MN Thompson's

Christopher was my big helper all day yesterday.  One of our tasks was to pick up doggie doo doo and he got this great idea to yell “Poop ahoy!” every time he found some poop for me to pick up.  He must have yelled that 50 times – and it never lost its charm.  I’m going to start using that when I’m in public restrooms from now 🙂

Colleen had her school play last week.  She did two dances and also had a speaking part (in English) to announce the next dance.  For one of the dances her class all made their own not-so-cute masks in art class to wear.

We are also getting ready for our first ever garage sale. The kids have sworn to buy back most of their stuff at the garage sale, so I can already tell this is going to be a fun day coming up. Here’s Megan stuck in her exercauser and loving it! I was inspired by one of my co-workers who took Thursday and Friday off to run a garage sale at her house – she told me Friday she made a grand total of $6 dollars the day before – whoohoo!

Christopher has surgery scheduled for this coming Friday (Beth’s birthday). He has an inguinal hernia. This is the same thing that Beth was born with, and that Megan already had surgery for. They are going to fix a slight undescended issue that he was born with while they are in there, something we previously had decided was way too minor for surgery. Did I cross any lines and give too much detail? Or should I post some pictures too?

Poop ahoy!!!

We visited Fort Snelling on Memorial Day. I had only been there once before, probably about 10 years ago. We did a volunteer day there with KPMG and afterwards listened to Kirby Puckett give us a motivational speech. I remember at the time that I had never even heard of him and didn’t know who he was. This was a bit before his groping incident with the floozy in Eden Prairie.

This time, they were dressed in character, and fired a cannon and their riffles. The cannon was incredibly loud – and the blast blew your hair back.

We noticed that their flag is a little dated. Someone ought to fix that.

I know it is a bit early, but for my birthday this year all I want is sleep. Megan is the only one sleeping through the night now, go figure. Christopher’s entire head is filled with snot so he has sounded like a pug the past week – gasping as he eats, and gasping as he sleeps. Hopefully this is a cold and not allerergies – I don’t think I can put up with it all summer!

Christopher spent a while yesterday completing coloring my Heron with chalk. He was pretty proud of that.

For his punishment I made him cut the grass (check out the scabs on his arm – those have been there for over a month. The boy has switched from picking his nose to picking his scabs!!!).

Colleen is loving gymnastics this year. I picked her up last night and they let me go out to the mats and see all of the new skills that she has learned. They said she can go to level II now (if we let her take a class over the summer, otherwise she stays at level I in the fall – what a scam 🙂 ). Here she is showing off her bridge.

And here’s Christopher’s…

And here’s Megan’s…

The Celtics just managed to pull off a win – go KG! They need to win one more now against Detroilet.

Last week was the final preschool class for Christopher and the final 2-year-old class for Megan. Friday morning they each had a post-class gathering with their classmates. Here is Christopher’s class at the playground. Check out the ratio of boys to girls – lucky guys! Megan is in there too, and for the only time in her life is the only one looking at the camera!!

Later that night we went out for ice cream. This was our first visit of the year to Adele’s for frozen custard. This has always been my favorite ice cream place – good treats, great atmosphere, nice relaxing drive to get there. They are in Excelsior which is right on Lake Minnetonka. It is hip and fun and where all the beautiful people gather all summer to play with their expensive toys on the lake.

We made our first trip to the arboretum this past Monday night. Every year they have a theme (e.g., tree houses, bugs) and this year it looks to be “trees”. They were just starting to get their displays setup throughout the area. We walked a while and then drove on the 3-mile loop to get to the large maze. The kids love the maze – or at least they think they do until they get lost somewhere in the middle. Last year Beth and I went to the lookout tower at the end and tried to watch the kids wander through the maze. At one point they were both crying and lost – it turns out that Colleen thought she had two bees in her hair and was scared to move anywhere. So she just stood there and cried with Christopher not sure what to do. It’s shocking they wanted to come back… On the way to the maze we saw at least 7 wild turkeys all grouped together (warning, Cliff Clavin moment: I now know this is called a “rafter” of turkeys – you’re welcome, that will save you on jeopardy some day). They always look so huge in the wild. It was hard to get the kids to stay still long enough to take a picture – but I managed a few.

I know, I’m old and turning into a bird nerd. Check out the Cedar Waxings in our stream – the tips of their wings and tail look like they’ve been dipped in brightly colored wax. I count at least 8…

And the best part of spring…our first strawberry-rhubarb pie of the season made with rhubarb from our yard. It was a huge self-realization a few years back when I realized I am a pie person and definitely not a cake person. All my life I’ve been eating cake at birthday parties, weddings, etc and never really enjoyed it. Cake won’t make me happy, it never does, so don’t even offer it to me, ever, eat it yourself. Pie on the other hand…yummy…any kind will do…

Megan graduated at the top of her class. This is right before she gave her commencement speech.

It was a beautiful day today – with some strong winds as you’ll see in a few pictures. We lived, breathed, and played soccer all day today – Colleen’s pictures at 11:30, Christopher’s pictures at 2:30, Colleen’s game at 3:00, and Christopher’s game at 5:00. Colleen had an awesome day. Her team won 3 – 1 and she scored the final two goals (yeah – ice cream for the Thompson family!). This year there are 7 players on the field for each team including the addition of a goalie. Here is Colleen coming off of the field right after she scored her second goal and about to give Beth high five.

Here’s Christopher warming up before the game 🙂

And in the game…

And of course we can’t leave Megan out. Yes, it was just a bit windy at times.

Hey dad, if you thought my train video was weird then you probably shouldn’t read this next part I found on the Internet (I was researching the apparent violent biting behavior of our ducks 🙂 )

“When a sufficient amount of head bobbing has taken place, and the female is ready, she will stretch out her neck and allow the drake to mount. To keep his balance, the drake bites the back of the hen’s neck.”

You can all stop worrying about momma mallard – she likes it rough 😉

Here is a link to a still-picture video from Megan’s 2-year old class this past year http://teachers.edenpr.org/~nbajda.

Click on Classes –> Friday 9:30 –> Video

Username: nbajda
Password: smile

You may have to enter the username and password twice.

Can you tell what’s missing from this picture?

Colleen has been working on a tooth for weeks. Every few days we hear “it’s really loose now!” (we typically hear that at about 9:30 p.m. for some reason). So…it finally came out this week – hooray! Colleen did all of this hard work to get her tooth out, but then…I woke up yesterday at 6:30 a.m. with Colleen saying to me, “Daddy, the tooth fairy didn’t come last night”. Can you believe it!?!?! The tooth fairy skipped us – no way!!! I went straight to the Internet, my one trusted source of truth for EVERYTHING. Apparently this happens all the time – who knew? The tooth fairy can be picky about what type of bag you use, and if there is a zipper on a bag, and something about if there are cows in your backyard that can distract the tooth fairy too??? We read the most important thing is that writing a note to the tooth fairy really can help out. So we’re going to write a note and Beth is going to make a tooth fairy pillow. See if that helps the silly tooth fairy get her things in order!!!

I thought we’d make it through all 3 kids with none of them using a pacifier. I guess I was wrong – Megan is reverting back to being a baby now.

We had some strange suburban graffiti sprayed on our lawn, rocks, and driveway earlier this week. Of course no one talked to us about this or what’s going on. Why would we care – we only live here?

On day two it all became a little more clear – but still, of course, no one talked to us – other than to put a note on our door saying we wouldn’t have water from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. As soon as they leave I’m going to have the kids fill their hole back up.

Real quick updates…Christopher almost scored a goal in soccer tonight. Colleen got 8 quarters from the tooth fairy. Megan has a blue mustache. And I’m so happy to see comments from everyone on the web site – THANK YOU!!!

We live in Minnesota – you’ve got to learn how to shoot at a young age.

Speaking of being Minnesotan, Megan was sitting in her car seat yesterday and started saying to herself, “Duck…duck…grey duck!”. Noooooo, that’s so wrong!!! It’s “Duck-Duck-Goose”! Next thing you know she’ll be saying “spendy” and “can you borrow me a dollar” and she’ll be cutting her hamburger in half before she eats it. Where does it end?!?!?

Here are the monkeys playing outside in the stream.

Colleen had her last Brownie meeting of the year tonight.

Christopher woke up early with me today, so we got a special treat – 5 ducks outside all at once (only 4 are pictured). We caught the female wood duck flying up to the bird feeder. She barely fit on the edge, but she kept at it. Two male mallards ganged up on momma mallard. Christopher said “look dad, they’re fighting”. Maybe he was right, but I looked up the gestation period of mallards just the same (23-29 days in case you’re wondering).

Next week is Megan’s “graduation” from ECFE 2-year old class, so today they celebrated all of the summer birthdays. For some reason they made elf hats as part of this celebration 🙂 Megan has loved going to this class each week. She gets to sing and eat snacks – the highlight of her week!

I don’t remember ever asking to have warm clothes dumped on me. This must be a Schmidt thing. Beth loves clothes from the dryer dumped on her, and so does Christopher. I wish they liked folding the clothes as much as they like sitting under them 🙂 Here’s Christopher getting toasty warm.