first HOUSE!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Celebrations

We have had some fun parties & celebrations going on lately..

Last weekend we had a Caribbean dinner party at our friends Val & Brian's house. We had lots of good food and a couple good drinks! Since we weren't going anywhere warm we decided to bring the Caribbean to North Dakota!

The "spread" - Jamaican jerk chicken, Caribbean rice, fruit, shrimp...all kinds of delicious food...

Me & Val all smiles with our pina coladas...

Me & Kailey all decked out for the occasion.

Jay & me enjoyin' a Jamaican Red Stripe...yeah mon!

It was a lot of fun actually getting to cook in a nice kitchen at their house!

Speaking of houses...we got our bid back last Wednesday and we think we are going forward with building the house plan that we have been going over with the builder for the last few weeks. We need to meet with the bank on Monday to make sure we can go ahead with everything. Pending that, it's probably just going to be meeting with the builder about a few more questions & changes and we'll probably be signing a contract with them soon!

We also had a couple birthdays this past week. Our sister-in-law Val had a birthday on Feb. 6th and I met her and a couple others out at BWW the night before to help celebrate that and also to get her sister-in-law Missy out of the house after having a baby a few weeks ago!

On Feb. 8th it was my friend Sara's birthday. We weren't able to celebrate it with her this year since she is up in GF now but may get to see her when we are there in a couple weeks.

Feb. 8th was also our niece McKenzie's 4th birthday. We went to Kenzie's party last night at the Ramkota which was a lot of fun too!!

Grandpa Mike with McKenzie & some of the other kids at the party.

So in the midst of all this cold weather we've been having, we have found some fun things to do which helps pass the time until it's nice out again!

We hope everyone has a great week and we'll update again soon I'm sure!

UND Sioux Hockey

The video below shows why we love watching our Sioux hockey! Can't ask for a much better finish than that - especially against the Gophers!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0au3sixxGyg