Archive for the 'Family' Category

Support a paddler, protect the river!

Posted by Karen in Family, Work.
Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 11:59 am


Nate’s sister Sierra (the Pinolera), my brother Steve, and my dad have all accepted the challenge – the Mississippi River Challenge!   On August 4th and 5th they will all paddle the Twin Cities section of the Mississippi River to raise money for Friends of the Mississippi River.  Nate and I will both be volunteering at the event, probably helping out at rest stops along the way and coordinating the fun at Fort Snelling, where paddlers camp on the 4th. 

How can you be a part of this amazing event you ask?  Why, just look to the right!  Help Sierra, Steve, and Pa Phillips meet, nay, EXCEED their fundraising goals!  Click on the link and donate away!  Every little bit helps, and it all adds up to help us do a whole lot more work for this mighty river! 

(And a big thank you to those of you who have already donated!)

Te Beagh

Posted by Nate in Family, Travel.
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 9:46 am


It’s pronounced "best picture ever".

Run, DAMNU, Run!!!!

Posted by Nate in Family.
Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 10:05 am


damnu.jpgWell, they’re at it again: my rockstar sister and Freddie are choosing to blow a perfectly good Sunday morning by running down through the lovely Poudre Canyon and finishing in awesome downtown Ft. Collins.  Actually, that doesn’t sound half bad, and after watching the cool flythrough and photo video at the main site, I’m officially jealous that I won’t be there to cheer them on.  And a little emotional about the whole thing…  My mom says she cries at parades, well, I cry at marathons.  Something about those poor, stupid bastards running their little hearts out just gets me.  They’ve got the heart of a champion.

giddyup.jpgSo, here are these signs to cheer you on!  I don’t think they got quite enough play last time, and unfortunately these are the best pictures I have…  Jason made the green one and ran out of room for "you", hence "damnu."  Perfect.  The orange one (which I made) has a sweet little pony on the left and the world’s gayest cowboy on the right – he has a shiny Texas-shaped belt buckle and sparkly spurs, and he’s saying "Hot to Trot!"  For real.

Go get em, Lobo & FroYoHoCho!

A not-so-subtle prod

Posted by Nate in Family.
Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 1:42 pm


Dear QSchroe,

Remember when you used to blog?  I do. Those were good days.  Good days.

More later.  Love,
Nate

PS – That goes for you, too, JMS107!  (And you’ve got a few more weeks before I get serious, but watch it, Pinolera…)

Chicago trip

Posted by Nate in Family, Friends, Holidays/Birthdays/Etc, Travel.
Saturday, April 21st, 2007 at 7:11 pm


Justin and I got back today from a whirlwind trip to Chicago – left early Thursday morning to the Grandparent’s house, hung out for a bit with them and my parents, and then headed to Laurel’s show.  It was awesome to see her on stage again, one of the last things I can remember seeing her in was Stop Kiss back at Bas Bleu in Colorado.  Stop Kiss is such a different show it’s hard to compare the two, but it really seems like she’s taken a big step with her acting in terms of being more real in the moment on stage — not that she wasn’t before!  Just that it’s one thing I think I notice is better now.  A really fun show overall, I think everyone had a good time.

Friday I slept in a bit, ate Grandpa’s waffles for breakfast, then we all sort of puttered around the house getting yardwork done – mowing, window washing, and trying to get Grandpa’s old car running.  I know Rick took pictures so I hope he writes that up, it was fun to get to play with an engine that’s about as straightforward as it gets.

pict3215a.JPGThat night after dinner I went to meet up with the Chicago boys and Laurel, it was good to see everyone even if just for a night.  Noah, if you’re brave enough to click that picture, is ironing a crease in his pants — while wearing them.  I believe he put a book in there first to help shield the heat, and Rick V.T. was kind enough to offer the tip of waiting for the zipper to cool before removing the book.  Ah, I miss those boys…  :)

Justin and I left at 5 this morning to get him back for a noon meeting.  Whew.  It was fun driving with him, some good time to chat, but man am I tired!

I heart winter (again).

Posted by Karen in Broomball, Bruno, Family, Friends, Weather.
Sunday, March 18th, 2007 at 7:10 pm


This is very belated, but still needs to be written about.  I’m a fan of winter.  I’m a big fan of spring, summer, and fall too, but it seems like a lot of people either whine all winter long about the cold and the snow, or just kind of quietly suffer through it.  Not me.  I love it.  There are so many fun things you can only do during winter!  Broomball for example, snowshoeing, ice skating, sledding, skiing, snowball fights… 

So imagine my surprise when this year I found myself hating winter!  Before we left for Ghana and Scotland it was too warm so there was no ice for us to play broomball on – major bummer.  Then when we got back it was like a million below zero and we had to just jump in to broomball games, no fun practices with our awesome team to get us all excited.  And I had a cold.  So I kind of went to the games and froze my butt off and was miserable and whiny the whole time.  But then we had a great fun weekend session of play-till-you-can-physically-play-no-more broomball, and things started looking up. 

copy-of-pict3159.JPGAnd then it snowed.  Heaps and heaps of snow!  FINALLY!  Nate and I took Bruno snowshoeing at Powderhorn Park and the little buddy got pretty tuckered out.  He had been getting pretty short walks when it was way below zero, so he may not have been in primo shape.  And then it snowed heaps and heaps more just a few days later!  So I got to go snowshoeing two more days that weekend!  And it was the most perfect weather, all sunshine!

pict0029.JPGI took Nicole with me on the first day, her first time snowshoeing, awww.  We went to explore some trails along the Mississippi where I will be spending quite a bit of time this spring and summer.  There’s a small but wonderful oak savanna there that volunteers have worked really hard to restore and maintain, and even in the winter it was a sight to see.  I took this totally ridiculous picture of us.  I’m such a friggin genius that I thought I was wisely blocking the sun from my eyes. 

pict0031.JPGSierra went with me the next day, and we went to Fort Snelling State Park.  We took Bruno with us because I realized from the previous day that the trails would be packed down enough for him.  There are so many people here who love to play in the snow and it’s amazing how fast they get out in it!  It can make it hard to find some nice deep fresh stuff, which is what I prefer to snowshoe in, but it’s so great to know so many people are getting out there, getting exercise, enjoying the snow, the sun, the fresh air.  We went on a long hike around Pike Island, and there were so many people out walking, skiing, snowshoeing, so many dogs, so many deer!  Bruno was completely overstimulated.

pict0005.JPGSo I completely fell in love with winter again, and just in the nick of time.  It’s all melting now, and I would have been worried if I hadn’t enjoyed any of the season.  But now I am getting excited about shedding some layers, digging in the dirt, planting things, and getting to actually do some of the events I’ve been planning at work!

Bloggity Blog Info

Posted by Nate in Family, The Blog.
Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 10:26 am


So, looks like Feedshake underwent an upgrade and broke the combined Schroeder blog feed.  The Walker must have just dodged the bullet, we were using Feedshake to provide combined feeds to our homepage and others – and those pages break terribly if the feed stops working.  Luckily I rewrote the Walker scripts to bring them in-house a few weeks (a month?) ago and it’s working great, so I just adapted them to the Schroeder blog feed as well:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/CombinedSchroederBlogs

Also wrote a plugin so Duoteam images should come through the RSS even if they’re uploaded weird.  Sorry for the hassle.  Now that it’s on Feedburner it should keep the same URL forever, even if I have to move things around again.  Enjoy!

Marathonathon

Posted by Nate in Family, Travel.
Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 9:11 pm


img_5348.jpgSo the marathon was awesome.  Made me want to run one.  Really.  Maybe.  Either way it was a sweet event, and the weekend trip was – as always – a ridiculous whirlwind visit, but very fun.  We made these hot fluorescent signs to wave as our runners went by, and it ended up being a great plan because some of the places we tried to catch them were like a constant stream of humanity rushing by and it became really hard to stay focused on looking for your person.  I had to keep envisioning what they were wearing and how they were running so I could find them, but they still saw us way before we saw them.  (The signs say Fredel and Laurie, it’s Laurel and Freddie mixed up.  Long story.  Jason made the "run damnu ruuunnnn" sign.  Don’t ask.  Also don’t ask about FroYoHoCho.)

pict0113.JPGHere’s a long distance shot of them behind a lady in a blue vest.  I know my dad got some video, but for now this is what I got.  They’ve got white shirts over black running gear and Freddie has a white hat.

img_5353.jpgAnd here they are at the finish – Freddie did me proud and grabbed a beer as soon as he crossed the finish line.  His IT band was flaring up really badly during the race and Laurel had some cramps in her legs and feet, but they made it!!  Color me impressed.

img_5337.jpgWe also got to have a nice lunch with Grandma and Grandpa – she’s been saving a beer I gave her for a few months and we finally cracked it open.  A nice belgian Grand Cru, yummy.  She even said it tastes like pineapple, which is totally a flavor I get from from that yeast!  True, we were also eating pineapple chunks at the time, but I think that just brought out the flavor in the beer, since it was honestly already there…  Clearly I got my discriminating beer taste from Grandma.

Overall, a great if hectic visit.  Now, if they would just STOP(!!!!) working on I-90 and 94 I would be much happier and maybe make that commute more often again…  Stupid "open-road tolling"…

Going abroad, Mead, and Marathons

Posted by Nate in Family, Homebrewing, Travel.
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 12:02 pm


Whoa.  Kind of a lot happened in the last few days, and lots more coming!

We just booked our tickets to visit my brother in Scotland and Karen’s brother in Ghana!  Going to be a whirlwind two-week trip in January…  Super exciting, I’ve been to England and Ireland but never Scotland, and definitely never Africa.

Early this morning I started a batch of mead that if all goes well will be used for the toast(s) at our wedding.  It uses cranberry honey and I threw in about 4# of frozen cranberries – the hope is the tartness will balance out any residual sweetness, and coupled with high carbonation it should be very champagne-like and delicious.  I didn’t chop or otherwise mess with the cranberries which may end up being a mistake, we’ll see how much flavor comes through in a few weeks and maybe I’ll add some more.  The guidelines I’m following say you can go up to 8#, so I’ve got some wiggle room…  Anyway, I’ve been stressing because time is getting short for aging and especially for all the work involved with the méthode champenoise.  (read here, scroll down a bit)  High hopes for this batch, fingers crossed!

Finally, we’re going to Chicago this weekend to cheer my sister on in her first marathon (and her b/f Freddie).  Whoa, indeed.  My knee is improving, but I’m still nowhere near jogging, let alone a freaking marathon!  So I can’t quite relate to that distance except that it seems really far…  Good luck, kids!

Pinolera Feature

Posted by Karen in Family, Work.
Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 4:40 pm


The Pinolera has officially moved to Minneapolis! HURRAY!!! I lined her up with a temporary job where I work, so she was able to start making some money almost as soon as she got here. The great news for her is that she then got the very first job she applied for, which she will be starting on Monday. The sad news for me is that work will no longer be anywhere near as fun for me without her.

So in celebration of the fun we’ve had working together over the past couple of weeks, here are some photos of the Pinolera in action, and the last few weeks we’ve spent as coworkers.

We’ve spent most of our time planting plugs. The first picture is of Sierra using an auger to dig holes for the plugs. She used tons of hand tools during her job this summer, but we use tons of power tools, so that was a little adjustment. She became quite a master at changing the blades on the brush saw, and even managed to break a brush saw in her short time working here! (Ok, fine, she just happened to be the one using it when it broke.)

I had a little run-in with a wasp nest a few weeks ago, where I stepped on it while herbiciding and a wasp went up my suit and stung me in the thigh. When I opened up my suit it flew out, stung me in the nose and then kept dive-bombing me! Another one joined in and it got a little scary, but I just kept running and eventually they went away. I had a big ol’ bruise on my thigh from the sting. Well last week Sierra stepped on a bee or wasp nest and one stung her on the stomach! She got the hugest big swollen thing that hurt and then itched for days. Ewww.

We’ve unfortunately had lots of cold, rainy days lately, but on the nice ones we find a spot to have lunch outside – it won’t be much longer that we will be able to do this so we gotta soak up all the sunshine we can!

We had an extra adventure on her last day when Kevin, our crew leader (the one in the brown sweatshirt) got our truck stuck in the mud. It took us an extra hour to get it out. We couldn’t get it out going forward, so Kevin decided to try going backwards. First we had to unhitch the trailer, swing it around, and then pull it out of the way with the Kubota. Luckily, the going in reverse plan worked. Somehow no one fell in the mud, which would have made a great picture.

Sierra looooved driving the Kubota RTV, as do I. This is what we’ve been using to haul plants around to the different zones we plant them in, as well as tools, and people.

Another girl started working there while I was off galavanting around the tall grass prairies, Katie. She’s awesome. She is also looking for other jobs, so I may lose her soon too and once again be the only girl. Sad. It was her birthday on Monday so Sierra and I made her cupcakes. Mmmm, cupcakes. I’m super happy for Sierra getting her new job, and so excited for her as she starts this new chapter in her life. But my job is just not going to be the same without her. It’s been so fun to be able to share this with her, and to have someone else get to know my coworkers and boss, and really understand what I do. I’ve got some great memories now. It’s kind of funny to think that next week she will be doing something so completely different and in such a completely different environment. She’ll be inside for one thing, and most likely won’t have dirt stuck under her fingernails and burs on her clothes!