Day 16 Old Shoe

Some days I feel like this old shoe. Worn out, used, abused and walked on. Too easy to discard because it's comfortable. The first thing you turn to when the rains come. And like this shoe, IT STINKS!

Day 15 Stormy Skies

After a ridiculously windy day we had a line of strong storms roll through tonight. When they had passed we went outside to check out the light show. It was so cool so I thought I would try to capture it. Ha, easier said then done! I spent the first few minutes just trying to get my camera to fire off a shot, then they were completely out of focus. By the time I started to figure out what settings would work the storm was moving out. This is a little group of what I came up with start to finish. Looks like I need to do more research, but at least there was improvement!

Day 14 Time To Paint The Shed

Just another thing to add to our never ending list of household projects. I didn't realize how rough our shed was looking until I was hanging out on the patio tonight grilling supper. Painting party anyone?!

Day 13 Bleeding Hearts

I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and remaining sunshine after work today and snap a few pics of the bleeding hearts in our back yard.

Day 12 Self Portrait

After nearly two weeks of this project I think my family is getting sick of seeing me like this :) They better get used to it!

Day 11 Sharks Shutout

To wrap up our busy baseball week we headed to Dundas, MN for the Stewartville-Racine Sharks Amature Baseball season opener. We refer to the members of the team, their wives, girlfriends, kids and parents as our "summer family" as we spend so much time with them throughout the season. Huddled up in blankets, under umbrellas or baking in the sun with a cooler of cold beer and countless bags of seeds at hand, we faithfully sit by in all conditions and cheer on our team! It was a rough start to the season as we lost 15-0 to the Dundas Dukes in less than ideal conditions. To top it off our manager was stuck in Sweeden because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland that halted all flights in Europe.

Day 10 Litter Bit Better

Nothing fancy about today's pic. Just got done volunteering 4 1/2 hours of our time cleaning up a park for a Litter Bit Better. It's an anual city wide clean up program where volunteers pick up garbage all over the city of Rochester. We chose a park on the south side of town and to be honest, before the project I didn't even know it existed. I can barely move right now...ugh, but at least the park looks great. To all those smokers out there: Do the world a favor and stop throwing your butts out the window! The majority of our trash was from cigarette butts.

Day 9 Soggy Sweep

Lake City Tigers faced off against our Stewartville Tigers tonight in a cold, wet and windy double header. In what turned out to be a wild game, James got hit by a pitch in his first at bat. The ball deflected off the bill of his hat and then hit his nose. Thankfully he was okay and took his base, even scoring a run. Dropped pop flies, wild throws, several hit batters and crazy hops were the story tonight, but luckily we pulled out the wins, both games coming down to errors on the last couple of plays. Since the rain was coming down pretty good (note the white spots in the picture), I thought it would be fun to play with a new texture...cross process. One more day of baseball this weekend, then we will have a 5 day break.

Day 8 Target Field

Welcome to the new home of the Minnesota Twins, Target Field! We made our first trip to the stadium today and it was love at first sight. So much to see, so much to do. We were fortunate enough to have seats behind the end of the Twins dugout on the first base side, but there's not a bad seat in the house. My favorite place in the stadium was Townball Tavern, which serves as a shrine to local town ball teams from Minnesota. Even though the Twins lost 8-1 today I can't wait for our next trip back!

Day 7 Jameson

It's been one long week and unfortunately it's only Wednesday. I came home from work to unwind with a nice glass of Jameson (with Pepsi). Ahhh! I am so happy that I have tomorrow off! Looking forward to our first trip to Target Field in the morning :)

Day 6 Perspective

There was a patient seen in our clinic today for a follow up after some new scans. She found out that she has a lung metastasis. She is my age with two small children. The news was difficult for the doctors to relay, not to mention how devastating it was for her and her family to hear. As she walked out of our clinic in tears I thought about how thankful I am for my health, family and everything that I have been blessed with. As I was leaving my son's baseball game this evening I saw the sun shining from behind a this dark cloud. Even when things are more than we think we can handle God's love is shining down upon us to see us through dark times.

Day 5 Baseball is life

Today starts a very busy week of baseball for our family. James had a rain day makeup game today vs Hayfield. They lost 5-3, but James had a good game scoring a run, went 1-2 at the plate and made two outs in the same inning playing second base. What an absolutely BEAUTIFUL evening for baseball. Let's hope the other 4 baseball games this week are as nice!

Day 4 Spotty

This is Spotty, our purebred Rat Terrier. He was the only one who loved me enough today to let me practice my picture taking skills. I learned that if I hold his tennis ball on the top of my camera he will actually sit still and look directly at me. He is OBSESSED with his tennis ball! I even got practice with catchlights in this picture. What a good dog!

Day 3 Trains

When James was little my mom started buying him Thomas the Train stuff. Her first purchase was the figure 8 track and from then on every year for birthdays and Christmases he would get new pieces to his collection. He is 13 now and still plays with it. Mostly creating new track layouts and designs. He may be quite the engineer someday! This is the James Train car...well worn!

Day 2 Baseball Heartache

Brian always calls baseball a game of disappointments and today was no different. James was called out sliding into third during their double header against Cannon Falls.

Day 1 Daffodils

Anyone who knows us knows how busy we are. We are constantly on the go and haven't been home most of the spring. Our poor yard is suffering, with the exception of this one batch of daffodils. Beautiful, effortless. I wish everything in life could be this easy.