Homecoming Weekend

We had a great evening on Friday with the Homecoming Parade and the Pep Fest. We met Ally, Zander, Ashley and Danny for the parade. It was a good parade, nearly 1 hour long and Z did very well in the candy, footballs, and beads department. Before the parade Nicole and I ate at Big 10 which is always good. We ran into one of Joe's friends (Ray) who works at Big 10. He recognized Nicole (unfortunately) and sat down with us. He said he could only remember Ashley when she was 21 or 22 years old. It was pretty funny.
After the parade we went to the Pep Fest which was outside McNamara and it was pretty boring, definitely geared more toward students. They did announce that AGR (my college fraternity) won the Homecoming Float competition. It's nice to get that trophy after spending nearly $15k on the float each and every year, plus hundreds of hours of time. To their credit, it looked great.
After all the festivities on campus Nicole and I met some of our college friends Aaron and Emily Peter and Mark and Amanda Escen. It was good to catch up with them, but Nicole says that I do all the talking so I have to work on that. I felt that we would all just sit and stare at each other if I didn't ask questions, so that is what I was doing. Mark and Amanda had just returned from a vacation in Brazil so we discussed that and Aaron and Emily are expecting their first baby in December (it's going to be a boy) and they are very excited about that. Our other college friends Adam and Eve Adamson are also expecting a baby girl this November, right around their and our anniversary.

Saturday
We met Ally and went tailgating around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday. The game started at 11 and was pretty good. We were ahead at half time and looked ok. The defense got weaker in the 4th quarter and we weren't able to hang on for the victory losing 29-28. It was a beautiful afternoon to be outside at a football game, but I did notice that the student section was less than half full so it looks as if the students are losing faith in the team. Not a good situation.

After the game we had planned to test drive cars. We went to our favorite spot in Golden Valley where we have bought 2 Saab's in the past. We have a salesman there that we like, we don't feel pressure from him and he is very fair. I always told him we wanted to have one car and one SUV and probably a Land Rover as we have had good luck with ours. Well, they sell Cadillacs as well as Saab's and someone traded in a nice used Land Rover on a Cadillac Escalade so we went to check it out. It turned out to be very nice and we traded our old Land Rover. Nicole actually cried when we said goodbye to the ol' girl. (Actually, I didn't cry. I did say "goodbye" to her and told her that she was very good to us and we enjoyed driving her around. Okay so those of you that know me well know that I do get very emotional, so maybe there was a tear!) We were just short of 170,000 miles on it and they gave us $1100 for her. So we bought a 2006 Land Rover and hope for the same luck with this one. We upgraded 9 years. So no more rust and loud noises when it turns.

Sunday was a day of catch up as we were gone all day Saturday. We played golf and watched a lot of golf (Ryder Cup). I mowed the grass and we spent some time cleaning up the house.

Next weekend is Nicole's graduation so we have some getting ready to do. Her ceremony is around Noon on Saturday and then we are having family over afterward for some food and the Gopher football game at Wisconsin. As of now, the weather looks perfect for the next 10 days.