MN Thompson's

The kids did a performance for school on Friday night. Colleen did a dance for Colombia and Christopher did a dance for Purdue (funny that all the other kids thought they were dancing for something called Peru – go figure?? Viva Purdue!). After sitting an hour we were done with 3 songs out of 17, so Megan and I conveniently decided we had to go potty (and never returned – heh heh heh).

In two hours we’ll be doing our annual March of Dimes, March for Babies walk. As is typical, it’s supposed to rain throughout the day. Over the years we’ve had rain, snow, sleet, and even some sunshine – but somehow they usually get the worst weather of the month for this walk.

Last weekend I ran in a 50K team event for the park’s district (which translates to 8 miles for my portion of the run). I hadn’t run farther than 3 miles this year and hadn’t even run that distance many times. I guess weekly boot camp and racquetball have kept me in shape because I finished with 9:25 per mile. This course is “off road” so you’re going up and down dirt, grass, and wood chipped hills, and even run up the backside of a ski slope on a narrow, single-file, rocky path to the peak of the “mountain” and then straight down the ski slope itself. I finished it feeling very strong, so…I’m contemplating running a 1/2 marathon at the end of May. My theory is that 13 miles is only 5 more than what I just did, and if I didn’t train much for 8 miles and I felt good at the end, then I can squeeze out another few miles with hopefully not any major problems (can you spot any flaws in this theory?). I don’t like to run, and really don’t like to run for no reason (i.e., training – blah!). Wish me luck 🙂

Have you ever watched any of those World’s Dumbest Criminals shows on TV? Christopher and I were outside and he yelled that Orca got into the trash. I went inside and found her running around like this:

Momma duck is finally sitting on her eggs fairly consistently. She may be a new mom – I’m not feeling as good about this as last year, but hopefully she’s got everything under control now. Here she is on the nest, and here she is off somewhere leaving her nest fully exposed for a long period of time. She’s pretty popular with the male ducks again so they get her distracted and flustered. Keep it in your pants fellas.

I forgot to mention the conversation Megan and I had in the boys bathroom at the Wisconsin Dells. She had to go #1, couldn’t hold it, and Beth wasn’t around…so we went into the boys bathroom. She is always a chatterbox so why would that change in the bathroom. We went into a stall and she started talking about peanuts. Peanuts??? It didn’t take me long to figure out where she was going with this. Here are few samples of the wisdom echoing from our stall: “Boys stand up to go to the bathroom because they use their peanuts” and “Boys don’t have to wash their hands because they use their peanuts”. For the record, I wash my hands, and based on our water bill at home I know Christopher washes his hands for longer than it takes him to go to the bathroom. Peanuts – tee hee.

We are going to be proud parents again!

Yes, it’s true. Momma duck is busy making eggs. I was getting ready to clean out the pond yesterday and I stumbled upon 4 eggs right by the electrical box for the pond pump. Momma duck wasn’t around and she really hasn’t been around as much as she has in previous years. I was worried that there were eggs and no mamma so I turned to a trusty friend for some input. Google told me that momma duck squeezes out a few eggs every few days and she won’t start sitting on them until she’s done laying. This way hopefully all eggs will hatch at the same time…I learn more about ducks every year (I’ll take Ducks for 400 Alex). I love the fact that they keep choosing our yard to raise their family – way cool. Orca likes it too 🙂

Momma duck came back today and sat on the eggs for a while. I couldn’t tell if she laid any more though. She let me switch the pond pumps and get the stream running again while she swam around in the pond. She then spent 1/2 hour playing in the stream and eating all the muck that got churned up. I think she approves of my work.

Playing around with a tilt-shift photo…

Colleen woke me up at 4:00 a.m. last night. She said – “It smells like Orca’s poop or dog food”. We walked closer to her room and she said how much stronger the smell was in the hallway. My worst sense (other than common) is my sense of smell so I’m sniffing around – something smelled – I wasn’t sure if it was a good smell or a bad smell – I didn’t want to step in whatever it was she was bothered by…wake up calls like this in the middle of the night are never a good thing. So I’m sniffing and trying to wake up a bit…and then it hit me…before we went to bed Beth had filled the crockpot with dinner for the next night and had set it to run all night. Ha! Wish us luck as we try to choke down dinner tonight 🙂 Too funny.

Congratulations Dan, Jacqueline, big brother Preston, and new baby Cameron!!!! Way to go! Hope all is well!

Aunt Kat is talking smack about blogging…bring it. I’ve already proved UT wrong (which isn’t hard – he opens his mouth and inserts his foot way too often). I survived my first year of blogging! The problem is that it’s harder to get computer time at home than at the library now. I need to request a time slot in advance when the kids aren’t playing Poptropica and when Beth isn’t trying to rekindle old high school romances on Facebook.

Busy weeks coming up – we’re entering birthday party season, the kids are singing at church and school, Orca is getting her first haircut (we haven’t seen her eyes in a month), I’m doing the 50K race on a 4 person team again, March of Dimes walk is coming up, and the neighborhood Easter Egg hunt is coming up this weekend (which is a huge event in our neighborhood – the Bloody Mary’s keep the crowds coming back). We’re also starting to think about all of our summer/fall plans – it hurts our brains trying to think this far ahead. If anyone is planning a trip out here let us know.

We had an awesome time in the Dells. We got to hang out with Evil E and Wen (from Lafayette) plus Gen & Tom (from Chicago – also Purdue friends). We each have 3 kids so it was fun going out with a party of 15 people. We had a “big kid table” wherever we went – it worked out great for everybody (except the waiters). The Great Wolf Lodge was tons of fun as always. Gave me a chance to show off my new tatoos.

Beth and Colleen swooshing down the slide.

Megan swooshing on her own.

With the exception of the Tornado, Colleen and Christopher did everything at the water park this year. That made it a ton more fun – for them and for mommy and daddy. We had an excuse to repeatedly do the tube and mat slides. Multiply 74 steps to the top by probably 20 trips a day – we were getting quite the work out.

Colleen at 90 mph!

All the cool kids carried their mats up the stairs by balancing them on their head.

But the coolest kids of all made it look like the mat was magically walking itself up the stairs.

Can you find two of our monkeys in the wave pool? Hint – only one is facing the camera. Colleen was a super star and Christopher gets the “most improved swimmer” award. This year his head was under water longer than it was above water. When the waves came Christopher would flop onto his back under water and lay there (for a long time) – lifeguards would get a bit freaked out. I had to take him to the bathroom a few times because he said he kept drinking too much of the water 🙂

It snowed just this past weekend after we got back from the Dells. It’s April – stop it!!! The ducks weren’t sure what to do, I’ve never understood why ducks walk so much (even in the snow) when they can fly. Waddle waddle quack.

Mr. and Mrs. Mallard came back today for the first time this year. The weather got up to over 60F. Momma Duck was quacking up a storm this morning. I don’t know what he did but she was really letting him have it. Probably arguing about asking for directions to get back to our pond. Orca wasn’t sure what to think about them – hopefully they can all be friends this year. I also counted over 30 BIG fish in the pond today. This is the first day that I have seen fish this year – guess I’d better get the pump running again. It was amazing how many people were out walking, jogging, biking, etc today – I did a quick jog around the lake as part of bootcamp – it felt great to be out there.

On Saturday we went to the Polar Plunge. We watched tons of crazy people jump into the lake. People are nuts. They couldn’t have asked for a better day though. This picture is perfect…got my kids in it, got firefighters in it (they are the ones in the suits in the water), you can see the bikini girls waiting to jump, and to the right you can see how thick the ice still is – probably about 1 1/2 to 2′ thick.

Christopher didn’t wear a jacket the entire time we were outside and not once complained about the cold (he just got back from Kung Fu – that’s his uniform). Next Saturday Christopher will get tested to be a white belt. Here we are out on the lake after “the plunge”. I think he’s ready for spring 🙂

Colleen was one of a few kids selected again this year to have her art work displayed at city hall. Here we are at the reception which is fun for the kids…

How come this stuff always happens on my shift???

Bob Barker would be proud of us. Although he isn’t Orca’s biggest fan right now.

Yep, no puppies in her future. Dogs always look so sad wearing their cones – you can tell they know exactly how dumb they look. She’s getting bigger, huh? And needs a haircut 🙂

Last weekend I climbed 30 flights of stairs in my fire gear. We (Eden Prairie) finished 4th out of 9 fire departments. Minneapolis won of course, and I think 2nd place went to a department from Iowa – if you’re driving that far you’d better be good at it. We’re just a bunch of hacks – and shocked that 5 teams did worse than us 🙂 This weekend I climbed another 50 flights (over 1200 steps) up the IDS tower in Minneapolis. It is the blue building in the center of this picture. They also have a firefighter challenge but I didn’t compete in it this year. It actually wasn’t that bad to run up – it helped that I got stuck behind several families making a day of it :). Based on my time (a bit over 11 minutes) I would have finished 86th out of 204 emergency personnel. Next year I’ll definitely be back…85th place is all mine!

We went to downtown St. Paul yesterday to the Science Museum. Checked out the dinosaurs and learned how much snot, spit, and urine we produce each day. Yuck. The kids had fun playing in this mist machine (it was cool – they projected words onto the mist that you could run through).

I was in charge of Megan last week when first she bumped her head on a table (her story, seriously, is that Orca pushed her from behind), and then she went sledding a little while later and ended up dragging her forehead on the ground right over that same swollen bump. The end result is this big ol’ scabby area.

Tonight we had chocolate ice cream and both Beth and I almost wiped the scab on her forehead thinking it was ice cream (can you blame us?).

Orca = killer whale = one of the world’s most powerful predators. Six tons of awe. This may be what you’re used to…

Here’s our version…meet Orca…8 weeks old and ferocious like her name:

She still hasn’t learned to walk because Megan will never set her down. How do you explain to a 3-year old that the dog isn’t her toy to carry everywhere. It’s great having a dog again that likes all of us the same. This is really our first puppy since Sidney and Raja both came from the shelter. It is amazing how much stuff they get into and chew, and how much they nip at you…but she is a ton of fun and a HUGE hit in the family.

We are finally getting a real fire pit area in our backyard. It ain’t cheap but we have enlisted the help of a local landscaping firm. They start the week of August 25th and it should only take a few days. Then we can have some mega bonfires in our backyard…good thing I have a few contacts at the fire department. We are going to put this in an area that is currently filled with flowers. So…starting at 8:00 a.m. today I moved rocks, and dug up plants, and dug holes for new plants, and leveled another area in the garden, and built a rock wall, and dug up monster weeds, and lost 10lbs in water weight 🙂 The kids got up with me…here they are in the pajamas first thing this morning helping me get everything done!

With Beth’s degree in genetics we need to cross-pollinate this weed with carrot. No lie…the root on the biggest one that was entirely underground was taller than Megan. I’m just glad it all came up when I pulled it…no way I ever would have dug to the bottom of this one!

So…after spending 7 straight hours of digging and sweating and working hard…my fire pager goes off for a garage fire. Blah. It was almost 90 degrees here – weather that is no fun to fight a fire. I get to the station and end up being the driver (which was good because I probably didn’t have enough energy to repeatedly go into the burning house). By the time we got there the attached garage no longer existed – all we could see was a driveway and house next to the driveway…no garage. Several hours later I got back home to a much needed trip to the hot tub 🙂 We sent two fire fighters to the hospital on this one with heat related fatigue…it was a lot of work today for everyone on the scene.

While the family was in St. Louis I bought a hummingbird feeder. Amazingly (to me at least), within an hour or two of putting it up I saw a hummingbird. In several years of living here I think we have only seen two hummingbirds ever…so this was crazy. Since then we have seen a bunch of hummingbirds…here’s one in the yard today.

Phelps rocks…what a stud…lots of medals…although his life for the past 8 years has consisted of eating, swimming, sleeping, eating, swimming, sleeping…I guess we all choose our path in life. Edwards is an idiot. Did you see that weightlifting dude disolcated his elbow…ouch. Megan is afraid of monsters in her room…help! This has been a crazy week…I’ll put up some pictures from the family in St. Louis next.