MN Thompson's

I make a crappy detective. I came home tonight and found our trash can half way up our driveway, standing up. I then noticed marks where it had been dragged from the middle of our yard to this spot on the driveway – but there weren’t other marks near it. It was windy today…but not THAT windy. And it would be amazing for the wind to first blow a mongo trash can way into my yard and then to blow it back upright in my driveway 🙂 . Maybe a neighbor saw it laying in the yard and picked it up for us – but why??? So I went to get the mail and only then noticed tire tracks through part of the front yard…yes, straight into the rock that had already been hit twice this year…yes, leaving tiny plastic car parts scattered in its path…and they must of first completely blasted straight into the trash can because it was a good 10 – 15′ into the yard without leaving any tracks. That must have been a sight to see 🙂

Eagle Heights had their annual family fun night. Aunt Katherine was here a year ago for family fun night 🙂 The kids had a blast – Colleen got 2nd place in hula hooping for her grade. She chose a bad hula hoop so was at a disadvantage – but she did great anyway. They made the kids raise their hands over their heads and clap and hop on one foot and spin in circles – all while hula hooping – out of my league for sure!

Christopher loosened up this year and let them spike and color his hair. Monkeys.

Look how much fun the kids can have when left unattended with tape and a marker – I should package these together, come up with a cool name, and make millions.

Here’s the mutt getting a snack outside…ought to send her off to the circus…

All 7 feet 6 inches of Yao Ming came to town this weekend just to watch Colleen dance at the Timberwolves game. He came out early from half time to watch her dance. He’s the tallest dude in the NBA – his knees are taller than most of the girls on the dance team. Here Colleen and Yao are…

You Can Danz did the half-time show. It was the best half-time show I’ve seen all year! Before the game we got Crunch’s autograph (the mascot), and a poster of the Timberwolves dancers that several of them autographed (woo woo), and petted real sharks, and got balloon animals…attendance is way down so they really go out of their way to make it fun for the kids.

Megan had her (oral) surgery today. The actual procedure took 2 hours, but we were there from 9:00 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. – everything went fine. Megan did great. Final tally was 6 caps plus another 7 cavities filled. We are still in shock that this happened, especially since we brush her teeth every day and the other two kids had no troubles at all in this area. You learn many times as a parent not to judge other parents because soon enough you will be in a seemingly absurd situation that others may not understand. We’re glad this is behind us now :). Here’s the before picture of her pearly whites.

And here’s an after picture of the mad grillz now in Megan’s mouth:

I’m already back from my annual trip to Vail. I had another great year out there. Thank you to Beth’s p’s for coming up and helping while I was gone!!! We really needed their help – thank you!!! Day 1, I wore sunglasses all day. Day 2, it was foggy, snowy, and even rainy throughout the day. Day 3, we woke up to 8 inches of new powder and had a blast all morning. It was a beautiful day of spring skiing. That’s what it is all about. Here I am at the bottom of Sweet N Sour, I believe. Look at that beautiful trail of perfect S’s behind me…keep looking…closer…

That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Purdue showed off their new uniforms and routed Michigan State. They’ll get to do this again at Michigan State in a week or two.

We survived our annual weekend of church camp. No tv in our room, no nintendo. Really roughing it. The kids love going to this camp. We do a lot of crafts (this year we made clay masks) and play a lot of games including broomball on a lake outside. The theme this year was “the many faces of God”…in each other, all the time, all around us. On the drive home, as we drove through a small town, Megan suddenly yelled out “I see God”. I was impressed that she was already applying the lessons we learned…but we soon realized she was telling us that she saw some leftover Christmas decorations of baby Jesus in a manger. Oh well…close enough.

I didn’t collect that many things as a kid – stickers, maybe pennants. Anything else? I finally put those stickers to good use. Christopher had to bring in 100 things to celebrate the 100th day of school. He used 100 of my stickers (20-plus-year-old-stickers). Unfortunately the MOTBY, Reagan-Bush ’84, and Cincinnati radio station stickers were too big. Here’s a before and after.

This weekend I head to Vail. I’ve done this same trip the past 3 years and am thankful Beth gave me permission to go again 🙂 Beth’s parents are coming up to help with the kids. Thank you!!! I was telling Beth tonight Christopher dressed himself yesterday and his pants were on backwards. I thought it was funny and cute until she told me the last time he wore those pants was to church when Beth and Colleen were out of town and he had to play bells in front of the whole congregation. Apparently I also let him dress himself that Sunday because Beth said when we got home from church she noticed his pants were on backwards then too (yes, in front of the whole congregation, and to Sunday school, etc) – cracks me up 🙂

Go Boilers!

Having just spent two weeks at home with Megan (and Colleen and Christopher), I have now changed more clothes on baby dolls than I have ever changed on all of our kids combined! We had a blast with all of her dolls – with feeding, nap time, changing clothes – you name it. It is amazing how fast these two weeks went – I don’t think I got to cross anything off of my to-do list. God bless anyone who can stay home full-time with kids!

Shhhhh – here the babies are sleeping (just don’t show the fire inspector!).

And, of course, here they are all going on a fire truck ride!

The kids had some friends over from school. Amazingly they played nicely together at times – here they are playing doggies – taking their doggie naps and going for a walk.

Before I forget, congratulations to Track, Willow, Piper, Bristol, Trig, and Levi on the arrival of Tripp Easton. Are you as shocked as I am that Levi’s mommy was arrested on felony drug charges – that’s sad to hear from an otherwise stable family.

Happy New Year! There was a picture in the paper of a Christmas card that said on the outside

“I made you a Christmas present!”,

and on the inside

“But I had to burn it in a trash can to stay warm. Have a Great Depression and a Happy New Year!”.

Pearson continues to send out very positive messages from all levels of management. Beth’s company (R&D Systems) is also sending out positive messages. Although this year will be tough I think we are both very fortunate to have found companies that have sound values and care about their people. I still chuckle (sadly) at a quote in the paper from Paul Douglas (a local gazillionaire weatherman) who said his 401K is now a 201K. That hits way too close to home, huh? I just hope the other prediction in the paper doesn’t come true…that we’ll all be turning to Spam as the cheap meat…no…not that!

We had a great Christmas and are looking forward to starting a Happy New Year next week. The kids were very fortunate to get most everything they wanted this year. I’m thankful that our present-to-plastic ratio went way down (i.e., not a lot of big hunks of plastic from China that will end up broken and spread all over the basement within a month). If you love winter then the past few weeks would have been great for you – lots of snow and crisp cold air. The kids and Orca had a blast playing outside while they are on a two week break from school.

We made some cookies (for Santa of course). Guess who the artist is? Guess who thought Santa needed some red-hot-encrusted cookies?

Here the kids are late on Christmas Eve sprinkling reindeer dust on the snow. Pajamas and 0 degree weather – I think we easily topped Anne’s Christmas card letter telling about panicking in 40 degree weather wearing t-shirts 🙂

Last year the kids weren’t so good at telling time so when we told them they had to sleep in until 6 or 7 a.m. we could keep sending them back to bed without them really knowing what time it was. This year was a different story. They were checking out their stockings at 5:30 a.m. and by 6:01 a.m. we had the whole house downstairs ready to start they day off. We spent Christmas day as usual – pajamas most of the day and opening presents one by one, letting the kids play in between gifts, lots of snacking, and making it last until the afternoon. Megan was the first one dressed and if not for a fire call (small chimney fire) I probably never would have changed clothes all day. Colleen and Christopher made it the entire day in their pajamas – that’s the way Christmas should be 🙂

We are now an official Nintendo DS family. I’m glad the batteries run out every 15 hours; otherwise, the kids would never take a break from playing it!!! Similar to the foul baseball I caught at a Twins game a few years ago (that TC the mascot signed for us) – the Nintendo has yet to be set down – it gets passed from Colleen to Christopher to Colleen to Christopher (to Daddy) and over and over. Although I was never the biggest game player it seems like this is exactly what I played 20 years ago – true? Christopher got lots of science experiment stuff – he is really into all sorts of experiments. Here he is make the volcano erupt that we had to build from a mold the night before.

Megan got a light-up nose from the woman up the street who will be helping us with daycare going forward. Megan decided it would go perfectly with her Christmas outfit. She wore it non-stop from our house to church but realized as we were walking up the steps to church that maybe she would be the only one with a light-up nose at church this year. There’s always next year…

Why is mommy always surprised at what goes on when daddy is in charge? We have a mat out. I’m trained in first aid. Megan clearly has a big smile on her face. I’m not pushing the kids down the stairs. What could possibly go wrong? Here’s Megan jumping from 5 steps, Colleen from 6 steps, and Christopher from the top of the stairs.

Beth won a $75 gift certificate earlier this year to go bowling…so we went yesterday. It is amazing how expensive things like bowling are – having 2-hours for free was great. I bowled lefty the entire day (and proudly used the bumpers). Colleen ended up getting the overall high score (122). Here she is airborne!

I think they said the high temperature today was -1F. Right now it is -11F (without the windchill). Yesterday it was 35F all morning so instead of getting snow it rained for about 4 or 5 hours…and then it started getting colder…so the roads were freezing everywhere. I happened to look out our window at one point and saw some people trying to dig their car out of the edge of our front yard. It was a teenage girl and she slid off the road and hit a big boulder in our yard. The rock won that battle and rendered her car undriveable. Unfortunately for her she was in a really bad spot on the street – down the hill on a curve so people were sliding straight at her (despite neighbors at the top of the hill waving at people to slow them down). When I first came out of the house I said “What did you do to my favorite rock!?!?!?”. She started apologizing so I told her I was kidding, and I said something like, “I don’t care about that rock but I never liked the mailbox, why couldn’t you have hit that?”. Well…I guess she took that to heart and she must have made some phone calls because it couldn’t have been 10 minutes before I got a knock at the door. This time another teenage girl lost control around the corner and plowed straight through our mailbox (you can see it in our yard) and actually moved the big boulder about 3 feet. As you can see from the tire tracks she somehow missed a big street lamp and she also missed the original car (which is the grey car parked by our driveway). Although she hit the boulder straight on she could still keep driving (her car isn’t even in the picture). By this time a cop showed up and officially declared our street very slippery 🙂 You can see he is walking through the snowy yards back to his car – walking on the street was a bit challenging without ice skates.

Despite the road conditions (and worsening weather – high winds and 3″ of snow yet to come) we still had Colleen’s dance show and the church Christmas pageant that night. Here is Colleen in an action shot – she’s front and center.

And afterwards with a friend.