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Randomness + 2013 birthdays

Monday, February 10th, 2014

Wow – got a bit behind on birthdays from last year 🙂 But first, here are some thoughts to go with the very random pictures this month. I’m sure you can easily guess which is which for all of them!

– Christopher and JT entered the science fair this year. They tested to see which material made the best paper airplanes. Science made throwing paper airplanes not so much fun 🙁 But I think they’re over that now!
– I ran up the IDS tower (50 floors; 1280 steps) in exactly 10 minutes (10:00) – this is what my goals has been for several years (so now I never have to run up it again!). Ha – I’ll be back next year!!!
– Megan got the great idea to throw a birthday party for Susana before she left (ignoring the fact that her birthday is in April). We’ll take any excuse we can come up with to have more cake in the house! 🙂 It was fun for everyone.
– Beth led the webelos through a science experiment in our kitchen. They extracted DNA from strawberries. It turned out awesome and got the boys an extra STEM award for all of their hard work.
– Cutest little snow covered yeti was found in our backyard 🙂
– Our last pinewood derby – Christopher got 2nd place overall. Actually…his sister Megan got 2nd place overall but she wasn’t officially allowed to win. Exact weight, straight axles, and graphite are the secrets to the race. The kids did work every step of the way – these were no “Dad’s cars”.
– Before Susana left we had to help her try junk cereals. Another perk of having an intern 🙂
– Christopher has been sniffling and sneezing and wheezing for months and months and months – since last summer. It got to where meal time was filled with odd noises at every bite and all of us telling him to go blow his nose (again). We took him in for allergy testing and unfortunately for Sammy (his guinea pig) it turned out that Christopher was allergic to him. So it was a sad day for Christopher as they brought him in to the humane society to be adopted.
– Frozen waterfall caves at Minnehaha
– So in order to brighten back up Christopher’s day…we bought him a tiny, little donut 🙂
– Poop. Poop. Poop.
– I keep telling Megan it is a waste of money to put a dollar into “the claw” game but she always wants to and is convinced that she’ll win. I thought I’d teach her a lesson and let her spend one of her dollars at the Mall of America. Of course she won on her first try (while Christopher went on rides in the background of the picture).
– I had to rescue a dumb bird who snuck between our screen and window and got stuck. His little birdy buddy kept flying up to the screen directly outside of him – I think he was telling him what a dumb little bird he was.
– We have seen crazy cold negative temperatures this year but I still love the menacing “minus zero” reading we get every so often.
– Name any foods that Spam doesn’t go with. Doesn’t exist. We brought Mom’s pudding/cake dessert to the next level!

CHRISTOPHER(April) – amazing how consistent some of these answers are without the kids looking back to last year’s answers:
My favorite food is…pasta (and ice cream)
When I grow up I want to be a…scientist
My favorite restaurant is…Noodles
My favorite possession is…iPod Touch
My favorite color is…teal
My favorite song is…I Have a Feeling
My favorite book is…Ranger’s Apprentice series
My favorite movie is…no clear favorite…a lot are tied…Gilligan’s Island is a favorite series
My favorite holiday is…Christmas or birthday (because I get lots of presents)
My favorite season is…winter (sledding!)
My favorite thing to do is…read
If I could do anything tomorrow I would…go to Florida (body boarding)
It would be a really good year this year if…we went to Florida

MEGAN(July)
My favorite food is…Mommy’s mac & cheese
When I grow up I want to be a…fire fighter (because I like helping people)
My favorite restaurant is…Noodles
My favorite possession is…Penguiy (stuffed animal)
My favorite color is…blue
My favorite song is…Live While We’re Young (One Direction – all of their songs)
My favorite book is…Hunger Games, and then Shark Boy & Lava Girl, and then Harry Potter
My favorite movie is…Harry Potter
My favorite holiday is…Christmas and Halloween (because I get presents and candy)
My favorite season is…winter and summer (because my birthday is in the summer and in winter you can go sledding and Christmas is in winter)
My favorite thing to do is…sled
If I could do anything tomorrow I would…go skiing – and go to Spain
It would be a really good year this year if…turned 9

COLLEEN(September)
My favorite food is…apple sauce
When I grow up I want to be a…dance
My favorite restaurant is…Punch Pizza
My favorite possession is…iPhone
My favorite color is…yellow
My favorite song or group is…Imagine Dragons
My favorite book or author is…Fault in our Stars, John Green
My favorite movie is…Hunger Games (I don’t really care)
My favorite holiday is…Christmas (presents)
My favorite season is…fall (because that’s the season of her birthday)
My favorite thing to do is…dance
If I could do anything tomorrow I would…hang out with friends
It would be a really good year this year if…got platinum awards at dance competitions

Posted in Birthday, Children | No Comments »

Pumpkin Gobble

Wednesday, November 27th, 2013

The fall just went zooming by…from finishing up football, to carving pumpkins, to playing in the leaves, to having campfires, to cleaning out the gutters, raking up all the leaves, and getting the sleds and snow shovels down from storage. I’m not sure that I have a favorite season but I do love the smell in the air, getting out the warm flannel sheets, and that crisp slap to the face when you step outside in the morning this time of year 🙂

Christopher’s football team went undefeated this year and won the championship! He saved his best game of the year for the championship game. In that game he had a few good tackles and won the ultimate prize…brownies from the coaches (only a few players get brownies after each game from the coaches). That made his whole season! There are a ton of videos but I tried to single out the ones you should watch if you are interested – he’s #90:

10/1/2013 – EP Black (Chris’s team) vs EP Orange – watch video 20 (notice who ends up on the bottom of the pile!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRuZWX71Zr4&list=PLfPM1tu6rWeo8AHpAevLexSVguQydy9eQ

10/5/2013 – EP Black (Chris’ team) vs Chaska Black (Chris is wearing a maroon long-sleeve shirt under his uniform so look for red/maroon arms) – watch video 18 (he’s in on the tackle), video 24 (a hilarious tackle – I watch this one over and over), and video 46 (a punt from our team into the head of one of our own plays – fun stuff)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFwmSFiuPo0&list=PLfPM1tu6rWeruPc7G768nRqvZpdFyyQzf

10/26/2013 – Championship Game – (Chris is wearing dark blue long sleeves in this game) – here are some fun ones to watch of Christopher – 22 (Christopher solo tackle) & 23 (helped with tackle), 28, 34, 68, 70
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNcUzSVaUAs&list=PLfPM1tu6rWeqmo7j2bV0JJ3kuLOQ0rxIJ

I didn’t get pictures from Susana of when mom and dad were out here so I’ll have to post those next time. I’m SOOOO glad they made it out here. It was an intense week of the year and unfortunately my stress was showing at times. Too many things going on at once and I was on edge here and there but I love having them come out and getting to hang out and talk and play with the grandkids. It’s tough being so far away so hopefully we can do this more often. It was made all the more special by a surprise visit from Danny DeVito – shocking.

We’ve been to two half-time dance performances by Colleen in the past week. Both times were at women’s Gopher basketball games. These games typically have lots of empty seats and by the second game we knew the routine of what they would do during timeouts throughout the game. At the first game during timeouts they threw some t-shirts and mini-basketballs out to the crowd. Maybe 10-20 of each so not that many people get them. We didn’t get anything at the first game and Megan said she was going to get a ball the next time we went. Not only did she say she was going to get a mini-basketball, but she also said that once she got it she would use it as a pillow that night. So at the second game she picked our seats (4th row on one end of the floor with no other kids around us). When they came out with the mini-basketballs she ran to the aisle and jumped and waved her arms. Sure enough…one of the cheerleaders (who had been staring at me all night already…uh…maybe I’ll save writing about that for another time) spotted Megan and threw a ball in her direction. It was a high throw…and Megan was standing on the stairs…and the lights were so bright shining into Megan’s eyes…and if she didn’t catch it the ball would be up for grabs…so Megan stretched way up…and the ball was coming…and…and…and…of course she caught it and gave us a look like “I told you I’d get a ball” and she went right back to eating her ice cream with the ball tucked under her arm 🙂 We found Goldy (Goldy Gopher of course) after the game to get his signature. She did try using it as a pillow but when I woke her up this morning the ball was on the ground. She said it was too big and rolled a lot – hee hee.

Ok…gotta go do some sit-ups and jumping jacks and whatever else I can think of to make lots of room for turkey, stuffing, pie, etc, etc, etc.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!!

Posted in Children, Games | 2 Comments »

Snow on the way?

Saturday, October 19th, 2013

Might get flurries this weekend. Haven’t officially had our first frost yet but it’s dipping into the mid-thirties at night now. Had the scouts camp out in our backyard last weekend – they can attest to the 30’s at night and the grass sure was crunchy and white in the morning regardless of what the weather people are saying about official frosts. I made campfire stew and we also used pie irons to make sandwiches and pizzas and all sorts of different kinds of pies over the campfire!

Sorry for the lengthy time between posts. Maybe I’ll make up for it by posting quickly twice. Or maybe not. Life has been insane but finally football is almost done, and soccer is done, and cross country is done, and CISM weekend training is done, and Beth’s pre-defense-(or whatever it’s called)-paper is done, and Susana has been in NYC for a week. It’s all good – but busy.

One of my make-a-wish children died a few weeks ago – very sad, but I got to see him the weekend before which I’m very grateful & blessed for it all working out. That same weekend he spent several hours with Vikings players at their practice facility, met AP and other Vikings, and went to the Vikings game the next day. The Viking World Order (VWO) group has been fantastic about taking care of him and his family – Make-A-Wish really didn’t get involved very much with a wish unfortunately but it was still great to get to know this amazing 13-year-old. At the visitation it was packed with people in football jerseys – unlike any visitation you’ve ever been to – I guarantee it! I took the kids and Susana to a spaghetti fundraiser the weekend after the services and it was the same thing – completely filled with people in purple and Vikings attire. It’s great to see their family get so much support in this time of need.

In completely random order that likely won’t match up to photos…

First-day-of-school photos (yes, from a month ago).
Colleen has braces.
Christopher is playing on a girls football team – or is it that a girl is playing on his team – I can’t remember 😉 BTW – she’s great!
Harry Potter sometimes visits us. Wish those darn owls wouldn’t follow him around.
Susana made us a fantastic Spanish meal – super yummy!!!
Mmmmm – fish chowder and local beer at the Angry Trout in Grand Marais. Love that place!
Colleen also made us a dinner – I recommend the orthoptera over the diptera.
Muddy, muddy football. The boys spent more time picking mud out of their shoes than playing!
Scouts waking up around the fire after spending the night camping in our yard on a 34F morning 🙂
Daddy’s and Megan’s apple pies. Yep – we are master chefs!!
Colleen and Mary Tyler Moore (we took Colleen to a nice dinner downtown followed by seeing Wicked for her birthday).
Lots of pictures from the corn maze this year. Fun times!

See the picture of me (or is it grandpa?) in the flannel and all hunched over helping serve food outside with the scouts? Did you notice the orbs? What?!??! You missed the orbs? I watched a video by Dr. Wayne Dyer several months ago. I wouldn’t suggest that anyone watch any of his videos but he did have a few fun quotes or ideas mixed in with all of the other insane thoughts that he has. So…he says that orbs in photos are spirits and otherworldly visitors and that it is an amazing coincidence when they show up in pictures. So I have four spirits visiting me that morning by the campfire. Sweet! Cool! And here I thought it was all due to me not cleaning my lens ever. Fantastic that Katherine, Andres, and Grandma & Grandpa T all joined us that morning!

Hope all is well with everyone. Can’t wait to see mom and dad in a month!!

Posted in Children, Weather | 3 Comments »

End of summer 2013

Monday, September 2nd, 2013

Wow – where did the summer go??? School starts tomorrow!!! It’s been a really good summer – and we’re looking forward to a good year ahead of us.

Our biggest news is that Susana joined our family a week and a half ago. She is an intern with the Spanish school and is from Spain (a small village of 100 people but she has lived in a larger city called Soria most recently). She will be living with us until mid-February, and we are loving having her as part of our family. I’m sure she’s trying to look up what “redneck” means in Spanish…so far we’ve taken her to the State Fair, and to Friday Night Destruction at the car track (the highlight was a figure 8 school bus race), we sewed with glue (hee hee), introduced her to Kristin (one of my crazy college roommates), and we fed her food fit only for animals in Spain (corn – ha!). Fun stuff! We’ve also gone on a bike ride, and showed her Costco, cooked some Spanish treats together, and taken her to the Mall of America, and the Cherry on the Spoon, and to Beth’s lab, and had a small ice cream social at our house with our buddy (helper) families…all sorts of fun stuff!! And she hasn’t asked us to take her back to the airport yet 🙂 It’s been a lot of fun talking to her every day and learning about each other’s country – it’s going to be a great semester! And the kids are exposed to more Spanish which is also great.

A HUGE benefit of having Susana joining us is that we cleaned our house to a level we hadn’t done in 10 years. Bye-bye box of old trophies (Mom and Dad – Are you proud of me? Do I need a box of old trophies to get your love and support?). Bye-bye boxes of old cardboard for making cardboard tunnels in the basement (we made our last one to send the boxes out in style). Bye-bye load after load of toys and clothes and books and picture frames, etc to Good Will. Bye-bye bicycles and scooters and big wheel we left at the end of our driveway with a “Free” sign (draws ’em in like moths to a light!).

I don’t think I could ever get sick of trampoline pictures. They crack me up every time. Goofy poses and goofy expressions and big smiles and bouncy fun every time! Colleen’s aerial now keeps her nose 1-2′ off the ground, but they were a lot more fun to watch when her nose would almost scrape the mat. She’s worked hard on those this summer!

Got some hail! Haven’t had our house checked yet. Lots of people lost windows to their cars and had screen, siding and roof damage. This is the biggest hail I’ve ever seen. The kids had a lot of fun jumping on the trampoline when it was covered in hail. They would bounce and then try to catch hail in their hands when it bounced back up. It was insane when it was hailing to watch the hail hit the trampoline and the hottub cover and the ricochet every which way.

I led my last rocket launch for the scout troop (well…I still have all the supplies and haven’t officially handed it off to any else yet…who knows what will happen). We’ve got over 20 rockets in our house now! Wow – fun – zoom. Is this for the kids or me??? Both? Ok, fine – it’s all for me – and if the kids have fun then that’s just a bonus 🙂

Have you ever looked at those “wait for it” pictures online? You think you know what you’re looking at and then you realize there is more to the picture. Look at the picture that is mostly green with a tree and our yard – and the colorful birdhouse hanging from a branch. The birdhouse had several newly hatched, very chirpy baby birds in it – make a huge racket. Keep looking at the picture…what else do you see?

And we did our trip to Grand Marais again. It’s always great to go up there. It was just us this year. Great weather, great food, beautiful views, good hikes, and great time with all of us together. We went fishing and had worm races too this time 🙂 And lots of the World’s Best Donuts!! I got up to see two sunrises (Colleen joined me for one of them). The first several days were great – lots of hiking, and I jogged twice on the jagged rocks and rough terrain of Artist’s Point (Colleen joined me on one of those runs too). So we are always careful because it is so easy to fall or twist something – and I take pride in my coordination and athletic ability. So everything was going great…up until the day before we left…we just arrived at Judge C. R. Magney state park (where you hike to see the Devil’s Kettle). It’s a great park with a fun hike. I had just gotten out of the car in the FLAT parking lot…was putting sunflower seeds in my pocket and was looking up at Beth who was asking about sunscreen…and then I stepped in a rut and twisted my ankle. Pop. Man does that hurt and scare you. We watched my foot shake a bit for 5-10 minutes, saw it getting red, and maybe a bit bigger, but I decided we were there and it didn’t hurt(much) to walk on it…so we hiked…probably 2.5 – 3 miles total…with 200 stairs near the top leading down to the river (and of course back up when you’re done). Probably not the smartest decision I made that trip. We got home that night and my ankle was as big as a baseball…and then over the next day or two it turned some fun shades of purple. Three weeks later and it’s still swelling every day. Went to the doctor last week finally and they said it is just soft tissue damage…so it should all be good (the two 5k races I ran last weekend, and doing the state fair two days in a row probably didn’t help – that was my attempt to stay still). Enjoy the pictures 🙂

Apologies to everyone who has ever stayed in our basement. Don’t be jealous of Susana – instead, you should thank her for giving us that push to make that bedroom actually look like a bedroom!! Hope you like it 🙂 Maybe you can come stay in it sometime 😉

Megan eats way too much junk food and four of her teeth just fell out one morning. Roots and all. Darn orthodontist – you stop by just to say ‘hi’ and they find a gazillion things wrong with everyone’s mouth. Somebody gets braces in a week or two, too. Megan’s reward for getting teeth yanked was a fishing trip that afternoon – she caught 11 fish! Colleen caught 4 fish. Susana and Christopher didn’t catch any!!! Susana said the tooth fairy brings presents in Spain, so Megan was delighted to find a puzzle, a small air-rocket, and two other presents under her pillow the next morning – and she got to keep her teeth – lucky girl! She didn’t complain at all about getting them yanked and they said she was a perfect patient – awesome job Megan!

Ok – enough for now – best wishes for an incredible school year to all of the kiddies!!!

Posted in Children, OCD, Vacation | 2 Comments »

Summer is in full swing

Sunday, July 28th, 2013

I’ve got to get back to posting more frequently – where does the time go??? So much is going on!!! We found out that we get an intern from the Spanish school – yahoo! She’ll be here mid-August through January we think (maybe December – plenty of time to figure that out). She’s from Spain and we received a short letter from her this past week – hopefully we get to talk to her soon. We’re excited and a bit nervous as we try to get the house together but it will be a great experience.

I’m so proud of Colleen. She got 10+ inches of hair cut off and donated it to Locks of Love. I think her new hair cut looks fantastic and it’s an amazing feeling to have your kids making choices on their own to give back and help others. Way to go girl!!!

I found several races and walks to support causes that I care about. I took the kids to the Crohn’s Walk this year. We made our donation, stuffed our faces on granola bars and apples, and then walked a few miles. Do you like their picture inside of the giant inflatable colon? Erik should have bought one of those instead of a bouncy house to liven up any party! Colleen also ran her first 5k with me. We did the run-walk-hope 5k for the Logelin Foundation to support widows and widowers with young families. This was founded by the guy whose blog I’ve followed for years from Minnesota whose wife died right after giving birth. I’m also doing the Stomp Out Suicide – Run for Awareness 5k in a few weeks. The Make-A-Wish 5k got rained out a few weeks ago – the roads were closed due to flash flooding. I already did the Eden Prairie Fire 5k this year and I’ll do a 5K for the Plymouth Fire Department in a few months. And Kristin’s coming up again to run the Milk Run with me at the MN State Fair – guess this one doesn’t quite support a good cause like the others, huh? 😉

We had a big ol’ snapping turtle wandering around our yard. The marsh is a few blocks away and Round Lake is 1/2 mile away…not sure where it was headed but we’ll be on the lookout for some baby snappers in 9 to 18 weeks. Wikipedia said they will “travel extensively” and here’s your fun fact of the day – impress your friends tomorrow with this one…the female snapping turtle can hold sperm for several seasons, using it as necessary. “Earmuffs” kids…they didn’t give details about Mrs. Turtle but it made me think of that old joke where the man and woman are riding in the elevator, she’s going to donate blood on floor 4 and says she gets paid $20, and he’s says he’s going to floor 3 to donate sperm for $100. They run into each other the next day and he asks where she’s going this time and she says “Mmmmmmph!” and holds up 3 fingers. Way to go Mrs. Turtle – however you do it.

We traveled to St. Louis for the 4th of July. The kids went there the week before and then we drove down to pick them up and stayed a few extra days. It was good to see everyone. We went downtown for their big fair and saw some of an air show with lots of acrobatic planes. In the picture of the arch you can barely see a plane way beneath it. The view along the river by the arch is great. And the weather wasn’t scorching for a change down there which made for a perfect day. We saw a double rainbow while driving down there. I think that’s the 2nd double rainbow I’ve seen this past year (hard to see in the pic – and hard to take that picture while driving ). And both rainbows were full – could see the whole thing. I keep looking for more signs – Katherine and I never had much to say about rainbows or double rainbows but they are still awesome to see. We did the City Museum again while we were there – this museum/playground is an amazing place full of fun and places to explore mixed with the right amount of safe risks for your children – if you have kids and are going to St. Louis this HAS to be on your list. Here’s a fun article about the City Museum and it’s approach to lawsuits.

Sports and exercise. Colleen and Megan finished up soccer. Megan had an undefeated (one tie) season due 100% to the incredible coaching. Christopher went to football camp and is getting ready for the fall season to start. Megan just took a week of lacrosse which she loved (she was one of three girls in a group of over 20 boys). This coming week Christopher and Megan take tennis lessons. Christopher also just got back from 4 days at scout camp. He had a blast – highlights included shooting a BB gun, archery, and a rock climbing wall. The water was cold so they didn’t spend much time swimming but it sounds like they had plenty of other things to do! Colleen has been busy with dance and gymnastics – she’s working on perfecting her aerial. The kids are also loving the trampoline that we bought. They spend their days running from the trampoline to the pool and back and forth and back and forth. Megan also successfully completed Safety Camp. This program combining police, fire, etc. started in Eden Prairie 20+ years ago and has spread nation-wide. All children entering 3rd grade are eligible to participate and it fills up every year. Great program – and the kids love it!

This has also been a month filled with compulsive counting showing our craziness. For instance, how can I do kid’s laundry and end up with 17 unmatched socks? Interesting, the load after that (after I had the kids hold a contest to see who could find the most socks hidden in the basement and office and under their beds) resulted in almost as many unmatched socks without making many pairs. As we prepare for our new house guest we cleaned up toys in the basement. Megan is finally ready to depart with some of the toys for younger kids. The first go around resulted in 7 big trash bags full of toys that went to Goodwill. The second iteration is looking like several more bags will go. As we cleaned up the basement we found eight fully functional remote control cars all with working remotes – we even figured out that if we put them all next to each other and turn them on that one remote can control almost all of them – that made for some insane driving to have all of the kids controlling all of the cars at once – watch out!!! I’m working on 9 rockets at once too – prepping for the scout rocket launch – we’ve got fins and nose cones everywhere – not sure if the kids or I have more fun 🙂 I was also cleaning up old power cords, telephone cords, speaker wires, etc. Over the years it’s amazing how many times (dozens of times) I must have thrown out toys and electronics but didn’t throw away the power cords. So now that I’ve recently thrown away the power cords I’m sure some random whatever will show up and I won’t be able to power it up – oh well, I’ll wait for that day to come.

We rescued a bunny from our egress window well. Grrr. Stupid bunnies. That’s all I’ve got to say about that. Just glad it didn’t tear up my pond net.

I took the kids to Extreme Race Day at Canterbury Downs (about 20 minutes away). In addition to horses (not so extreme) we saw jockeys riding camels and ostriches. We didn’t stick around for the zebras. The camels weren’t that thrilling but the ostriches were a riot. Most jockeys fell to the ground but the winning jockey and ostrich made it look easy and he even was on the jumbotron holding on with one hand while pointing to the camera & crowd as he crossed the finish line. Fun stuff!

We successfully survived another birthday party. Megan had 9 girls over for a pool and trampoline SpongeBob party. We are still trying to get the water in the pool back to normal a week later but other than that it was a great party. Beth once again did a great job planning everything and making sure Megan and everyone else had a blast! Megan got a beanbag for her birthday from us and she has been sleeping in it every night since she got it – love it! Megan’s new self-assigned chore is to pick wild berries every night – we’ve had these prickly vines growing for years that only produce a few berries but this year the bushes have gone crazy and are producing berry after berry after berry – we just made some berry crisp last week. Yummy!!! Nice work Megan!!

And the highlight of Megan’s week…we finally went fishing. She caught a sunny (sun fish) on her first cast! We fed the fish for a while after that but managed to reel in a few more that night. She got a fishing rod for her birthday so I’m sure we’ll be out some more. She really liked it. She’s been asking a lot of questions about being a vegetarian lately and isn’t quite sure where she stands on fish. She was surprised to learn last week that Colleen wasn’t born a vegetarian 🙂 I thought that was cute – she has said a few times this week that she is now a vegetarian but then we had bacon, and then we had hotdogs, and I’m sure if we have salami she’ll give in again. That’s how Colleen started too – pepperoni and salami were the last to go for her. We have all started eating a lot healthier the past several weeks. Not that we were that bad to begin with but we’ve stepped it up and it’s been great for all of us.

At the start of summer I had the kids make a list of things they wanted to do this summer. I cut a few lines for you to read. Need a translator? I think all interpretations of the first few lines somehow work (I can read it at least 4 ways with different meanings – I’m sure there are more), although this could be fun that first week back to school when Megan has to write about what she did 🙂

And finally, I was so glad to hear that mom was able to meet Bil Bihlman (my roommate from freshman year) as part of his long bicycle journey across the United States (too bad dad couldn’t make it work out that day too). He is a very neat person and is on a several month journey from California to Virginia, which he then decided to extend by biking up to Maine (and then will bike back to Indiana). I think this is how Forest Gump started – he may never stop. It’s all for a good cause – Riding for Hope. Incredible story that the ex-governor and mayor stopped by the same restaurant that my mom and Bil were eating at – I think that type of things happens to Bil all the time and it doesn’t even phase him.

Ok…more than enough for now…take care everybody. Happy Birthday Dan!

Posted in Children, Exercise, OCD | 1 Comment »

Pics, pics, and more pics

Sunday, June 2nd, 2013

School dances,
U Can Danz dances,
mommy’s lab,
splits, splits, and more splits,
NH,
baptism,
Boston,
falling eggs,
new kung foo belts,
very long grass when we got back,
Schooner Days with fancy new Schooner porta potty! Just when I thought this fair couldn’t get any better they go and put a tarp over a bunch of biffies!

I think that pretty much sums up this post.

We had a GREAT trip. I can never believe how fast those trips go. We flew back and had an egg drop for the scout troop that same night. The baptism was great. Very proud and honored to be a part of it. So cool to finally meet precious little Aniston. Always great to see and talk to everyone – can never get enough and it goes WAY too fast. Start planning those trips to MN everybody so we can see more of you!!!

You get to play “spot the differences” in the photo of me and Aniston. I started out by removing some gunk and drool (from one or both of us), and then just kept clicking – I think there are at least 7 differences by the time I stopped spastically clicking. Hours of entertainment.

Four more days of school 🙂

Posted in Children, Vacation | 8 Comments »

Ups and Downs

Sunday, May 5th, 2013

Interesting week.

(Good) Coached my first girls soccer practice of the season (Megan’s team).

(Fun) 4 out of 10 girls have never played soccer before.

(Good) It hit 70s for the first time this year for that practice last Saturday.

(Bad) Despite it being in the 70s, I started getting chills & feverish while coaching and ended up coming down with the flu by that night.

(Good) Which resulted in losing a few pounds.

(Bad) We were forecasted to get 1′ of snow Thursday.

(Good) Woke up Thursday morning and didn’t have ANY snow.

(Fun) 30 minutes south got the full 1′ of wet, heavy snow.

(Good) Went to my first CISM team meeting.

(Good) There is a recent article about CISM at this link so I don’t have to explain it 🙂

(Great) People on CISM were very friendly and welcoming and serve a great purpose.

(Bad) Likely murder/suicide in Eden Prairie this week of couple in their early 20’s. His suicide was witnessed by police in city hall’s parking lot when he was coming in for questioning. Haven’t found her yet.

(Mixed) CERT (Citizen Emergency Response Team) got activated so I helped make phone calls & with the search for the young woman. I even got to drive and be in charge of a a van filled with 12 CERT members 🙂 Can you find me in these pictures? If you can your eyes are AMAZING. In one I’m in the center walking on the median. In the other I’m between the yellow lines in the middle of the road right in front of the tall black post going up the photo.

(Good) I made Kentucky Derby pies.

(Bad) The bourbon didn’t bake out of the pies the way I thought it would.

(Good) The bourbon didn’t bake out of the pies the way I thought it would!

(Bad) Because I was helping with the search we didn’t get to watch the Kentucky Derby as a family yesterday (Saturday) as we always do.

(Good) We watched it as a family today (Sunday). Had fun screaming at our horses!

(Good) I had great intentions as I do each year to teach the kids about losing their money through betting on horses.

(Bad) I lost all of my money to the kids again. I’m the only one who keeps learning that gambling is gambling and not everybody wins.

(Bad) All of the weight I lost from the flu came right back with the Derby Pies

(Good) Beautiful day and I took the kids for a bike ride to the park

(Great) We get to see everybody soon!

Posted in Children, Weather | 2 Comments »

Spring has sprung???

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

Need to get this post out with recent pics ahead of whatever I end up posting next week. No plans for next week’s entry yet but I’m sure I’ll have something to say. Absolutely thinking of everyone this week and sending warm thoughts out east.

It’s been a busy month. But first…exciting times in the Thompson household. We finally used up all of the staples that I think we bought in college. Amazingly, some of our spices have outlasted those staples 🙂 Who’s hungry now??? We also won another Who’s-Got-Their-Christmas-Lights-Turned-On-The-Longest-In-Our-Neighborhood contest – it’s hardly even a competition any more but the kids still have fun not letting me turn them off until we are clearly the champs!!!

This month was full of band performances, singing concerts, dances, snow ball fights, a pancake breakfast, Make-A-Wish wishes (finished one and have two others going), ski trip (yep, all about me again), CERT membership (me – yahoo – I passed my final exam 🙂 ), and funding for Beth (yahoo! way to go baby!).

Colleen has sure kept us busy this month! She did her duet performance with her friend Alexi again. They brought home a High Gold trophy (woohoo!), and also her entire group won Platinum (woot woot!). For those of you ignorant to dance scoring, it basically follows the periodic table of elements so next year they are hoping to get High Rhenium or maybe even Tungsten if they work extra hard. Her trophy has a bowl on top this year so we’ve been sipping champagne out of it all month while we bask in the glory. This past weekend was another dance for Colleen at the Mall of America. We made a day of it while at the mall and ate, rode rides, shopped, and built a bear for Megan (Fluffy is the green dude in Viking’s attire wearing rollerskates). The night before that Colleen had a band concert. Can you find her in the picture? Here’s your hint – if you can find her friend Julianna then Colleen is easy to find. Julianna is standing up in yellow and waving in one of the pics…and Colleen’s head is right in her armpit – how convenient. You’re on your own if you’re trying to find her in the zoomed out picture showing everybody – good luck (but it’s definitely possible). This is actually a pretty good concert – it is amazing how much better the kids get with each grade.

I think I included maybe 1 or 2 pictures of Christopher and then the rest are all of Megan. Mr. Christopher has been busy with finishing up basketball & kung fu, and working on scout stuff. Tonight we had a den meeting at the nature center. We got to walk in the woods (this morning it was -9F with the wind chill) but we only saw animal tracks since it was so cold. The kids still had fun spying nests in trees and trying to figure out what animals created what tracks. We got to play on the icy lake (just last week it had open water when it warmed up) – and Megan came with us tonight so she was making snow angels on the lake too 🙂 The nature center is awesome – filled with animal skins, skulls, shells, bones, and all sorts of live critters including snakes, fish, turtles, bunny, lizards, etc. The boys loved it!

Megan has been in to everything this month! She can spend hours stacking bottles and cups and glue sticks. She loves balancing them all over the place and setting them up in patterns. We should really look into one of those cup stacking games for her, huh? She also had a crazy hair day (and apparently crazy bug eye day too). Her new food love is artichokes. She ate two whole artichokes practically by herself repeatedly this past month. I can’t remember ever having eaten or seen artichokes my whole life up until now. But what foods aren’t good when dipped in small bites in gobs of drawn butter 🙂 And check out Megan with her new elephant humidifier. She bought it with her own money. Just like Christopher buying a fan for his room. I’m glad when they buy practical things for themselves without complaining but it still cracks me up when they buy things like that. Megan loves the humidifier – and I must say it is by far the coolest humidifier we’ve ever had – so cool to have the vapor come out of a trunk! I don’t think I had ever participated in the building of a bear at Build-A-Bear. Fun stuff and the kids love it.

Check out the picture of the indentation in the snow. Can you figure out what that is? When I was in Vail skiing one night we were in the hottub and throwing snow balls at trees. The trees had some sort of force field going on that night and were able to deflect most every snow ball. So then we see a squirrel run up the corner of the house outside of my bedroom (he obviously had been watching us miss trees all night so knew he was safe). My buddy scooped up a handful of snow and threw it at the squirrel. Amazingly (since he hadn’t hit a tree all night) he nailed the squirrel. I can still picture it falling in slow motion with all of its limbs flailing the whole way down. It landed right in the snow and left that hole with the outline of all of its limbs – too funny!

Ok…enough for now…got a heavy weekend ahead of us. Sending prayers and love and good thoughts to everyone. Take care – talk to you soon.

Posted in Children | 1 Comment »

Old man winter

Sunday, February 17th, 2013

I think I shoveled 5 out of 7 days last week and we still didn’t come close to getting as much snow as New England got in a day (hope things are getting back to normal for all of you by now). The weather has been anything but predictable here…snow, rain, ice, way below zero, back up to thirty degrees…I’ve stopped looking at the weather forecasts so each morning is a fun surprise 🙂

On one of the really cold days (I think it was -12F at the time) we boiled water and sent the kids out on the back patio to throw the hot water into the air. Pics are cool, huh? Poof! No more water – it barely even hits the ground.

We survived another pinewood derby. Christopher had the 5th fastest car. Megan’s was fast too – but not quite as fast. Christopher and his friends had lots of fun watching the cars zoom past (I loved watching his expressions from photo to photo). In one of the pics Christopher’s car is in 1st (in the far lane with three fins on it) and Megan’s is in 2nd (in the closest lane – red, white & blue). We painted sinkers on hers to look like people’s faces so it looked like hers had 10 people riding in her car. Christopher also got to lead the American flag in and out of the event that day.

Colleen and Megan built a snowman and sprayed blue food coloring all over it. The next day our neighbors had a red snowman in their front yard. Down the street there is a family of snowmen each holding tennis rackets, umbrellas, pinwheels, etc – they are a fun group to pass as we drive to and fro. We still have our Christmas lights up – only a few people on the street are in the annual lights contest – we’ll go to July if we have to – nobody is beating us, no way, not a chance.

Colleen danced again at the Timberwolves halftime. A friend of mine who works for the T-wolves got us great tickets (4 rows up) so we had an awesome view of the game and players. I don’t know how I did it but once again I positioned myself perfectly to not be able to get any good photos. Colleen’s instructor lined herself up perfectly between me and Colleen. The same thing happened last game. It’s a challenge because you’re fighting to get a good, low seat as half-time starts while so many people are exiting and we never know exactly where Colleen will be. She did great and had a fun time.

Megan had a music performance at school. We did the same thing at this event – got lined up so her music teacher completely blocked her for most of the songs (you can just see her in the pic right in front of her teacher). I don’t think we could have picked a worse seat – she was pretty much the only child in the entire gym that we couldn’t see! And the place was absolutely packed so we couldn’t move at all. The songs were great – my favorite was listening to her shout “Mama!” and wag her finger back and forth and do all the other hand gestures:

Mama! when you bake,
Mama! I don’t want cake;
Mama! for my sake
Go to the oven and make some ever lovin’,
Shoo fly pie and apple pan dowdy
Makes your eyes light up,
Your tummy say howdy
Shoo fly pie and apple pan dowdy
I never get enough of that wonderful stuff!

She also had a speaking part, which…earns us all ice cream 🙂 Yummy!

I’m two weeks into my five weeks of training to be a CERT member. Last week we learned how to use a fire extinguisher to put out fires. The rule of thumb is that if we can’t put it out in 5 seconds then we should retreat. That’s just a bit different than my fire instruction over the past 10 years but I’m ok with it and glad to be involved 🙂 My annual ski trip to Vail is coming up. Ran up the IDS tower again (50 floors – 1280 steps). I shaved 2 seconds off my time from last year and now am only 13 seconds from getting below 10 minutes total. Racquetball league has been good. Work and UMN are good for us. Kids are good. Purdue stinks. Man are they awful. Had a really fun night out with some friends last night – we stuck with the “sipping” tequila (versus the “shooting” tequila) but it was still a bit rough playing three early games of league racquetball this morning. Hope all is well with everybody. Hope RSS works for you dad – let me know…

Posted in Children, Weather | 1 Comment »

Joy

Sunday, January 20th, 2013

Our church attendance has been a bit spotty this year (uh, just a bit of an understatement) but we decided last night we were going this morning no matter what (e.g., no matter how close to 0F the temp was). The sermon was great (the weather was 3F – not bad – it’s going to get A LOT colder the next few days) – all about joy and how we should laugh in church and life, and we need to find this happiness all around us all the time – this joy comes from deep within, is part of our being, and helps us feel connected and care for others in the world. Yes, it’s been a tough year but there are still happy moments and there will be many to come. Here is the joyful Affirmation of Faith from today’s service:

We believe in a God of joy, who shows up
In roasted marshmallows and chocolate cake and fresh fish;
In the feeling of sand between our toes, a kitten’s fur, the touch of another person;
In the sun that shines in our faces (even, inconveniently in this sanctuary);
In falling snow;
In the life-giving green of new life and in new birth.
We believe in the joy that God creates in our lives.
We believe in the joy that resides in each one of us.

Our minister told several stories about weddings that she has presided over and that after one wedding she got a comment from someone that they had “never laughed at a wedding”. I know I wrote about it before but I still have good memories of the whoopie cushion that Katherine gave to Christopher at her reception – I don’t know how many whoopie cushions make it to wedding receptions but I’m guessing it can’t be that many…it was a great moment of joy and having fun in the moment.

Here are some other moments of joy I captured from this week.

Megan and I were playing a game against each other on the computer and she named our teams. She kept her hand over her team’s name while I went first, and I could tell she was so proud of her team name…which…after the big reveal of removing her hand, was…team “aSOM”. Totally aSOM!!! 🙂

We got a late Christmas gift this week. 3 slingshots, 2 packs of paint balls, and magnetic toys that have been recalled. We had a good laugh over this one. Payback is a you-know-what 🙂

I’ve been pushing the kids to do more laundry. I caught them doing my and Beth’s laundry – as they were folding they were slingshotting our underwear and having a fun time (which Megan tried to blame on daddy – uh uh, I’m not taking the hit for this one) 🙂

I was reading a story about sperm donation (related to a sperm donor being involved in a paternity suit when the female couple split up who had the baby – bizarre). Anyway, Schipper used to donate plasma in college – he was limited to doing it to something like once a month and the first experience made him either pass out or puke or both…and as I was reading the story we temporarily got confused as to what he used to donate in college – oops. Our confusion got even funnier thinking about which substance would be limited to once a month and would make someone pass out 🙂

We had a scout pool party last weekend. Beth very clearly told Christopher and me to bring a towel and underwear for him. Those were our instructions…”bring a towel and underwear”. We’re no dummies…we don’t need to be told twice…we can remember two things…duh. So I drive him there, and we remembered the towel and underwear just like we were told. Like I said, we’re no dummies and we had it under control. So Beth shows up (she was taking over and I had to leave) and she asked where his clothes were. Clothes? We brought the towel, we brought the underwear…and of course he only wore his swimsuit & swim shirt there b/c it’s only early January in Minnesota. How Christopher and I get blamed for not bringing clothes still doesn’t make sense to either of us – we have been trained to turn off our brains and follow directions – and we’re pretty good at it! 🙂

Ok…switching topics just for a minute. Aaron Swartz was in the news recently. As described by Wikipedia he was an “American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist.” Smart dude, who created some companies and contributions to the computer world, but…he committed suicide (hanging) on January 11th, 2013. In November 2007 he blogged about his illnesses. He was a good writer and I was drawn to how he described some things in that post here – http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/verysick.

Alright, switching back to joyful topics again. Check out the pictures. In hopefully not very random order…Christopher’s new pet Sammy; our beautiful children on Christmas morning posing with some of their new gifts which didn’t come as a packaged set; Christopher doing a combo skiing stop and Michael Jackson pose; the entire height of our ski MOUNTAIN (hill); Megan’s chair in the snow; Colleen’s Sammy Sosa outfit for a school report; Colleen and her friend at their science fair exhibit (on how tie dye stains different types of material); and finally, we had two visitors this morning who came to play with Orca – this picture is right off our patio – yikes coyotes are big up close!!!