Minnesota Randomness

The past 2 weeks have been crazy - hence my blog hiatus. I still have a few more pictures from our trip back home that I want to share with you all though.

Aside from seeing family and friends, one of the most memorable parts of MN was all of the snow! I don't think we've had this much snow since the 90's haha

Dad recruited Andrew to help shovel the deck and rake the roof. I have to say, he's better at playing in the snow than working in the snow....good thing we don't get snow in Berkeley.

Each time I come home Katie and I plan on grabbing coffee or dinner; this time we even invited the boys. We had an enormous meal at the Cheesecake Factory and chatted each other up for hours.

The boys of course talk about engineering/techy stuff while Katie and I talk about much more interesting things ;) For instance, the possibility of them moving to Berkeley while Adam to get his PhD at Cal!! Yes, you read that right. How exciting would that be?!

By the way - did you notice how Katie and I look like twins in that picture. Cream scarf, black coat with a hood, Long Champ bag, skinny jeans and brown boots. She has such good taste ;)

The next few pictures are just a few of the 'usual scenes' from the week:

Mindy and Andrew relaxing. He claims to not love her, but I think we all know that's not true.

Dad building a fire downstairs to accompany a movie, dinner, scrabble, etc.

Hanging around the coffee table in the living room attempting (yes, that means we didn't finish it) to do an impossible 1,000 puzzle.

Since we weren't home on our 1 year wedding anniversary back in July (when you typically eat the top layer of your wedding cake) we pulled it out now. While admittedly not as good the second time around, it was sill fun to nibble on it for traditions sake. Andrew wasn't so sure about eating 17 month old cake.....haha

On New Year's Day my parents hosted the annual Hofflander Scandinavian Dinner. The whole Hofflander family plus spouses' parents (e.g. Aunt Julie's mom, Lois comes) come over for a huge feast to ring in the new year and celebrate our heritage!

My dad starts cooking days ahead of time to have the whole spread ready on time on the first of January. I love the meatballs and sausages...

I don't love the lutefisk. Though everyone agreed it was better than usual this year - if that's even possible.

Yes, my dad cooks all of this! Everything is SOO good. And I always eat more than I should (I can't resist lefse; I don't even try to anymore)

And the grand finale: Grandma's assortment of mostly Scandinavian cookies. My dad and his brothers split up the cookie making duties these days, but my grandma used to make all of them (there's about 18 kinds!)

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Best wishes for a happy 2011 :)