Rob and Emily Raleigh

I realize it's been since before Thanksgiving since I've updated. It's been very busy around here. The Thanksgiving weekend flew by without any time to unwind and I ended up coming down with a cold which made for a miserable week back. In addition to seeing family and traveling and having friends over, I had to find time to make Christmas cards for the card-exchange club at work, find Christmas gifts for a Secret Santa thing at work, and make 12 dozen cookies for a cookie exchange party. Add in a few Raleigh birthdays, a busy few weeks at work, and the time spent decorating our house, the big couple of storms that came through town.... We've been busy! I think most of my obligations are done after this weekend, so hopefully I'll find time to do a little Christmas shopping- and to finally RELAX!

In the midst of all of this was Rob's birthday. He doesn't like to really like to plan things for his birthday, but we ended up meeting Nick and Molly and some friends at the Happy Gnome for dinner. It was such a nice time! Molly introduced us to the joys of the Happy Gnome cheese platter. The spread was delicious but I think Molly got the most out of it, relishing every bite. Then on Saturday we had an impromptu party when the roads were at their worst. A few didn't want to risk the drive, but we still had a good group show up. It was a very low-key event with the guys downstairs playing pool while the girls had some quality girl-talk upstairs.

We bought a Christmas tree this week. It came "pre-lit" and also has pine cones scattered throughout the branches. It's pretty cute for a fake. Last night we hung the ornaments, and also did a little more decorating in the front entry way. I wish I could start putting Christmas gifts under the tree but I think Penny would mistake them for a bathroom and ruin Christmas for everyone.

Today the Raleigh family gathered at Day by Day Cafe for Angie's birthday breakfast. There was a little confusion about what time the reservations were made for. But between those who showed up at the quoted time, those who are chronically late to such events, those those who arrived at the actual reservation time, we were all winners and arrived "on time."

The Raleigh Lefse tradition continued this year with a day devoted solely to the Scandinavian treat. After breakfast we went to Stillwater to make this year's holiday supply. Angie and Cheryl had each made batches, and although it was the same recipe, both were different. Nick and I started off rolling the patties of dough and manning the griddles. I was surprised at how smoothly it went for me. I only had one incident where the dough stuck too much to the towel and I had to start over. Nick had a few more problems with sticky dough, but not as much as Scott did. Though eager to learn, Scott quickly became frustrated as patty after patty of dough stuck to one specific problem area on his rolling surface. However, he was able to successfully make as many lefse as he had eaten, so after meeting the quota he surrendered his duties to more expert hands. Cheryl sent each of us home with a small bag of lefse and hopefully I won't eat it all before sharing it with my family for Thanksgiving!

I only saw two people at work who were dressed for Halloween, one of them being our corporate receptionist. She always does it up big for the holiday, and this year she was a pirate complete with a huge wig of curly black hair, a beard, a parrot attached to her shoulder, and a bottle of rum (it was fake).

Traffic was crazy last night. Every parent left work early to get home in time to take their kids trick-or-treating. When I finally got home, I plugged in our pumpkin lights and set our jack o'lanterns outside. It wasn't long before we had our first group come by.

We had quite a number of trick-or-treaters this year. I thought that maybe three bags of candy would be enough, but I had to send Rob to the store to get a couple more bags halfway through the evening. The kids just kept coming! Rob gives each kid to only one piece of candy each, whereas I tend to dole it out by the handful. Wally and Cheryl were over for a few hours as well. They don't live in a very strategic location when it comes to trick-or-treaters so they don't get any, and I think Cheryl enjoyed seeing all the kids dressed up.

I really enjoyed seeing the home-made costumes. Not that there's anything wrong with buying a big scary gorilla suit, but I grew up making my own costumes. My favorite was the girl who came in a bathrobe, her hair up in curlers, with a white facial mask. The kids next door were dressed as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. I asked little Darth to do that scary mask breathe, and he did. Some older kids also stopped by and saw Wally and Cheryl's little dog Bert and said, "he looks like that Taco Bell dog!" They laughed when I informed them that he doesn't speak Spanish.

The Raleighs celebrated Nick's birthday at the Lexington on Grand Ave in St. Paul today. Nick came ready to party sporting a mohawk. Classy? Yes. Can he still go to work everyday and not get fired? Yes. A mohawk in the truest sense of the word? Not really. But it still looked cool. Breakfast was delicious and everything was very relaxed. Cal even got the table of older ladies next to us to sing a harmonized Happy Birthday to Nick. So sweet!

Rob and I carved our farmers market pumpkins today. Rob gave his pumpkin dimples. Mine didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped it would, but it has a face with a toothy grin, so I'm happy.

This morning we went to the St. Paul farmer's market with my brother Tim and his girlfriend Lisa. Lisa's main mission was to find a pumpkin and some apples there, and Rob was looking for some unpasteurized apple cider for a hard cider recipe he wants to try. I wanted good pumpkins to make jack o'lanterns and to roast their seeds. I found three pumpkins of varying sizes, and Lisa got a small one that she'll use to make pumpkin pie. I can't wait to start carving! After purchasing our goods we went to Day By Day Cafe for a late breakfast.

This weekend we had our annual fall camping trip at Merrick State Park in Wisconsin. Though it was past the peak fall colors, there was still enough to make it a pretty drive. A little wind Friday night blew the clouds away, and Saturday it was sunny with temperatures warm enough for shorts, which never happens on these trips.

We were without a few key group members this year as Jon and Kim and Mike were all out of town. It wasn't the same without them, but we had a few extra people along bringing the group count to 16. It was Rob, me, Matt, Chad, Leah, Joe, "Other Chad" (or Chad Too, Chad Two, Roommate Chad- he had several nicknames to try to avoid the confusion of sharing a name with another), Tim, Mer, Sarah, Pat, Naomi, Ryan, Angie, Ira, and Adam. Biggins was there again, and his BFF for the weekend was the little newcomer Miles, Tim and Meredith's dog.

Aside from the warmer temps bringing in a host of flies, a few deer ticks found on the dogs, and the giant spider in our tent that almost ate us for breakfast, camping was really no different than in years past. People trickled in to the campground little by little on Friday, with Naomi and Ryan pulling in last after a long drive from Duluth. There were the late night campfires, big group meals, bocce and bean bags, a lovely hike around the park and a carefully constructed group photo Sunday morning.

Monday morning at about 9:30am I got an email from my mom saying that she was not going to Illinois to pick up my dad because there was 3" of standing water in the basement. I called her right away and she said that due to excessive rains in Duluth, water and mud had blanketed the entire basement. She had been bailing water out of the window wells since 7am that morning. Uncle Todd said he'd bring Dad back, but in the meantime it was Mom vs. Nature in what seemed to be a losing battle. After a few emails to my co-workers, I left work at about 10:30 to head to Duluth to help Mom out.

By the time I got there, the water had gone down. Mom thinks the City might have unclogged something after she talked to me because the water in the window wells had gone down considerably when before she had been bailing just to keep it from filling more. But still, the basement was a mess. In Tim's old room downstairs, the window well had filled so full of water and mud that it pushed the window opened and washed down the wall. Something must have malfunctioned to have left that much destruction.

Mom started the clean up by laying things out to dry on the kitchen and dining room tables. We then started scooping up the mud and ran the shop vac. After that we tried mopping up as best we could. My lead-foot uncle Todd made it to Duluth in record time and he and Dad spent the rest of the evening ripping up the carpet in the family room and getting the water out of the workshop.

What's even worse about having water and mud in your basement is having water and Duluth mud in your basement. It's not just dirt and mud. It's clay. The house sits on a bed of granite and a layer of clay with tiny little streams running under ground to the Lake. We couldn't dump any of the water we soaked up into the sink. For every gallon of water there was an inch of the silt on the bottom of the bucket so we'd have to bring each bucket up to the back yard and scoop out the clay.

By early afternoon Tuesday, most of the clay was mopped up and we were busy moving shelves and furniture around so we could get every last inch of the floor. I left in time to make it home before rush hour got too bad, and when I checked in with my folks last night they were ripping up the 40+ year old linoleum and they're looking now at water proof sealant paints for the floors.

It's really frustrating to see the house that way, when we did everything we could to ensure something on this scale would never happen. But with the 6 weeks of rain and fully saturated ground, the systems were all overloaded and I think the water had no where else to go.