Last California Post for 2006

Heidi writes:

I can't believe how fast this semseter went. Tomorrow, I have my last class of the semster!! All I have left to do is hand in my paper I just finished and take my oral exam tomorrow. I am very excited to get back to MN and WI and to see everyone. Another great thing - my sister Melissa and her family are moving home!! Branden will officially be out of the Army tomorrow morning! It will be the first Christmas that we have all been together for a while, so I am really looking forward to that.

Here are a couple of picturs from this past week:

So, the above picture isn't the best, but I wanted to include something from the Lodi Light Parade. The picture is of the General Mills float that Jeff and I help build and we got to ride on it during the parade! It was a lot of fun. We were the 13th float in the parade so we were able to watch the rest of the parade at the end!

The following pictures are from the amazingly awesome game that took place on Sunday between the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers! I had such a great time! There were a ton of Packers fans there. With about 10 minutes left, a majority of the 49ers fans started to leave, so the stadium was full of green and gold. There were times throughout the game where the cheer "Go Pack Go" was louder than the other cheers!

We took a ton of action plays with our camera. The above is just one of the many - I didn't want to overload the blog site :-)

Jeff even wore green :-) He didn't do a lot of cheering, but he still really enjoyed the game!!

OK, that is about all from this end! We fly out at midnight Friday morning and will arrive in MN at 6am!! I hope that everyone had a great week and has a wonderful holiday season. Hopefully we will see a ton of people while we are back in the midwest. Be sure to give us a call if anything is going on!!

A Boat Parade and A Marathon...

Heidi writes:

Ok, so I am supposed to be writing my paper that is due this afternoon, but I needed a break from all of the Adlerian theory stuff, so I thought that I would write a post. I know - what a great excuse to stop writing a final paper that is worth 40% of your final grade...

This weekend was a lot of fun. On Friday, Jeff and I hung out in Lodi with some friends at the Cactus and then played darts at Drew and Toni's for a while. We got up pretty early on Saturday morning and drove to General Mills to help build/decorate the float that will be in the parade on Thursday. We were there for a couple of hours and got some accomplished. I am excited to see the finished product. (As a side note - Jeff and I will both be riding the float! How fun will that be!!) We got home and took a nap. I got up and did some homework and then we went to beauiful downtown Stockton for the lighting of the Christmas tree and the boat parade. Well, we missed the lighting of the tree, but did get to see the parade. It was pretty cool. We attempted to take some pictures, but not all of them turned out. Here are a couple to show you what we experienced:

The boat above was one of my favorites. It had the sword fish in the front and the fishing poles in the back had fish and stockings on them. I thought it was very creative. The photo below is of a speed boat decorated to look like a swan.
Overall, there were about 75 boats parading in the Delta that evening. It was something that we would never experience in MN and had fun seeing all of the boats (I could use the word yachts). A funny note about this - they place where the tree is and where the delta flows is a pretty popular place. During the winter months they have an skating rink. I was excited about the opportunity to go ice skating so Jeff and I walked over there while we were waiting for the start of the parade. Well, it turns out that it is not an "ice" skating rink - it is plastic!! It was so funny to see people skating on this. I almost want to try it just to see what it is like :-)

Sunday was another early rise. Jeff and 3 others from General Mills (Toni, Steve, and Catherine) ran as a relay team in a marathon in Sacramento. I was their support person and chaperone for the day. It was fun to see and there were a ton of people there! They did a super job and finished the race in just under 4 hours! Here are pictures of Jeff running and the team:

Jeff ran the final leg of the race which ended at the capitol building in downtown Sacramento.
Toni, Catherine, Steve, and Jeff - Go CHEERIOS!!

OK, I need to keep going on my paper. I know that it should be completed already, but the rest of the weekend was spent on a final presentation for my Monday class - which I am very happy with how it turned out (Yeah for Cultural Identity Development Theories!!)

I hope that everyone had a good weekend. Only 10 days left until we are in MN/WI!!! This semester just flew by!!