These past couple weeks at the Jeske household have been quite busy… two Loons games, an open house, and a family campout! The weekend before last we hosted an open house for Susan’s side of the family so they could see our new house. Before that started, Susan’s folks and grandma came down a couple days before-hand to help prepare and go see the Loons in action. It was a fun game, but really cold, good thing the stadium makes hot chocolate to keep everyone warm. Only problem was they ran out of hot water… Other than that, the Loons played pretty decent until the tenth (that’s right… tenth) inning. The other team just seemed better prepared and scored six runs. Once the Loons got up to bat, it was three up, three outs… can’t win them all (or many for that matter…) I went to get the car while fireworks were set off from the outfield. I got it all nice and toasty for everyone once the show was over (they seemed to appreciate that 🙂 ).

The day of the party was a busy one. I wasn’t a full part of “Hell’s Kitchen”, but I had a lot to do. I went out and mowed the lawn, de-weeded the rock bed, and was off to the store for some groceries and bagels. We wanted to make the same punch my mom had made for Ben’s graduation party, but the recipe was no where to be found. After getting a list of the ingredients (almost all of them, heh…), I was off to the store. Not sure of the exact proportions I found the recipe on the internet… everyone seemed to really like it, although there was no OJ concentrate in it. After the party, the recipe was found (a little late, but we’ve got it written down now!) The party went over pretty good, even though the person who wrote the invitations, *ahem* Sus- *ahem* an, thought the party was an hour later than stated. Needless to say we were a little suprised when people started showing up earlier then expected (oh well we got more help 8) ). After the party I was on clean-up duty while everyone else took a well deserved nap…

There was also some excitement at work the Friday before the party… Around 9:30 or so in the morning the fire alarm went off. We proceeded to the gathering area for my building and watched as 6 or 7 security trucks pulled up in just a couple minutes! As well as a firetruck and an ambulence… I was impressed at how fast they got there… A couple men went in the building and about 30 or 45 minutes later came back out. Apparently someone left a bagel in the toaster too long and sure enough it caught fire (I still don’t think anyone fessed up to it yet!) Always makes for an interesting day.

Ah, the DeHate Family Camp-out ’07… “Dry canoers! Dry canoers!” could be heard during the last stretch of the annual canoe trip. Yes… me and Susan stayed dry… we didn’t flip, and we escaped pursuit of those trying to get us wet. All and all I think there were atleast four times a canoe was tipped, mostly by someone seeking revenge! Hopefully I’ll be able to put some pictures up soon of me and Susan in our spiffy new t-shirts. It was a good time, even though we just went for the day. It seemed liked it was going to be a repeat of last year, there were lots of clouds and a light drizzle as we made it over to Evert. By the time we got there, it had cleared up and turned out to be a beautiful day.

The LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNSS won a game we went too!! (yes, that is absurdly long, and yes can be annoying at a game) We had a really, really good time at that game, besides the drunken guy sitting in front of us. We saw a couple of people we each new from work, we got ice cream… and the Loons won! Next year it sounds like we’ll be trying to get a package deal and be able to go to quite a few games. Hopefully they play a little better…

Well my birthday was a lot of fun… and the celebration isn’t over yet! Susan’s folks are coming down for our house warming party (for Susan’s side of the family) and we’ll be doing something this weekend to celebrate my b-day! I was pretty surprised Susan had gotten me even more gifts… the unicycle was pricey and I thought that was all that I was getting… I also got a book that I’ll be taking a look at once I’m forced to take a half hour lunch at work (I’m switching over to a compressed work week schedule – every other Friday off, w00t!) I also got Wii Play with WiiMote which is a pretty fun collection of mini-games and it comes with a WiiMote! The pie in the pictures was even better than it looked and we got to go to Red Lobster for dinner… Not everything that happened this past weekend was cheeful. I went to light the grill on Saturday and as I was walking out I noticed a bird sitting on top of our garage door… It got startled and tried to fly through the ceiling! It actually bashed it’s poor head so hard it starting bleeding. After he landed on one side of the garage, I grabbed a broom and tried to shoe him out the door. He kept wanting to fly above the garage door (dummy, you can’t get out that way…) He landed again and Susan had a paper bag in hand (what the heck was I suppose to do with that… I’m still not quite sure). He was in shock I think and I bent over to grab him, but before touching him, I was encouraged to put on some gloves. The gloves were too small, but I forced them on and managed to grab the bird and set him free (hopefully he’s okay…) So, maybe that was a happy ending after all! 🙂

It’s been quite warm out lately. We haven’t had much rain until the other night this really big storm came through. The thunder was enough to wake me up, I wonder how Scout did, she was probably hiding under the couch with a really puffy tail. My unicycling skills are improving, although I did break it (sort-of). I was out riding and doing really good all the neighbors come out to watch me… I should start charging admission. All of sudden the uni skidded out from under me and I noticed the next time I got on, something wasn’t right. The left pedal felt weird, sure enough it was crooked in the crank arm. After trying really hard to get that pedal off (to try and straighten it), I ended up partially stripping the threads… doh! I ended up taking it to a bike shop where they struggled really hard to get that crank off, even breaking the handle of a tool off in the process. They put a new one on for me and a couple of new pedals and I was good to go (literally…) I haven’t been on it much since, the crank doesn’t quite match the other one, I think I’ll probably just order a set and put the cranks that are made for the uni on it. It’ll work until they come though. This weekend wasn’t too exciting, but we did go for ice cream the other night. Susan’s co-worker is leaving and we had a fun time at Great Lakes Ice Cream Co., even if they didn’t have cotton candy… it’s the best one! I also learned an important lesson this week, move the grill before backing out of the garage (oops!) The way our driveway is sloped, you can’t see it when backing out, the only damage taken was to my poor little fingers trying to move the hot grill out from under my car, oh well, I didn’t get burned that bad… it’s actually mostly healed now (happened on Monday) Oh, and just to remind you, you’ve only got three days left to go shopping for my birthday… 😉