Our Anniversary Weekend 8.23.09

We had a great Anniversary trip last weekend. Elise and I headed out to Omaha, NE for a 5-day trip, half business half relaxation. We spent Friday and Saturday with Elise's Aunt Mary Ann and Uncle Art and kids. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the boys. Art was so amazing as he gave us tons of maps and materials on Omaha and surrounding suburbs so we could get to know it demographically. He also took us around on a tourist drive around the cities. Absolutely a saint for doing that for us. Omaha area is definitely high on our list of places to move when I'm finished with school and ready to open our office. We will still be looking closer at Missouri and also the East Coast in the coming year, but let's just say Elise already has her heart set on Omaha.. :)

Once we got through our couple of days of work, we spent Sunday and Monday relaxing and enjoying our Anniversary and time together. We did a lot of wine tasting on Sunday, where we skipped over to the Iowa side of the cities (as those vineyards had FREE tastings and the ones we called in Omaha charged) and visited three different wineries/vineyards. This was our first time and we're so glad we went! We got to ask tons of questions and tasted probably close to 25 or 30 different wines. We got a bottle from each place to enjoy through this fall. We also walked around a couple of the vineyards and tasted some of the grapes (edelweiss was our favorite!). Sunday night we stayed at a historical mansion in Bellevue, NE. It was alright, nothing like the Laurium Manor Inn though! It was the same time period, but not at all as nice or historically accurate. It was fun to stay at a B&B again as we did a year ago. It was really neat, as I'll put a couple pics below, there was an old castle across the street from the mansion we stayed at. The castle wasn't open for tours on Monday when we walked the perimeter, but it was HUGE. We peeked in a few of the windows, but couldn't see much. It is called the Joslyn Castle, now used for weddings and other social events. Historically, Omaha's wealthiest family built it and lived there from the last 1800s until they passed away in the mid-1950's and the city took ownership. Must say, it was the first castle either of us had ever seen!

Can't remember the name of these grapes, but they were really good, too

Thought this was a sweet pic of the first vineyard we visited. You can see the dirt roads we had to ride for 20 minutes to reach it!

Can you see my wife?? These were rows and rows of grapes.

Elise was trying to be artistic...we'll give her a little credit. This is how dusty our car was from the dirt roads adventure.

Having fun at our third stop! Fresh Sangria was on the house here!

We were pretty impressed by how well this 70 year old woman took our picture on her first try. :)

We went to a sweet restaurant for our Anniversary dinner, which also turned out to be a winery, too. Guess the odds are high in that area.. Anyway, our waiter was this really cool old dude who was chatting with us all night, telling us stories of his days as a kid in Brooklyn and all this hilarious stuff. After dinner, while we were finishing our drinks, he brought us these Champagne grapes that one of the chefs had brought in for the staff to sample. Such a nice guy, and he didn't even know how special that made the end of our night!

Yeah, I might have ruined the moment.

This is the Joslyn Castle. Quite ridiculous...

So today was the MN State Fair. Elise and I had pre-purchased admission tickets AND tickets to our first concert (yes, we are sheltered yoopers...........). We were planning to go see Kelly Clarkson and Eric Hutchinson as the tickets were fairly cheap, $35 each. Our roomate, Kelly, and her boyfriend were also planning to come with us. So, we left today around 3:30pm for the fair. Paid to take the city bus to St. Paul's fairgrounds. Walked around for a couple hours to kill time, but there wasn't much to do at the fair unless you had money. So we headed over to the Grand Stand to have Kelly pick up their tickets from the booth, only to see flashing up on the gigantic sign, "Kelly Clarkson cancelled tonight's concert due to illness." DANG we all said, and there were about 200 people around us saying the same thing. So we got our ticket refunds all sorted out, but were still really ticked off that we wasted all that time and money for nothing. We hopped back on a bus and headed home after that... I guess it was a good thing though as we now have 5 free hours to do whatever we want. We are tackling the mountain of laundry that has been piling up for the past month...5 loads are going right now! Feels good to get the apartment cleaned up now that we're actually home with some free time for a change.

Break has been going great for me. I study for Part 2 Boards a few hours every day and get to relax a little here and there. Much needed after last semester's stress. Getting excited for this next semester, only one more year left!

And Elise keeps remind me to post this, as we forgot to include August Birthdays.... Happy birthday to our sister Mary on Aug 8th. (don't worry, we did wish her happy birthday before now! ;)

Hope everyone enjoys these last few weeks of Summer! Fall is almost here, and the weather sure is showing it!!

- Dave

Last Week's Events

August has been a great month for us, full of fun and accomplishments. Dave finished up his 6th trimester last week (and got good grades, yay!). He is now a "T7", trimester 7, student. One more year to go! And besides all this mice junk going on in our apartment (the saga still continues, but more details on that later...), we've been having a fantastic month with lots of fun activities, relaxing and celebrating!

Last Wednesday, Dr. Suzy and Rob gave me a huge bonus gift for holding down the fort while our office manager was out of town for most of July/August. They gave both Dave and me tickets to the PGA! They knew we love golf and would die to go, especially with the PGA being basically in our backyard this year, so they surprised me with the gift during the morning shift last Wednesday and gave me the rest of the day off. Dave was in on it, too, but he never said anything! He had already cleared out his schedule from work and exams...bad boy! So we went to the PGA from about 2pm til around 7ish. It was so amazing! We got to watch just about all the big namers. The only ones not there were, of course, the realllly good guys (Tiger had already been there at 5am and left before 10am to beat the huge crowds). Phil WAS there, but we never caught up to him. And when we got through the front gate, I scoured the name board for my beloved Ernie Els, but he wasn't on it for Wednesday's practice. :( I was so sad!

Ernie is my favorite because back about, oh, maybe 12 years ago my brother Matt decided to raise a bet while watching the start of the US Open (1997 I think??). Joel, Matt and Eric all said the names of who they thought were gonna win it. I, not being the sport fanatic as they were, had no clue what golf was, how to play it or who any of those guys were. Ernie came up on the screen and the E's drew me in. I remember saying, "E + E forever! That's my pick." Matt laughed at me and said okay. I didn't watch any more of the US Open. The final day, Matt was astonished as Ernie won the whole thing, MY Ernie! I don't remember the exact bet, perhaps a silver dollar coin or a piece of copper, but Matt did pay up because he was so shocked. Since that day, I've kept up on Ernie's progress and everything. So sad that he got 6th overall at this year's PGA..

So I was saddened that Ernie wasn't out there when we got to Hazeltine. But we moved on and toured the course with Rob. Rob had gotten us Clubhouse tickets, meaning we had access to a lot of the buildings. We got to go inside the clubhouse and saw a lot of the stars in there, escaping from the heat. Also got free drinks. Who can complain about beer and cocktails on the house?

After walking all 18 holes and 3 drinks later, we decided to relax at the driving range, where we saw Ryo Ishikawa, the youngest golf prodigy at 17 years old. He was the only one out there, so we stayed and talked for a while hoping others would come to practice. We were in the stands for about an hour when Rob looked over his shoulder while in mid-sentence, paused, then said, "That's Ernie!" We immediately jumped up, I grabbed the camera from Dave, ran down the stairs and took this video:

Then we went down further to get some pictures.




And when I thought the day couldn't get ANY better, he packed up his clubs and started walking out the gate. Rob grabbed my hat and started running. Dave and I ran after him and I snuck in next to Ernie as he grabbed my hat from Rob. After he signed my brim, Dave asked to take a picture.. And he said sure! :D I was a little historical at this point. Couldn't stop smiling and laughing! But it got even better! Ernie had hit a few balls over the fence, so we ran over there and I found one of his balls!! We also got one of Tiger's! It was meant to be. :) Seriously the best day ever, next to our wedding day, Dave! After leaving Hazeltine, Rob and Suzy treated us to a delicious dinner and drinks and great conversation. SO much fun, guys! THANK YOU!!!!

Holding my fav!

Friday thru Sunday, Mom V and Joel came for a weekend visit. Friday we did some wining and dining after work (Cheesecake Factory for dinner!! And drinks at Majors. Classic.). Saturday, the boys did their own thing with a Twins game and some Mall of America browsing. I took the digicam with us, so Dave didn't get any pics. But he had a really good time and enjoyed being at a baseball game for the first time in a long time. The boys took the light rail over to the stadium from the MOA and it seemed to work out really well.

So while the boys did all that, my mom and I got up early and hit the MOA, but not for shopping. We wanted to check out the Underwater Aquarium which is in the basement floor of the MOA. We had a half off coupon that I got from Subway a few days earlier. We highly recommend going to the Aquarium if you are ever in town and have the time or if you have kids with you. It's amazing! The coolest part was going through their tunnel of sharks, so you feel like you're underwater with them. My mom's favorite was the alligator fish (looked just like an alligator with fins!). It was kind of scary when the sharks flew over head with all those rows of teeth (although the 3 year olds in the tunnel ahead of us were a lot braver than we were!). We also really liked their newest addition, a seahorse exhibit with probably 10 different types of seahorses. They were so cute!





After the Aquarium, we headed out to a matinee at Chanhassen Dinner Theatre. I am SO glad we decided to do this! August is slim pickings for shows as September kicks off the Broadway season, so many theaters take a break in the summer months, especially August. But mom found Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat at the CDT. We decided just a few days before they came that we would buy the tickets and do it. The show was ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR! I want to go see it again! It was hilariously funny and the music was just WOW!!! Dave and I are hoping to see Oklahoma at the CDT in the fall. The theater was so impressive that we will be going back as often as we can afford it! :) That night we had dinner at our place, played Mexican Train for many hours, and enjoyed homemade daiquiris. A very refreshing night!



Sunday, before they headed home, we went over to St. Paul to visit the Science Museum. It was the usual exhibits, but we still had a lot of fun going through each floor. Here are some of the pictures we took.

A huge fish, can't remember the name, but it was found in Kansas...

The dancing micro organisms game...good stuff. Couldn't have passed the test without your help, Mom! No thanks to Dave...(heckler)

AH!! RUN!

Dave driving the tugboat.

Joel driving a barge

Dave lifting a huge fish

This is a video of Dave finding out how many liters of blood he has in his body. Joel had around 11.3 and Dave had about 10.8. WEIRD, hey?? MAYBE it's inaccurate...maybe.

This is a video of me doing the Micro Organisms Dance. It was basically like Dance Dance Revolution, but it showed you a picture of an organism and you had to step on the arrow for which type it was (bacteria, parasite, etc). Dave was no help during round 1 or 2, when they asked all kinds of questions, questions he KNEW from all those Doctor classes he's had to take... It was fun though. We got thru all 3 rounds!

They headed out back to the U.P. after we finished up at the Science Museum. Next time they're in town, we'll probably try the Art Museum or Natural History Museum.

Right now, Dave and I are on the road driving to Aunt Mary Ann and Uncle Art's. Our 1st Anniversary is on Sunday! WOW!! Where did this year go?? We are going to spend 2 days in Bellevue with the family doing some business work, scoping out the area/demographics as we're thinking of opening up in Omaha/Lincoln/Bellevue. Sunday and Monday we are dedicating to US. We'll be staying at a historic mansion in Omaha and will be doing a lot of fun, touristy activities. We're thinking of even visiting a wine vineyard!! Can't wait!

Two and a Half . . . MICE?!

It has been a week, boy oh boy! Thursday two weeks ago, our friend Kelly contacted us to say she had finally been offered a job (after graduating in May), and it's right here in Minneapolis! She was in town for some intense apartment hunting because she started work last Monday! She ended up not really finding a good deal for how long she'll be here, so we offered her our 2nd bedroom (which we had been using as our office/storage room). We're excited to have a roommate, especially one as easy-going as Kel! It's going to really help us cut costs for the coming months. And now I have a girlfriend to hang out with!

So Kelly went home and was to arrive at our place on last week Sunday evening. We got up Sunday morning and started clearing out and cleaning up the spare bedroom. Along the floor under the radiator I noticed this row of little black pellets... I asked Dave what the heck they were.. And before he could answer, I found a scattered mess of them under a table next to our futon and Dave said, "I found more over here under my golf bag. They're mouse turds." *MOuSE TURDS?!?* I thought...! So I got the vacuum out and started to clean up the little mess. We figured there had been a mouse going from apartment to apartment or something like that. We live in a super nice complex, so we thought it was weird to find mouse droppings, but we also live on the first floor so we understood that a mouse could get in and float around.

As we were talking about all these theories and trying to rationalize, Dave pulled out the futon so we could vacuum the rest of the carpet and lifted up the lawn chairs we had under it, we were absolutely sickened to see literally hundreds, maybe even over a thousand, mouse turds all over the place! It was like a little next almost, with paper scraps and shiny things. I screamed, Dave dropped the lawn chair and jumped back. We are both grossed out by mice!

Dave looked at me and said, "I think this is from more than one mouse................." **EEEK!!**

We immediately went to get some traps then stopped by our apartment office to let the managers know what was going on. Unfortunately the exterminator only comes in once a week and wouldn't be back in til Wednesday. We told them we'd still set the traps in hopes to catch the one or two mice that were going around. We didn't expect to catch anything, but we used peanut butter and set up 4 traps in the areas we found the turds. We put one in Kelly's room under her bed, 2 in the livingroom and one in the kitchen. Kelly arrived about 10 minutes after we set the traps...but we didn't say anything about the traps. Didn't think it was a big deal and we just wanted the exterminator to come to bait the mouse!

We three went out to dinner and made it home and in to bed by about 10pm. Dave and I were on our computers in bed and all of a sudden we heard: *Snap! Snap!!* TWO TRAPS went of literally within seconds of each other. I pushed Dave out to go look at the traps.. One had been set right by our deck door, but when Dave went to check it, the trap was GONE! Freaked us out! So we pulled out all the furniture in that corner of the room and finally found the trap, but only found HALF of the mouse!!!!!! Yeah, half. Sick, hey? SO Gross! We luckily had the whole mouse in the other trap. We looked at each other and, even though we couldn't find the top half of one mouse, agreed we did a good job and were glad we could tell the exterminator we got the mice.

We crawled back into bed closer to midnight, after cleaning up the messes, and drifted off. At about 12:58am, **SNAP!** The kitchen trap went off. I heard it and rolled Dave out of bed again. He said it was a bigger mouse, that the first two appeared to be babies or younger mice. This one was bigger (and whole). Two and a half mice caught within 3 hours; caught within 6 hours of SETTING the traps. Pretty scary, but we felt better going to sleep with three less mice in our apartment.

Here's a video of Dave checking the hole in the radiator on the other side of the wall (in our room) to make sure the mice weren't coming in and out of that hole, too. I had already played this trick on Dave before I got the brilliant idea to record it. Let me just say the first time was a ton better. He yelled out, jumped and got really angry at me and said "Don't mess around! I hate mice!!" hahaha :D

Monday morning rolled around and Kelly left for work. Dave went in to peek under her bed. Again, the trap was GONE! "What the heck! Elise, you are NOT going to believe this. These traps are not killing these mice!" We couldn't find the trap right away. We pulled all the furniture and suitcases from the walls and finally found the trap after 20 mins of searching, but again with only part of the mouse in it. Who knows what time that trap went off, but poor Kelly! We were worried she heard it go off, and right under where she was sleeping at that!

We contacted the apartment managers and the sent over maintenance to seal up a hole hear the heater where the mice were maybe coming and going. Dave and I went to Target for more traps. We set them up that night, and guess what. It all happened again! All of them went off that night! I won't go into all those details again, but very similar to the first night. We reset two of the traps. This time we set one in our room instead of Kelly's. Around 2am the one in our room went off. Dave and I were so startled that the first thing I remember is looking over at him sitting up straight in bed and noticed I was doing the same, heart racing. The trap was literally inches from our bed. He removed the mouse and reset the trap in the same place.

The next day was Wednesday, when the exterminator finally came. It didn't seem that he did much, but the note he left us when we got home that evening said he "removed mouse and set trap." No clue what that meant, whether he took a mouse out of one of our traps and reset it, or if he set a bait trap to clear out their nest, who knows..

When we got home from work and school, we checked the trap. Yeah, we WISH it was where we left it, but nope. It was GONE. *Sigh* Again, like the times before, we moved everything around looking in every crevice that it could possibly go. Couldn't find it. Days went buy. Many days, about five. Finally, last night, I was emptying out a mesh hamper of clean clothes and the further I got down, I noticed the clothes were smelling really dirty. Now, to be honest, it was Dave's underwear and socks, so I rationalized it as maybe they missed the wash or need to go through again. But then, I picked up the last few items and at thru the bottom of the mesh bag I saw the freakin' trap! I threw the clothes who knows where and ran out of the room to get Kelly to help me. Dave was out studying for finals with his buddies not to be home for hours. It was so gross. I'm totally washing that entire hamper of clothes again! EW!! We're thinking the trap got caught somehow on the hamper so even when we moved it around, we didn't find it. So gross! I think if the mouse hadn't decomposed over those many days, then we may have never found it. EW!

So now we're at present day, you're brought up to speed on our mouse situation. Our total is 10 mice that we caught personally, not sure if there were more with the exterminator. A few more than 1 or 2.. :S We're going to pick up more traps tonight, just to be sure we got them all.. If any more happens with this, we'll keep you posted. Hope you weren't too grossed out by reading all of this. And sorry to Chris who slept on the floor in the spare bedroom last month!

Off to run some errands now, then to work! It's going to be a beautiful day in the entire state today! High 80's and sun sun sun! Can't wait to go for a walk or maybe some pool dwelling for a change! :) AND I will get my husband back after today! His last finals are today. We're getting excited to celebrate our 1 Year Anniversary in a couple weeks. My mom and brother will be in town this weekend. August is going to be the best!!


Love, E