garden madness

We've transformed our backyard to a vegetable garden!
Does this arbor look familiar to any of you?? Hint: Glensheen Mansion

We've also been digging out trees that have taken root in our hedge of bushes. By summer's end, the exterior of our house and the land itself will be transformed. Can't wait to show you all the before and after photos. Mike and I are also working on transforming our exterior selves. We have a fierce weight loss competition going on. Ok, so it's not so fierce but the competition is on!

On a side note, we've both been extremely busy working a ton-opposite hours of course- and I came home on Friday to a cleaned out refrigerator! I could tell the shelves had even been taken out because they were put back in a different spot. The back story to the significance of this is that all week we've been saying "what in the hell is that horrible rotten smell?" The answer: spilled CLAM JUICE! Yuck! Can you imagine? All I can say is that I have the best husband in the world for not only cleaning that up but also the whole fridge! It's lovely to have a pal who can help you out in those moments where you know you'd have been dry heaving:)

whirlwind

The M&M house has been quite empty lately. We've been on the go so much. Mikey spent last week at Bowen's catching cold weather and no fish. It was the first time they've had snow on the deck of the cabin. He did mention that his arteries were screaming from red meat overload during the trip... I didn't think that was possible for him:)
I spent the weekend in Chicago with Tre. We rented bikes and took in the sites of the city via a 2 1/2 hour bike ride along the shore. I highly recommend this for anybody heading to Chicago. I'll post some pics soon.
On Monday and Tuesday I was off to the cities for a Homeland Security training on stadium security. I had to drive downtown Mpls for the first time. EVER! I woke up Tuesday morning at 4am with a panic attack about the thought of driving downtown alone.
Lesson learned: Maps= NoDirection. Silly me- I thought if two roads intersected on the map, that I'd be able to turn at the intersection. At one point, I was laughing at myself as I was driving over the Mississippi River toward the U of M campus for the second time in 4 minutes. Pretty sure my face broke out from all the stress!
We'll both be home tonight for the first time in like 10 days. Mike broke down (after 2 days of shoveling) and rented a tiller for the garden. It's time to plant our veggies this weekend.
There's also the potential for a second panic attack: I have to pick the exterior paint color for our house this weekend! Yeek! I'd love to be adventorous but the current color isn't half bad either. $20 off 5 gallon buckets of paint at Home Depot this weekend... A month from today, we'll be putting the first coat of paint on.

Cujo

We think Anna accomplished her reason for existence at the M&M house tonight. Her Cujo bark was in full force right as some vandals threw a brick through a rear window of our neighbor's van. Within seconds, Mike went outside and all we saw was a car turning around in an alley. About 5 minutes later we saw a couple of suspicious guys walking down 13th Ave and they stopped to look at the van. We made eye contact with the pair and they kept walking down and were picked up at the Shanty bottleshop by a car of a similar color that had turned around in the alley earlier. Cops came, photos were taken and then the fun began. We shrink wrapped & duck taped the van. By this point, the owners of the van were able to chuckle that now they really look like they belong in the Hillside. It turns out that our Trib is in the shop for new brakes, so they were able to pull their van in our driveway tonight to get it off the main street.

Anna is known as a vicious dog in the neighborhood. Little do they know that she's the biggest pansy in the world. We're glad to have her and glad that her bark is definitely bigger than her bite.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mom's Day (on Sunday) to our wonderful moms- Barb & Dianne. And to all of our friends who are also mothers. You all do a terrific job of doing the toughest job on the planet. We salute you! Enjoy your day.

The M&M house is in totally cram mode- 2 finals next week for Manda & a ton of hours crammed in at work for Mikey. Mikey & Anna will be off fishing on Tuesday at Bowens Lodge. Manda has finals, graduate commencement, and then a quick trip to Chicago next weekend. Did I mention an entire week with Kramer cat? Pretty sure I'll hear him airing his grievances about the dog while she's gone. Oh boy...

Have a splendid weekend!

Happy May Day

Last weekend the Fudala 'rents were up visiting. It didn't take long before we put them to work. It's a miracle anyone ever wants to come visit us considering we always put them to work. Anyway, the infamous bathroom vanity is now installed:

As you can tell, we still need to add the doors to the vanity and patch up the paint on the wall. It's wonderful to have warm water to wash our hands after being without it for 2 stinkin' years!!

Anna & Timmy wore each other out playing on the beach at Park Point:
Mikey made blackened shrimp to go in a pasta he made last Fri. night. We had to take the battery out of the smoke detector. This was only shrimp #1 out of probably 15. Pretty smokey.
As usual: Annabelle- the little charmer:
It's Homegrown Music Festival week in Duluth. It fun to see new local bands. Some are great, some are not so good. I give 'em credit for getting up on stage.
This weekend should be pretty low key. I only have 2 weekends left until finals week so I'm hunkering down and wrapping things up while Mikey works all weekend. It's nice to say we actually have a "boring" weekend... they don't happen very often.