No Words

Some friends of the family lost their home to a fire about 4 weeks ago. Mike and Kristy and their two kids Rachel and Mikey live across the street from my parents and at about 1am on a Saturday their home started on fire. They all escaped unharmed but the house is a complete loss. They are an amazingly strong family and coping with it the best they can. The house is going to be torn down today (which is why I am home, Colton and I are going to go watch) and then the rebuilding can begin. They were able to save some items but not much. They allowed me inside the house to take pictures on Sunday. I spent several hours in the house, shed some tears for their loss and took over 200 pictures. I will share a few pics of the devastation and believe me when I say that there are not enough words to describe the feelings you have when you are looking at the devastation.

This last picture it the hardest for me - this is their camera (full of pictures which of course cannot be recovered/replaced).

Oktoberfest!!

I went back to my German Roots this past weekend. We went down to New Ulm to celebrate Oktoberfest! We had a blast. We spent Friday evening at the Morgan Creek Winery sipping wine around a campfire (well I was drinking Mountain Dew). That night we went back to the hotel and warmed up in the Hot Tub. Saturday morning we headed back to New Ulm to take in some German Festivities. We started off shopping, Frankie was on a mission to find 'Das Boot' and we finally found them at a little shop called the Guten Tag Haus. Then we went to lunch at Veigels Kaiserhof, which was some of the best German Food ever! Yvonne tried some Sauerkraut and Meatball soup, which to me sounds horrible but I tried some of hers I was amazed - it was delicious. After lunch we enjoyed a Horse Drawn Trolley around town - this sounded like a great idea but it was COLD!! We ended our day at the Holiday Inn where all the indoor Oktoberfest activities were taking place. The beer was good, the food was great and the music was entertaining. Frankie bought his first german hat and of course had to get his first pin to go on it. We had a great time and enjoyed many laughs thanks to Aunt Sandy and her stories. We again ended our night with some swimming and relaxing in the hot tub. Frankie even showed us his mad skills by doing some cannonballs... it was like being a kid again! Okay here are some pics:

I had to throw this pic in because he is just so cute! With the warning of snow we decided to pick the few pumpkins that survived this year! For some reason we ended up with one yellow pumpkin and even a green one! I am not sure what happened but at least we got a variety - we may have invented some new kind of pumpkin!!

The Curse of the Ax

I went to the Gopher vs Wisconsin game last Saturday - it was cold, rainy, early in the morning and so much fun! There is something awesome about getting all bundled up to watch outdoor football - Priceless. It was a very intense game, but in the end the Badgers held on to the win and the AX, maybe next year Gophers! Here are just a few pics!