One year in Minnesota

As of last weekend we marked our one year Minnestoaversay - it was August 2nd 2007 that we arrived with all our wordly possessions packed into a few suitcases, and an entire cargo container. Its been a really busy year, we've missed old friends and made some new ones - mostly out of lego. We've been colder than we could ever have imagined and also baked in the sun for the last few weeks. We've changed a lot of the house and I think we're almost done on that front now. In fact that is the reason we didn't get to blog for a while is that we've been too busy enjoying the fruit of someone else's labour. The cinema is now done, I found some special paint for cinema screens so you can paint the wall and I have to say it looks fantastic, so far too many of our evenings have been stuck in a dark room.
Probably not the best shot of the room but you get the idea, 8ft wide screen 112" diagonal - Epson HD projector onto a wall painted with Screen Goo - mmm.

The kitchen is now also done, pretty much the last piece was the staircase which is now all there apart from one bannister which got broken during installation.

Andy's old work colleague Michele and her family Dave, Toby (Dan's adopted big brother) and Georgie (Becky's adopted older sister) were here for a few days and will be back again in a week's time. Had a really good time with them, which has a lot to do with the fact that the kids seem to adore eachother. No pictures I'm afraid as I can't find the camera we used, but I'll slot them in when I get a chance.

This weekend we got a real treat as one of my work colleagues, Debbie, and her husband Rob took us out on their boat for some fishing on Lake Minnetonka. This is one of the larger lakes in the state (although minuscule compared to the great lakes) and because it is close to Minneapolis it is where a lot of the wealthiest people live as you can see from the sort of house that are on the lakefront.We were out on the lake for about 4 hours , not fishing all the time, sometimes just cruising around. Dan loved fishing and caught 7 fish, mostly Sunfish which we threw back, Becky managed 3 and Andy and I got 1 each and a lot of pond weed - really good day though.













Work has been a little crazy of late, really too dull to speak of but it has meant that I've had to make the most of the weekends as I'm not seeing much of the outside during the week. The overall Carphone/Best Buy joint venture is going very well and last weekend we finished putting a Best Buy Mobile into all 950 Best Buys across the states which was good for morale in the team. We also opened a store in the Mall of America for the first time.