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.

Never too old, or young to jet-ski

How old do you have to be to jet-ski? This weekend we went a friend from work's house on Prior Lake who has a 1250cc jet-ski and they let me take Becky and Andy out on it (Dan was too busy playing arcade games in their house). A big jet-ski can go pretty quickly, but Becky and Andy loved it, so I guess 2 is a perfectly acceptable age to jet-ski - not allowed to play with lego though.

Here is Dan playing with their Son and his friend who are just about to catch a frog.
Here we are on their boat, they took us on a tour of the Lake which is several miles long.
And here is the view from their back garden, in the background is their water trampoline, complete with slide and other appendages for watery fun - jumping off of the water trampoline into the lake is loads of fun. You can also see their boat and aforementioned jet-ski. Nothing witty to write about all this, it was just really good fun and on a perfect summer's day I really couldn't think of anywhere I would rather have been.
The house is now nearing completion, the kitchen floor was refinished last week, which meant another week out of the kitchen, but the good news is that some of the other rooms are fully functional such as the art room (bit of a posh term for a tiny room with a bare floor).

Trip back to Blighty and Returning to Minneapolis

Apologies for the huge delay in blogging - too busy seeing people back in England and then too busy melting in a sweaty pool back in Minnesota.

Being back in England was great, saw loads of friends, all too briefly in most cases and enjoyed some rare English sunshine - it was even sunny during Wimbledon which just isn't cricket (thought I'd use that expression to confuse any Americans accidentally reading this).

Had a trip up to Loughborough (obviously there had to be a good reason for this) to visit the people doing our website for the US and took them out to the poshest restaurant in Loughborough, which is (multiple choice time)
a) McDonalds
b) Not in Loughborough
c) A pub
d) Fictional
e) An oxymoron

Not quite sure about Loughborough but had a good evening - certainly better than the 5 hours I spent at the American embassy for a 2 minute interview earlier in the day, and certainly better than the 3 hours it took me to get there - I hate British traffic. However I was also able to appreciate some of the finer points of our splendid isle.

5 things that are great in England (apart from friends and family - aah)

• Cars you can steer
• Good food - Sausages, Butter, Bread, Cereal, Bacon, Curry
  
• Ability to get a cup of tea anywhere
• Buildings that are more than 100 years old
• The BBC (you don't realise how much you miss it until its gone)
  

5 Poor, but typical British experiences

• Having to wait 2.5 hours to get a rental car at Heathrow having just been awake all night flying home
• Staying in a expensive London hotel where the air con was broken on the one hot day of the summer and having to get a bucket of ice from the lobby at 4am so that I could lie in an ice-bath to get cool enough to sleep as they had no spare rooms or fans
• Litter everywhere
• Being stuck in traffic
• Being stuck in traffic (I would have gone on to another point but I was STUCK IN TRAFFIC)

Since we got back the weather in Minnesota has been scorching, we've had 3 days in where it has hit 35C (95F) and the air-con in our one half of our house has not been working which has made it unbearable in that part, thankfully not the bedrooms. We've spent as much time as possible swimming in the local lake which has been really good -certainly one of the great things about being here is the ability to go to a beach on a sunny day and it isn't too crowded.

Air-con finally fixed today so I can type this without dripping into the keyboard - stupid weather, too cold for 5 months of the year and too hot for 5. The ideal temperature is on May 14th between 11:32am and 11:38am - really good then.

Anyway here are some pictures, I'll sort them out when I get a chance.

Happy Father's Day

This morning I got woken up with a nice father's day message and a DanDadaCoaster picture from Dan of our rides at the MOA (see previous post).

Happy Father's Day to Martin and Wayne too from Andy and me.

Denise and Bill left yesterday evening, we got a really great last day in before they went at Lake Harriet. All the public parks have BBQs which anyone can use so we had a BBQ and then splashed in the lake, some more so than others.

Best use of a day off

On Wednesday I was at work when everyone else went to the Zoo. Minnesota has a great zoo, but unfortunately the wildest animals were outside the cages so it was a little stressful (so I hear :0)

I had the day off on Thursday and was hoping for better things as we had booked out the whole day to go to the Mall of America (MOA). We all got day passes ($30) and as the MOA is just 10 minutes away we were there pretty much when it opened. It has just had a massive facelift so now all of the rides are Nickelodeon themed and there are a couple of new 'big' rides which were great. Sadly my camera battery went flat after just a few shots but you can get some idea that we had a great day. Dan, Bill and I stayed until 9pm and clocked up over 30 rides throughout the day each.