A Cheese Curd Christmas

The holidays started off with a marathon drive through the wind tunnel of Iowa. We set out on Tuesday, December 22nd ... expecting to stay the night in Ames, IA ... but the weather was only getting worse so we pushed through the entire 12 hour drive, arriving at Kyle's aunt and uncle's house at 3am. Dear God - Thank you for a husband that is a professional driver in crappy weather. I'm pretty sure he saved our lives multiple times.


We continued north on Wednesday for another hour and a half to celebrate Christmas with Kyle's family in Chetek. This is the type of celebration I'm used to ... quiet family dinner, lots of gifts to unwrap, lots of laughs as we share memories. I'm lucky that my wonderful husband came complete with a wonderful family! I mean, my mother-in-law even rocked an Ohio State shirt for the festivities! :)

We even had some General Mills moments as Kyle's mom and sister anxiously opened the holiday gift box that arrives every year and Emily opened an entire case of Dunkaroos to properly supplement her college diet.





Now, on to the celebration that is quite the change from our quiet Ohio holidays. Kyle has a ginormous family on his mom's side and we all pack into his Aunt Lori and Uncle Steve's beautiful house (always equipped with a beautiful tree) to celebrate the chaos. It was intimidating at first, but now that I'm official (and have experienced several of these gatherings over the years) I have come to love them! I used to sit back and watch the chaos, and now I partake in all the fun.

Given that church and dinner were late this year, we hung out at the local bowling alley for some pizza, beer and friendly competition. Of course we threw in a few games of Euchre, a holiday family tradition.

I was on fire and bowled the best game of my life ... 181!

Look closely, that's my husband with a 134. Hey - until he starts blogging, I am perfectly comfortable using this medium for bragging purposes. :)





By the time church rolled around, the roads were getting uglier. The adults left plenty early, but not us kids ... and stalling finally worked in our favor when the adults called to give the "kids" a free pass to stay home. That has never happened before and I venture to guess that it will never happen again. Hence the following pictures - Christmas 2009; A Christmas to Remember.

Here's the family playing Snoop - a version of White Elephant.

Here's Grandpa Joe, winning Euchre like he always does. Nice try, Aunt Jodi!

Here's little Spencer, the hit of the holidays. He made his debut as our ring bearer last year. He will be a big brother in a few months ... little does he know he will no longer be the center of everyone's attention. But, we still love him!

Thanks to everyone for making our Christmas in Wisconsin such a great one! It was really nice to see everyone after being away in Arkansas for the past year. And to those we weren't able to celebrate with, we hope you also had a wonderful holiday with friends and family and look forward to seeing you soon!

To all those that are talking about visiting us in Arkansas ... you only have one more year left ... so get on it!

Merry Christmas, from The Petersen's. [consider this our Christmas card since we don't send one!]

That Girl Can Eat!

I'm a bit behind on posting this one, but it's just too good to pass up!

So, you've heard about our favorite pizzeria, Gusano's, here in town that we like to frequent. Well, they recently created a Pizza Challenge ... if anyone can finish a 1-topping, 30-inch pizza (that's right, I said 30 INCHES) in 1 hour, it's FREE. No one has succeeded yet, but there are two pictures on the wall of people that have tried.

Big-Talk-Tracie claimed that she could at least make a healthy dent in the 30-incher. That comment was enough to lead Kyle to throw out a bet of his own. $100 that I couldn't finish a 1-topping 13-inch pizza in 1 hour.

Little did he know, my dad used to say I "ate like a trucker" when I was a kid. And, I've been perfecting my art form ever since. Not to mention, a $100 prize! I was already coming up with ideas on how to spoil myself with that.

Here I am, staring my 13-inch black olive pizza in the face.

Bite number one tasted oh so good.


I was cruising until I finished the 6th slice of the 8-slice pie. That's when I hit the wall. And the strategy I tried of saving the crust until the end only held up for 3 of those slices. Hey, I figured I could dunk them in water and suck them down like the little Asian Champion hot dog eater if I had to!

Given that $100 and bragging rights were at stake, I had made the decision to finish the pizza before I even started ... so here I am with my empty box. Let's just say my body wasn't working like it normally does for a good two days!

But, I still conquered the pie! I proved to my hubby that I can eat like a dude ... hot, I know.

But I don't shop like a dude. Here's where my $100 winnings went ...


Sweet victory never looked so good ...

Thanks for doubting me, honey, the shoes are amazing!

Me Want Cookie

The ladies at the General Mills office have organized a monthly ladies night for a little girlie bonding time outside of work. We rotate houses each month, have dinner together, and the host chooses an activity. When the crew came to our house this past July, Kyle helped cook kebabs for 14 ladies and I organized a book swap, which was an overwhelming success.

This month, we were hosted by our bubbly administrative assistant, Joyce. She cooked some amazing potato soup, taught us all how to make easy apple cobbler, and coordinated a delicious (waist-expanding) cookie exchange.

This gave Kyle a chance to soak up some more of Jim Cramer's book and research stocks for our future investments in silence (and we all know there is no such thing as silence when I'm in the house!)

Not more than 2 days after the cookie exchange, a package showed up from the Baking Elves in Wisconsin ... and we were treated to even more Christmas goodies! Thanks to Aunt Lori and Mom Petersen! We are drowning in Christmas cookies and loving every minute of it.

Decking Our Halls

The Christmas season is here ... and Kyle and I worked hard to get the house ready last weekend.

We finally have a fireplace to hang our stockings!

I also had to put up my absolute favorite Christmas decoration - the Beary Merry Christmas calendar. My mom made it when we were little ... you move the bear around the house each day as he looks for Christmas. My big brother, Jeff, used to tease me by moving the bear to the chimney every day, and his legacy lives on as Kyle does the same thing. I'll never win.

Here I am "layering" as Lisa, Jenny and I were taught by a professional decorator while I was back in Cleveland. We went to a class and now I'm motivated to go a little bigger for Christmas ... but I'll wait until our next house before I buy more decorations.

Our annual tradition is to make the trek to a Christmas tree farm, cut down our own tree and enjoy the hot chocolate to kick off the season. That is apparently not the tradition of most Northwest Arkansans as there were no Christmas tree farms within a 2-hour drive from our house! We were not about to give in and skip having a live tree … so we did the next best thing … picked one up at Lowe’s.

Lame, I know. But we love the look, smell and nostalgia of a live tree for the holidays, and we weren’t about to let Arkansas stop us. Here's the winner.

Here's Kyle doing all the work again. Don't these pictures remind you of the Halloween posting when he had to haul the pumpkins to the car?!?! I've got a good thing going, I know.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but for some reason, the process of getting the tree in the house and set up in the stand is much easier these days then when I was growing up. I remember it taking forever with a lot of screaming going on; “Hold the damn tree!” “That’s not straight!” It tended to get a little intense. Now, Kyle just throws that tree into the stand, I pretend to hold it (which really doesn’t matter cause he’s doing most of the work anyway) and we get it positioned perfectly within minutes.

We played Christmas music, hung the lights and ornaments (of which 5 are “Our First Christmas” ornaments) and even baked some cookies to finish off the festivities.

Here's one of my favorite ornaments ... everyone has to have a little "Grandpa's Cheesebarn" hanging on their tree! For those of you that aren't familiar, your loss. It's an amazing place halfway between Cleveland and Columbus ... a family tradition to stop and buy cheese and sausage.

Kyle is sweet to humor me in all the cheesy holiday activities, but while he probably won’t admit it to you, I think he really enjoys this stuff just as much as I do! While it won’t be any time soon (seriously, Moms, don’t ask,) we are both looking forward to having kids so that we actually have an excuse to do all this holiday stuff!

I'm 29 ... From Now On

Yesterday marked the first day of the last year of my 20's. I can't believe it either. I'll be carded for another 10 years, though, I'm sure.

Where has the time gone? I planned to visit all 50 states before I turned 30 ... that's not gonna happen. I've been to 42 and will probably end at 43 by next year - valiant effort, but somehow, the time slipped away. I planned to run a marathon before I turned 30. I'll have done 2 half marathons by next year, if that counts. Where did my 20's go? I mean, I'm so old that my parents have even stopped bothering to call me on my birthday. (Still love ya, Mom and Dad!)

To remedy this situation, I've decided that I will stay 29 from now on. That feels right. Then I'll have all the time in the world to do, go, see all that I had planned on. So, here's to my first 29th birthday!

Thanks to everyone for the wonderful birthday wishes, cards, gifts, phone calls ... you sure made me feel loved.

Thanks to me for taking the afternoon off to go get a massage and for the cute shirt I bought myself at The Gap.

And most of all, thanks to my wonderful husband. Yet again, he made my special day special! He cooked me breakfast before going to work, showered me with gifts, took me out to dinner, and cuddled on the couch to watch a Christmas movie he rented for me. A perfect evening with the perfect person. I guess I could get used to this turning 29 thing after all!

From Cabin Fever to Cinderella's Ball

Typically, if Kyle and I are both in town for a weekend (which seems pretty rare these days,) we try to lay low, get stuff done around the house and relax. Not the case this weekend. We packed in the events: acting like our former, younger selves on Friday night – playing drinking games at a cabin in Gravette, Arkansas … and our older, more sophisticated selves at a charity ball on Saturday night – enjoying cocktails in our fancy dress and tux. (Me in the dress, Kyle in the tux!)

A group of my coworkers from General Mills plan an annual “Cabin Trip” to get away, party, and not worry about anyone having to get themselves home. We decided to join in the festivities as the cabin was only 30 minutes from our house. The cabin was absolutely gorgeous, ginormous and super cheap. "The Cabins at Big Springs" http://www.the-cabins.net/coloradopine.html

Our crew of 15 cooked up a Mexican feast (well, the ladies did, while the guys watched basketball on the couch, typical) listened to some good music, and played cards. Here's Erin cooking up the taco bar.

And Kyle and Kaylie partaking of the grub.

Kyle was up for staying the night, but I was pretty determined to go home and sleep in our own bed, so he partook in the drinking games while I played DD and watched the fun. It was very much like we were back in college … not something we would do every weekend, but it was nice for Kyle to meet some more Gmills people.

Here's my man, showing the youngin's how it's done. I'm so proud.

With Kyle still recovering from the night before, we headed to the Embassy Suites in Rogers on Saturday afternoon to prepare for our gala. We hung out with some friends at the hotel, enjoyed cocktails and played cards (no drinking games this time.) Then we put on our fancy attire and headed down to the event. We clean up pretty nice, if I do say so myself.

PS - Thanks to my Dad for the gorgeous dress! I really felt like Cinderella. Kyle is going to buy stock at White House Black Market now that I'm hooked. :)

Here are two of our best friends down here in Arkansas ... The beautiful Melissa and her good lookin' hubby, Jeff. (It would have been just too easy to get one picture of the four of us!)

We enjoyed a very nice meal and were entertained by a few songs from Danny Gokey … an American Idol 3rd place finisher last season, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While he’s not the big-namer they usually get, he did sound really good. Being the VIP's that we are, we got to meet him “backstage.”

A little Christmas spirit to end the night. Pay no attention to the beer bottles ... they had nothing to do with this photo.

Now we just need a weekend to recover from our weekend.