Friday, April 15, 2011

What's with this weather?!

Seriously! What's with the weather lately? I wish spring would get here and stay here. It's a balmy 44 degrees outside right now and the wind these past few days has been nuts! We had such beautiful weather at the beginning of the week, and now this?! I think mother nature is confused. Flooding, tornadoes, temps in the upper 70s, snow, rain, what's next?

On another note, today is Ryan's work going-away party. His official last day isn't until Tuesday but everyone from work are getting together. Look out Austin, you never know what will happen when they all get together :)

-Ashley

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Getting Lots Done

This week has been a week of progress here at the Thorson house!

Saturday:
Had a late lunch at Ryan's parent's house for his birthday. We cooked up a turkey with all the fixings and had DQ ice cream cake for dessert. Once we got home, Ryan and I cleaned the kitchen which was in pretty tough shape and started on our mountain of laundry.

Sunday:
Continued doing the laundry, finished it all and put it all away (this usually doesn't happen on the same day - ha!). Ryan and I both went through our clothes and pulled out things we no longer wear and packed it all up for the Epilepsy Foundation. When we packed it all up, we didn't know when the next time they'd be around but just yesterday I got the flyer in the mail and they'll be here on Monday - perfect timing! Ryan cleaned up the downstairs and I cleaned the dining room, front room and entryway. I was out the door by 5:30pm to go to my parent's house. After an excellent dinner of chicken, steak and shrimp I dropped my Explorer off at the dealership.

Monday:
Dentist day! I had a cracked filling repaired in the morning, relaxed the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, took Sophie for a ride into town, shipped our disappointing Litter Robot back to the manufacturer, visited with some of the staff at work, picked up my Explorer (got an oil, anti-freeze, coolant, spark plugs and air filter changed) and then went back home. My car should be good to go for another 100,000 miles ;) After my mom got off work, we went to Edenvale Garden Center as they just re-opened for the spring. Unfortunately they only had trees and shurbs but we looked around and got some ideas for my house. I tell ya, the things I'd do if my cash flow was endless! We ate dinner at Panera and then picked up a few groceries before heading home. Before falling asleep, I tired calling Hillary (who was already asleep), to wish her a happy birthday.

Tuesday:
Dug up some day lilies and a bleeding heart from my mom's garden. Got my stuff packed up and headed into town. They were a person short out in production so I went out back and helped for a while. After having lunch with my parents, I started the hour drive back home. It was SO beautiful outside. Once I was home, I changed clothes and started working on the gardens outside. First I planted the bleeding heart. Then I pruned the hydrangeas and cleaned out all the dead tree leaves from around their bases. Then I dragged out the hose and fertilized everything. Since it was SO nice out, I decided I'd work on this flower bed on the side of our garage, which is something I've been meaning to do since we moved in. Well, a small project turned into a big project. I started to pulled all the grass out of the bed and digging up the roots. Then I decided to dig up all the hostas which were in the bed but haven't been growing well due to the grass and really get all the grass roots out of there. This was a pain, but it needed to be done. Then after dividing the hostas, I re-planted them. Hopefully they will come up better this year. After I finished that, it was still beautiful out that I didn't want to go back inside (plus the cats were enjoying sitting at the front door as we took the glass out and put the screen in the door) and I also had a bunch of hostas left over that I didn't want to compost. So I decided to extend the flower bed the entire length of the garage which made it twice as big. There I sat until 8:30 pm - working on digging the grass up, planting the rest of the hostas and finally planting the day lilies from my mom's garden as well. It wasn't fun, but it's done now and it looks awesome!

Wednesday:
Not wanting all that grass to grow back into the garden, I went to Lowe's to pick up some edging. It was cold and a little rainy out and I could NOT find the motivation to put the edging in. So what did I do? I cleaned out the garage! What? That's not what people normally do? Oh :) After cleaning the garage I figured the edging wasn't going to put itself in so I bit the bullet and put the edging in. What do you know, I was two feet short on the edging - ugh! Back to Lowe's I will be going to get more edging, but not today. I hate making multiple trips to Lowe's. We ALWAYS have to make multiple trips to Lowe's whenever we are going any sort of home improvement project. Good thing they are close by! After finishing the edging that I had, I pounded a dozen fertilizer spikes into the ground around the pine tress in the back yard and then fertilized the hydrangeas once again (I want them to be big and beautiful this year!). Then, I called it a day and spent a good chunk of the night on the phone with Kristin, looking at shoes online for Hillary's wedding. Oh yeah, earlier in the morning I put an order in for some tulips!! YAY! I wish we were going to be here next year when they come up - oh well, I'll see them in four years :)

Today:
My motivation is dwindling! After eating breakfast and watching the morning news, I snuggled with the kiddos (aka Cooper and Zoey) for a bit. Still not having much motivation I made my way downstairs to clean the basement. But first I cleaned the cat litter as today is garbage day. I like to throw as much stuff away on Thursdays prior to the garbage truck coming - fill up that kirby. Our basement wasn't really that messy, well, ok it was messy but just because we were wiring it up and putting in lights, etc. So there was saw dust everywhere and bits and pieces of wiring remnants here and there. So I cleaned it all up - filled a garage bag of crap and got it in the kirby prior to the garbage people coming - yes! I love the feeling of getting more stuff in the garbage :) Weird? Yes, most likely, but I like de-cluttering our life :) Now the basement is cleaned and ready for us to move the stuff that isn't moving to Omaha with us down there. Now I'm really feeling lazy. We'll see what I do this afternoon.

~Ashley

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Movie Review: Source Code

Last week Ryan and I went to two movies. The first being The Adjustment Bureau and the second being Source Code. For both movies, since we went at odd times (like a Tuesday at 7pm) we have the entire theater to ourselves. As we sat watching the previews for Source Code I mentioned to Ryan that rich people usually only get to have theaters to themselves and pay big bucks for it. We go it for $15 - ha! (Lifestyles of the rich and the famous...)

Source: Google Images
Ryan: 3 3/4 stars our of 5 - "it was good, but it was still a love story." (to which I replied "See Ry, everyone loves a good love story!" he then rolled his eyes)

Ashley: 3 out of 5 stars - I thought the story line was a little shallow. The movie could have been more suspenseful, but it wasn't

Our recommendation would be: wait until it comes out for $1/night in RedBox :)

~Ashley

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Today is Ryan's 3rd annual 29th birthday, as he likes to call it :-)

Yesterday while Ryan was at work I was a busy baker in the kitchen. I baked three dozen cupcakes, from scratch, for the first time ever, for Ryan to take to work today. I do a lot of baking but I've never baked cupcakes from scratch so I was a little nervous that they weren't going to turn out. I made white cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes - both for very different recipes I've collected from one of the many baking blogs I read. Both turned our yummy! I topped them with homemade buttercream frosting - mmm mmm good :-)

The calm before the storm - I make a mess when I bake!!

The white cupcakes look pretty darn good!

Mixing up the chocolate cupcakes :-)

Woah - that's a lot of buttercream frosting. I did not use all of this but I didn't want to run out half way through frosting the cupcakes!

The finished product! Yum!!

All packed up and ready for Ryan to take to work with him.
Ryan made me chuckle this morning. First he almost ran out the door this morning without the cupcakes (what we would have done with all these cupcakes?!) and then about 45 minutes later I get a call from him.
Ryan: "Hun, do we have any cupcakes at home?"
Ashley: "Yeah, we have three. Why?"    I'm thinking that he dropped them and got the frosting all messed up or something
Ryan: "Well, I have this other tupperware with eight cupcakes, and I'll just leave it in the car so that we have some for home."   :)

I taste-tested the white cupcake last night and Ryan taste-tested the chocolate one. He must have really liked them since he wanted to hoard those eight cupcakes and bring them home. The last time I made cupcakes from a box mix, we ended up throwing away a bunch of them as they didn't turn out good at all.

Happy Birthday Ryan! I love you!!


~Ashley

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Movie Review: The Adjustment Bureau

Google Images
This past weekend, Ryan and I went and saw The Adjustment Bureau. I was a good movie. Surprisingly, the first time Ryan asked if I wanted to see this movie, I said no. It must have sounded to violent or SciFi-y for me - I don't know - but it ended up being a good flick.

Ryan gives it:
Four Stars (out of 5)

He couldn't quite give it five stars as he told me "It was still a chick flick with a mussy love story." Love story - yes, but chick flick?! - no, I don't think so! Chick flick is something like Legally Blonde or Nights in Rodanthe (*wink)....not The Adjustment Bureau.


I give it:
Four Stars

It was a good movie. Would I pay to see it in the theater again? Probably not (going to the movie theater is expensive these days!). Would I consider buying it on DVD in the future? Most likely. No violence, no guts, no shoot-em-up screens, good story line which at first has you questioning just what the heck is going on...it was a good flick.

~Ashley

Family Weekend - March 2011

Two weekends ago, my sisters and I all got together at my parents house. I was still up in Duluth on my neurology rotation so I road down to their house Friday afternoon with Hillary and Ryan. My Ryan drove up from Austin after work (I was sleeping by the time he actually showed up) and Kristin and Dave came over from LeCenter.

On our way down from Duluth, we stopped in Jordon to pick up a few select items for my parent's liquor cabinet. When we finally put all of our stuff on the check out counter, the lady told us, "Either you guys have a big problem or you're going to have a lot of fun this weekend!" HA - we had a lot of fun. Then while Hillary was grabbing a bag of ice, the lady asked "How old is the other girl with you." I laughed and told her she was older than me - she didn't even card me :-) I must look pretty mature :-)

We pulled out the old blender once we got to my parents house and mixed up some strawberry daiquiris to go with our sloppy joe dinner. Hillary's Ryan was mixing the second batch of drinks in the blender when the speed started to slow and then I hear him in the kitchen "Uh oh, it's smoking!" So outside the blender went...

Another one bites the dust!
Later Friday evening, we started to watch Inception. I think this is a great movie - really makes you think, but you can't fall asleep half way through. I didn't make it, I headed to bed before it was over and as mentioned before, I was sleeping by the time my Ryan made it to my parent's house.

Saturday morning, my dad made us all breakfast - eggs, bacon and hash browns :-) The two Ryans decided they needed a little bonding time so they went to Mankato to pick up a new blender (and also stop at Patrick's in St. Peter for a few beers as this is their tradition now). While they were gone, I studying some neurology for a bit as the I had my neurology shelf that next Friday and Hillary worked on making some necklaces for her bridesmaids. We got a call from the Ryans around 11:30 so we all loaded up and headed to Patrick's in St. Peter for lunch. Kristin met us there, but Dave was at home studying up for an upcoming engineering exam he has. It took FOREVER for us to get our food and we didn't leave Patrick's until 3:00. But we had a good time and shared a lot of laughs.

We had Hillary try on her wedding dress multiple times and we were trying to decide: no veil, veil, single layer veil or double layer veil - ha! She looked fantastic in her dress! Can't wait for her and Ryan's big day in July!! After a day of studying, Dave came over for dinner. My grandparents, Chris and Dean also came over for a big dinner of BBQ ribs. We had such a good time and laughed a ton! It was so nice to have everyone together. Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Ryan trying out the new blender! It works pretty slick!

The whole crew eating form DQ ice cream cake for desert!

Dean, Chris and Hillary

Goof Balls :)

Desert Liquor drinks. Hillary didn't think it was that bad.

Kristin on the other hand thought it was terrible!

Dad and Mom

By the looks on Dean and my grandma's face, something must have been very exciting!


Dean is so animated! I love it!

Lots of laughs!

Dean, Chris, Grandma, Grandpa, mom and dad

The two Ryans maybe shouldn't be able to drink together - ha! lol

Grandma and Grandpa with the Loewe girls and their significant others.

The best grandparents anyone could ask for!

Can't leave Sophie out! She was SO excited to have so many people over for the weekend.
 ~Ashley

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Done!

I'm done!!

After spending countless hours in the classroom, many more hours studying and rotating through all my required and elective rotations, I'm done. I took my neuro shelf on Friday and I'm a free woman until residency starts July 1!!

I know that sounds like a long time but I have a feeling that it is going to go by SO fast. I have a lot of things I want to do between know and then so I'm going to be a busy lady. I can't wait! It feels so good to have some time to relax and well relax! We'll see what the next three months of freedom bring me :)

~Ashley