Calendar of Highlights for 2010

January: Nick was promoted to “Strategic Accounts Manager” at Capstone. Nick has been at Capstone over 6 years now.

February: We met in Indiana to celebrate Valentine’s day. Nick was there for work, and it was only a 4-hour drive from Mt. Pleasant, MI for Jana.

March: We celebrated Jana’s mom’s 59^th birthday by going to “We gotta BINGO!” It was a cooky, interactive show and we all had a good time!

April: Jana got a job at Capella University in Minnesota and moved in with Nick. The going away parties in MI were a major highlight for Jana! Nick got to go to opening day at Target Field, and we celebrated Nick’s 29^th birthday in Milwaukee with friends.

May: We unpacked, and unpacked and unpacked. We had garage sale #1. For fun, we went up to Alexandria and stayed at Mike and Lea Reed’s cabin for Memorial Day.

June: We finished combining all of our “stuff” and had a very successful second garage sale! Summerfest in Milwaukee was also a major highlight. Thanks to Kate and Todd for hosting us!

July: Nick’s niece and goddaughter Hailey turned 1. We enjoyed the Reed’s cabin again for the fourth of July and then celebrated our 1-year anniversary. We attended the “Lee Family Reunion” (Nick’s grandma’s side) in Hastings, MN.

August: We did a lot in August including going to Jana’s 10-year high school reunion, camping with the Lewis’ on Mille Lacs, and hosting a BBQ at our house. Oh yeah…we also got engaged!

September: We went to Nick’s cousin’s wedding in Sioux Falls, SD where Nick was an usher. Their beautiful wedding was on Jana’s 29^th birthday, which made the celebration even more fun. Nick also went to Canada for a “short” fishing trip – he may share this story more in depth later on.

October: We had a blast taking our engagement photos. I’m sure you’ve seen them on the blog. Pheasant hunting season began and the Sykora women enjoyed their first annual Sykora women’s pheasant fun day at the zoo! Nick finished a great season of fall softball with “The New Direction.” Jana even played a few innings – getting 1 RBI.

November: Another HUGE month! Jana started two new jobs. She is working 3 days a week at Wayzata West Middle School as a school counselor and as a lifeguard/swim instructor at Safari Island Community Center in Waconia. Milo came home to us, and we hosted Thanksgiving. We hosted Jana’s parents (Howie and Cathy), her sister and fiancé (LeeAnn and Bryce), their dog (Bennie), and Nick’s parents (Sherry and Brad). We missed LeeAnn and Howie’s birthday party, but did get to go to Nick’s sister-in-law’s 30^th birthday (Yay Bri!).

December: We have spent ALL MONTH working on the bar downstairs. We also set up our 55-gallon fish tank and have added 11 fish to our zoo. Now we are really looking forward to driving to Spooner, WI to celebrate Christmas with Jana’s mom’s side of the family. We are then making the trip to St. Peter to celebrate with the Sykora’s.

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

We definitely weren't surprised when we woke up this morning to a lot of snow, but I was pretty impressed with how MUCH there was. We went out right away in the morning to tackle the driveway even though we knew it was supposed to continue blowing and snowing all day. We thought it would be good to get a head start.

It's a good thing we went out when we did since the snow was almost over the snowblower!

We got about 8-10".
 

I shoveled the deck to relieve the weight of all the snow.

Unfortunately, the driveway is all snowed over again and the deck looks about the same as it did in the picture above (even though I completely cleared it!). We have at least an hour left of snow tonight. Wish us luck tomorrow! :)

Milo

Well I figured I should write a post for once. Some people may have already heard, but we got a puppy on Nov. 16th. Unfortunately the puppies that Jana blogged about earlier did not happen. We got an email that Bella lost her litter and we would have to wait until spring to get on another list for a puppy.

Feeling a little down about having to wait longer I decided to check out petfinder.com. To digress briefly, months ago Jana and I had decided when I got my hunting dog that we would name him Milo. We also had always envisioned a yellow lab. So back to petfinder. I filtered my search to labs, then males, then puppies and a number of puppies came up. Most were not purebred, but then one name popped out of the list, MILO. I opened the link and called upstairs for Jana to come down.

We both couldn't believe what we were reading. He was an 11 week old, purebred yellow lab, named Milo. We decided it had to be a sign so we filled out the adoption forms. The form asked for 2 references. Our friends across town, Jake and Lacy, work with foster animals and I ride to work with Jake daily, so they were an obvious choice. We let them know we had used them as a reference and come to find out one of Lacy's close friends is fostering Milo. That connection helped us speed up the process and 3 days later Milo was at our house for a home visit. Long story short he hasn't left since.

This is Milo on his 1st night at our house.

Milo came to work with me the next day. He spent most of the day sleeping, judging by his choice of positions I guess he was fairly content. The last 3 weeks have been great and we think he is absolutely adorable, but they have also been challenging. Sera, our Yorkie, was not as welcoming of Milo as we were, but she is coming around. House training and obedience training had me about to snap this morning after our routine morning walk, but in the end he is so cute it's hard to be mad. One positive thing about house training Milo, we will be looking at finally replacing the ugly carpet in the living room once he is trained.

So our house is turning into a zoo, but Jana and I couldn't be happier with Milo. Now he just needs to learn about pheasant hunting and what his true purpose in the family is. :)