Happy 30th, Joel!!

Friday night we had a suprise 30th birthday party for Joel! It was pretty awesome- he had no clue. 17 of us were there to party- a good time was had by all!


This is the "initial reaction" shot- ha! Everyone hid their cars around the block, and Joel thought he was just coming over to hang out and grill with Greg and Nicole. When he came in, we all jumped out with our cheesey party hats and noisemakers- I think we caught him off guard!! Hilarious.


Outside after grilling, enjoying the beautiful weather.


Brian brought over Guitar Hero, which is pretty addicting. Here's Brian and Greg rockin' out....wait, is that Keith Richards???


Jesse playing some mean Guitar Hero


Jenny, Jennifer, Shantell and Alicia chatting in the kitchen enjoying some cocktails.


More fun in the kitchen...


And even more as the evening progresses...what the...?


SERIOUS game of Trivial Pursuit


Even Bree came out to celebrate with Joel! Sporting her party hat and all.


I (Nicole) am a dork and noticed that we had quite the rainbow array of shirts going on and had to capture it...


Random pic


Nicole and Joel

What a great night! We think Joel was definitely surprised....HA! Thanks for coming everybody!

Weekend at Mr. and Mrs. T's Cabin

We spent the weekend up North at Ryan and Alicia's cabin, just outside of Grand Rapids. The two of us, Ryan, Alicia, Scott, Cindy, Ryan, Erica and Jason made the trip up. Here's a pic of the lake the cabin is on. Isn't it pretty??? The following pics are not so tranquil...


The first night at the cabin consisted of ping pong and foosball (is that how you spell that?) and beer out in the "T's" new garage that they're building. Above is Ryan, Greg with his $2.88 hat that he found in Cloquet, and Scott.


Beer pong!!



Ryan had seen better days at this point.


The next day, the guys played some Snakes and we all played some Beer Ball before heading out on "The Armada" on the lake.


Scott and Greg emphasize "Safety First" before heading out on the lake.


Erica, Cindy, Ryan and Scott getting tans out on the trampoline, waiting for the rest of us to swim out.


Greg jumping off the boat! Water was a little chilly, but felt good. :)


That night, after feasting on some specialty brats, we continued with ping pong, foosball, beer pong and darts. Here are Ryan, Cindy and Alicia playing foosball and talking trash.


Action shot of Nicole playing some ping pong with Erica. What a great weekend! We had beautiful weather, too. Our bonfire did get bagged due to some Sat. night rain, but we had plenty to entertain us! Thanks again Ryan and Alicia!

A Night of Prince and a Night at the Races

We went to see PRINCE on Saturday night- all we can say is WOW. Nicole's seen a few of his shows and deemed this one probably the best of them all (NOT including some Paisley Park performances...). What a night! We won't go into much detail...all we can say is you had to be there. The photo above is actually courtesy of the Pioneer Press, and was taken from his performance earlier that day at Macy's...but we had to put an awesome pic of him on our blog.


We also headed out to Canterbury Downs on Friday for a "pre-birthday" bash for Joel....what a great time! We even came out ahead as far as the betting went...and Joel and Shantell didn't do too bad, either!



Brian and Joel



Greg, Shantell and Kendall


Nicole, Brian and Joel



Also had to throw this pic in....Greg did his first official "Mowing of the Lawn" last week...WOOHOO! He was pretty excited. Looked pretty darn good afterwards, too.


We think Poster is settling into the house quite nicely, don't you think? He doesn't look comfortable or anything....

Have a good week! I'm sure we'll have some crazy photos from Ryan and Alicia's cabin for the next post....