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Spring is sprung?

Sunday, March 25th, 2012

Remember with this new gallery format that you may have to click a few times on pictures to get them to a bigger size and then may have to hit backspace (or the back button in your browser) to see all of the photos again.

This weather is insane! It’s still March and everything is green and growing! People are out and mowing when typically we still have tons of snow on the ground. What a lame winter! Think I’ll get the snow tires off of my car this week – that’s sure to jinx everything. I got all of our lawn furniture out today (with Megan’s help) and pulled a bunch of weeds. It’s a sure sign of spring when Beth sprinkles stinky stuff all over the yard (darn bunnies!). In a week or so we’ll be playing in the water park for spring break. We have four families going this year which should make for a fun time – with I think over twelve kids. I also made the reservations for Grand Marais this week – that’s only 4 months away 🙂 I’m really looking forward to that. It’s been really busy lately – band concert for Colleen (french horn – can you find her in the very crowded picture?), dance recital for both Colleen & Megan (Christopher’s reward for going was getting to ride the craziest rides he could find at the Mall of America – the picture has him holding a joy stick that spun/stopped him with 360 degree range while hurling around in a circle on a track), swim lessons started, kung fu is prepping for belt testing for both Christohper & Megan, and increased fire calls for some unknown reason. Colleen is also doing an extra dance event this year for the first time – a duet with another girl in her dance team. They have been having fun coming up with fun tricks to do…here’s Colleen practicing one of them:

Colleen cartwheel trick video

I spent 5 hours in the evening last week at a big house fire. The garage was fully engulfed when we arrived and the biggest concern was making sure the neighbor’s house didn’t catch fire due to all of the heat. If you look closely in the picture with the fire fighters you might just see someone you know putting on an air pack (just don’t tell my station or I’ll have to buy pies). This morning (Sunday) we responded to a single car wreck on the highway. An elderly gentleman totaled his car (with his wife by his side) – lucky for them the wire barrier in between the highways did it’s job and completely caught his car and prevented it from barreling into the oncoming 60 mph traffic. The last we saw of him (remember, Sunday morning, about 10 a.m.) he was with the cops walking the yellow line for a sobriety test…I don’t think that was going to end well for him. Very lucky he didn’t hurt anyone.

This past Friday night Colleen had 3 friends come home with her on her bus. Then they got busy painting on t-shirts and writing bizzare stuff all over their arms and faces. And then…Beth took them and Christopher to go see The Hunger Games on opening night. Megan and I went and saw the Lorax at the same time. The theater was packed with weirdos waiting in line to see teenage kids kill each other (go figure). They all loved it and Beth & the kids all lied to me and said the violence and mature themes weren’t that bad at all. Beth said the girls held hands the entire movie (and sat in the front row) and screamed and jumped at all the right parts. What fun!

Life is good and very busy. Hope all is well with everyone.

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Snow Edition

Monday, March 5th, 2012

It’s supposed to be 50F tomorrow but for now we still have plenty of snow on the ground. The kids have had fun finally getting to sled this year. We had some very heavy, sticky snow last week so we went out right away and made snowmen. I started a new thing with the kids where I give them 10 minutes each of focused 1-on-1 time each day if they want. Megan takes me up on this almost every day and typically has us going outside to do something like swing in the dark 🙂 It started snowing really hard a few days ago and she said her 1-on-1 activity was to go build a snowman. In the past I would have said no way because it was close to bedtime and I didn’t feel like putting on my snow stuff, but now I go do these things and end up loving them. We ended up spending 1/2 hour building snowmen (“Frosty the Brown Man” is what we called him b/c the snow kept pulling up all the leaves that had blown on our bare lawn over the winter – ugh) and a snow owl (in her hand). We had a hard time mounting the snow owl in the tree on a branch like she wanted but the 2nd snow owl did just fine in a flower pot instead.

Early the next day the snow was still super sticky so Colleen had a great idea to go to the top of our hill and start making the body of the snowman. By the time she finished that we had bare path in the sledding hill and a huge ball right in the middle of the sledding path 🙂 Guess that’s how we learn, huh?

I went on my annual ski trip to Vail last week. We didn’t commit to this trip until a few weeks ago once Vail finally started getting some snow. By the time we went the mountain was 100% open. We got probably 8″ of snow our last day there and had a blast as always. We got there in crazy windy conditions and we left in almost the same conditions plus snow. It got so windy the first and last days that I wore my goggles in the hot tub! Our first day there, we were on our 2nd run of the day and I decided to zoom off into the trees while the other two stayed on the trail. I got going a bit fast through the narrow paths in the trees and it got to where I was just zooming left and right and waiting to pop back out onto the trail. I could see the trail getting closer as I turned back and forth between the trees and thought I was just about out when all of a sudden there was no more snow or ground underneath me. I completely launched into the air, got leaning back on my skiis in the air (because I didn’t know I would jumping out), must have closed my eyes, probably screamed like a little girl, and after landing found myself laying on the ground with one ski off. Fortunately I landed in a bunch of powder but it really shook me up (in a nervous way, not a hurt way) and I skied off to catch the other two as fast as I could. We didn’t go back to see where I had fallen right away so for the next day and half the other two made fun of me and would point out 1′ drop offs and ask if that was what I went off. Hardy har har. I thought I had fallen fairly far but wasn’t sure, so finally we went back at the end of the 2nd day and saw that I did in fact shoot out of the woods and dropped probably 8′. I think that’s the biggest drop I’ve ever (unintentionally) done like that. This is also the first year that I rented a helmet – I think I made the right choice 🙂 Here’s what I shot off into the air – wheeeeeee!

Posted in Children, Vacation | 1 Comment »

EPFD goes prime time

Sunday, January 29th, 2012

Did you see this video during the football games last weekend? I’m not in the video but there’s a certain fire department in this nationally televised video. Sweet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz18EC5NEwM&feature=BFp&list=FLItVbRNkeu3eJatkZaN4_IA

We spent New Year’s Eve with our friends who have a house on a big lake in Eden Prairie. The ice wasn’t that thick but we still ventured out a little ways and had a fun time. The kids spent a lot of time with sticks attacking any dead plants poking up through the ice. We shot fireworks from the ice and our whole family had a sleepover that night. Fun times for all. And then the next morning on New Year’s Day I got up way before anyone else was even stirring and ran a 10K race 🙂

Christopher’s scout pack had an “ool” party a few weeks ago. Megan and Christopher spent most of the time blowing water through long foam tubes at anyone who got in their way. Megan shot most of her water backwards behind her but Christopher targeted head shots. Fun times.

Have you ever scanned the people of Walmart picture compilations? Always good for a sad laugh or two. So after swimming I promised Christopher that we would spend his $10 Walmart gift card that he was awarded for selling so much popcorn for the pack. It was a really cold day in early January in Minnesota but there we were in Walmart with my kids wearing flip flops and crocks – so here’s my “people of Walmart” contribution. Maybe next year I’ll have them wear spandex and tube tops too.

This year has been crazy in terms of very little snow. We get an inch or two every now and then but the weather gets above 30F and it melts soon after falling. Finally this past week we’ve gotten several inches spread over several days but I see warm temps next week too. This makes for interesting sledding conditions and wardrobe. Here the girls are playing in their pajamas while sledding on a pathetic covering of snow. Wheeeee!

No snow makes the kids be more creative indoors this time of year. Between the dog and other kids, Megan was lucky to build a chain this long!

I laughed when I first saw this picture. Doesn’t it look like Christopher just left his job as a Chip’n Dale dancer wearing a checkered g-string? This was us earlier today at the pinewood derby race. Christopher took 7th place in his pack – not bad considering I had him do quite a bit of the work on his car this year. Here are the 3 amigos, followed by results of one of his heats, and then some of the kids in his den.

We also just hit a major milestone in our household. Colleen lost her very last baby tooth/molar. Does that mean we can’t put off braces much longer???

Posted in Children, Pool, Weather | 2 Comments »

Where’s the snow I ordered?

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

It seems like we’ve been blessed with white Christmas’ for a long, long time. We got a dusting of snow tonight but there isn’t much chance it will stay on the ground another few days. The kids are certainly ready for Christmas regardless. We love getting packages and tons of Christmas cards each day, and racing to see who can find Cookie (our Elf on the Shelf) first each morning – this is a fun time of the year. The kids have all been earning crazy days at school for being on good behavior. Christopher’s class won the read-a-thon so they got a pajama and movie day. Megan’s class has a pajama and stuffed animal day tomorrow. Colleen’s class wins the overall craziness award – Monday was jersey day, Tuesday was duct tape day, today was mismatched clothes day, and tomorrow is pajama day. What fun! And then we get a week off to be mellow for a bit. Colleen’s teacher obviously forgot that just a week ago she sent home a note saying she had to talk to the kids about putting “Kick me” and “Kick me in the shins” signs on student’s backs and chairs. Can you believe that one year ago we were all happy & healthy, and now a year later we’re back to being happy & healthy, with so much craziness in between. I’m sure we’re all counting additional blessings throughout the holiday season this year – I know I am. And keep sending us good news!!!

Here’s Colleen’s “duck” tape day pic:

Be safe over the holidays. Here’s a video the Eden Prairie Fire Department made – crazy how fast the dry tree goes up!

http://vimeo.com/32971079

We had an awesome progressive dinner in the neighborhood this past weekend. We hosted Spain this year and had 18 people at our house at one time chowing on paella, patatas bravas, jamon Y queso, olives, tortilla espana, and of course sangria. I didn’t get a chance to take a picture beforehand so all I have to show for Beth’s crazy hard work is empty dishes!!! We had a really fun time – great food and great company. We all started at one house for appetizers, then split into two groups (Spain or Mexico), then went to France or Brazil (we drew France out of the bag), and then all ended up back at one house for dessert, drinks and funky shots that seemed to keep coming & coming. The last thing we remember as we strolled home after midnight was a drunken serenade of Sesame Street’s “The people in my neighborhood…”. Fun times 🙂

This past Saturday both Christopher and Megan tested for their next belts in kung-fu. They both passed – barely 😉 Christopher is now a blue belt and Megan is an orange belt. Right after that we rushed to the Eden Prairie Fire Department’s annual kid’s Christmas party which is just for the firefighter families. It’s a low key event that is always fun and we get to see santa! After that I took Christopher and Megan to ring bells for the cub scouts. Luckily it wasn’t super cold this year – the kids (with Megan leading) sang Jingle Bells about 200 times in a row!!!

Just like last year, here are a few previews of pics from our Christmas card – hope you enjoy them!

And this time of year wouldn’t be complete without several dance shows – either at basketball games or the high school.

Remember how I took the scouts to the police station last month? I asked them all to write thank-you letters. I can’t stop laughing at this one (for the record, I didn’t see it happen – hee hee).

Have a very Merry Christmas everybody!

Posted in Children, Life | 2 Comments »

Pyramids

Sunday, November 27th, 2011

Boo! (right after I took this photo we had Colleen put on her Halloween costume too – tee hee hee)

Here’s the move I taught Colleen. She’s almost doing it the way I do it. With a little more practice she’ll get it to be perfect and not look so strained & uncomfortable! I think this may be the first costume that Megan actually likes a bit.

Christopher’s cub scout den got caught by the cops for causing some trouble at the mall. Here they are getting handcuffed and locked up. We let them all (including Megan) spend the night in jail to teach them a lesson!!!

I’ll let you add your own caption to this one. I did start locking the liquor cabinet after this one if that makes anyone feel better.

We got our first real snow of the season last week. Megan spent hours and hours outside in 20F weather – she is quite the trooper when she wants to be – and loving everything outside but mainly focusing on sledding, sledding, and more sledding.

Our kids are getting so smart. Megan’s latest learning from school is that she has started adding “pyramids” at the end of every sentence. Christopher’s flash of brilliance tonight was when we were working on his religious emblem award for scouts. I was trying to give him hints about who were the first people to visit Jesus. “They brought gifts and followed a star…”. Nope – no guesses. “The three…”. Nope – still no guesses. The “three wise…”. Pause, followed by this guess – “the three wise guys”? Goofball. Everybody got their report cards last week – lots of P’s, a few D’s, and I’m not sure if there were any B’s which is great for all of them. Does NH have P’s, D’s, and B’s? We made a quick trip and back to St. Louis this week – left on Tuesday and were back by Friday night. It was quick but a good time with lots of great food and seeing family. Our kids have fun playing with all of the cousins down there. We brought Orca – wow, she barely ever got a chance to rest – the kids in St. Louis love her and definitely are making up for not being allowed to have dogs of their own. Orca is always a great dog and thankfully deals very well with constantly being chased, grabbed, etc.

It’s a good day when we can get up for the early church service and do brunch afterwards. Today we tried Tilia. This place has been getting tons of rave reviews this past year and I’m glad I could finally sample it too (although I discovered that I need to go back and work my way through their outstanding tap beer selection). It was a hip place with fun food that you don’t see every day that tasted great (e.g., I had slow-poached eggs in parmesean cream with grilled bread and “three little pigs”; Beth had yogurt creme brulee; Megan had a peanut butter french toast waffle).

Tuesday of this week is the space derby for scouts and on Wednesday I make my first home visit to talk to a child about what wishes they want (for Make-A-Wish). I’m very excited to start participating in this program. I have a wish partner who is also new to this but this first time we will have an experienced wish granter going with us to mentor us. I’m really hoping this Wednesday goes well, and after this “interview” then we will focus on what wish we can deliver for this child.

I’ll close with this scanned homemade card that I think Katherine and Dan sent me just a year or two ago 😉 I found this card when I was looking through old photos that I’m trying to pull together for a calendar of my college roommates. It made my day to feel loved and handsome 🙂

Posted in Animals, Children, Life, Vacation | 2 Comments »

Chill is in the air

Friday, October 21st, 2011

The temps are starting to drop…no snow yet but the cover of the hot tub is looking pretty frosty each morning.

Sugar and spice and everything nice…nothing left to say about this picture…

I don’t know how she kept doing it but Megan was catching frogs left and right – sometimes two at a time. Speaking of Megan, earlier this week I had a bump on my nose and Megan asked what it was. I said I didn’t know, a scratch, and then I said, or maybe a pimple. Megan looked at me a bit confused and said, you mean one of these (as she was pointing towards both of her nipples)? Colleen and Christopher laughed for a few minutes over that one 🙂

Checkout Christopher’s opponent – this match up hardly seems fair, huh? It looked like they had Christopher lined up against a high school kid! Christopher never backed down – cracked me up.

Football and soccer both ended last weekend. Beth was working last weekend so my afternoon went like this. Drive past the soccer field to drop Christopher off at football, drive back to the soccer field to drop Megan off, drive back to the football field to watch Christopher play the first half, drive back to soccer to watch Megan play the 2nd half and to get her trophy, drive back to football to pick up Christopher and eat pizza at the field with his team, and then drive back past the soccer field again to go straight to the fire department open house. Mom – what were you saying last week about missing the days of driving us around way back when 🙂

Here’s Megan in her last game. She had a great assist and a couple of close ones in this game. She’s definitely determined and focused when she puts her mind to it.

I wasn’t able to work at the fire department’s open house this year because of all of the kid’s activities so I got to enjoy walking around and actually seeing what the open house had to offer from a different perspective this year. There are tons of freebies so the kids love it. We came home with t-shirts (2 each), rulers, slinkies, candy, and bellies full of cookies, popcorn and hot dogs!

The leaves were beautiful this year. As I’ve done the past several years I made a huge pile of leaves towards the bottom of our hill that the kids can run and jump in to. We’ve had several kids over to play in the massive leaf pile. We’ve also been fortunate enough to have several people over for camp fires and more to come next weekend. Love this time of year.

Remember last year when Megan lost 3 teeth in the span of 3 days??? She did the same thing again last week – 3 teeth in 3 days!!! We ended up having a dentist appointment set up for Megan to do a few things for her and one of the things they were going to do was pull one of those 3 teeth that needed to come out. That would have cost us $175 and wouldn’t have been covered by insurance. Megan drives a hard bargain and made a deal with her mom to save us some money. Beth ended up getting the pliers out and that did the trick. Can you tell from this picture what Megan got out of the deal for not having to pay the dentist to yank the tooth? She’s trouble!

Keep up the great work dad and mom!!! Thinking about you all the time!

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Welcome home Dad!!!

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

Dad’s trip up north seemed super fast – for me anyway 🙂 Glad to hear everything is going great now – way to go! I can’t remember if I shared a quote from Steve Job’s on this blog last month. I posted a quote from his Standford commencement speech at work last month and now that speech is getting tons of hits. Click here if you haven’t listened to it before – he brings home the importance of living life in the present and not having any regrets. Speaking of which, let’s start planning that trip to Grand Marais for next August – put your arm in training now for rock skipping, get your legs ready for some great hikes, and get your belly ready for great food at New Scenic Cafe, Sven and Ole’s, Angry Trout, Crooked Spoon, Gun Flint Tavern, and the World’s Best Donuts. Hopefully we can all pull that trip off and make some great memories of relaxing days and nights up in the peaceful middle of nowhere.

I had a great (but quick) trip to Chicago and Purdue last weekend. It’s crazy to believe that I already have been there and back. It always gives me a great feeling to be in Chicago and to drive through Wisconsin and into Indiana – fantastic memories. And of course it’s great catching up with E and Wen and having some great times. Here we are walking out of Harry’s Chocolate Shop. That place hasn’t changed a bit in 20 years!

There’s some new construction that will bring roundabouts to Eden Prairie. This has been an ongoing topic in the paper and people are concerned about not knowing how to use them. So…the paper this week had an article saying there is some upcoming roundabout training that will feature golf carts that you can take for a test drive around a mock course. That’s awesome – this is affirmation that even though I’m 40 I’m not officially old yet!

There was also an article today about how fire poles are coming back (along with more two-story fire stations). We don’t have any stations in the city that could use a fire pole but that would be cool. The article also mentioned that there is no longer any tolerance for some of the hazing that used to go on such as greasing the fire pole before a rookie tried to slide down it (yikes!).

Only a few more games left for both Christopher and Megan. I thought this picture on the bench was great. This is Christopher along with one of his best friends JT.

It was going to cost $175 for the dentist to remove one of Megan’s teeth. Zowy! What a racket! I told her I’d pay her $150 if she got it out herself (yah, right). Beth got the pliers out this week and the two of them worked on that tooth for several nights. And finally…success! Here is a photo just before it came out – looks fine to me 🙂

We were greeters in church this morning at both services. Why they scheduled us the day after Purdue played Minnesota I don’t know (Purdue whooped them yesterday by almost 30 points), but I got a lot of mileage out of my tie this morning 🙂

Posted in Children, Life, Vacation | No Comments »

Good week so far…

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Tonight Christopher had football practice from 5:30 – 7:00 and scouts from 7:00 – 8:30. So…Beth dropped him off at football practice and then I showed up a bit later, watched practice for a while and then pulled him early from football with just enough time to get to scouts. While I was watching football practice I read some old email and found out that scouts were encouraged to wear their favorite Minnesota sports team jerseys because there was going to be a guest speaker. So Christopher and I decided he would just wear his football jersey to scouts. The guest speaker turned out to be John Shevlin who played Minnesota Gopher football, was the team captain one year, and still has some college records. He gave a little talk to the kids and then they had a contest to see who had the best Minnesota sports clothes on. So Christopher goes up to the front of the room along with 10 other kids. The other kids had Vikings and Twins and Gophers jerseys and hats, but there was only one kid up there with an Eden Prairie football jersey, pads, and cleats 🙂 So they held a hand over each kid’s head and you’d make noise for your favorite. Christopher got down to the final two kids and then he blew away the competition. His prize…an Earl Battey bobblehead (he played for the Twins in the 60’s). Too funny.

Notice anything else in that picture? Hint – it lets me check another dream off my dream list.

I ran a 5k race Saturday morning. I normally run the Plymouth Fire Department 5k this weekend each year but the night before I decided to run a 5k at the Eden Prairie high school (because it was closer and I could bike to/from it). I ran the race, talked to a friend for 30 minutes afterwards (while eating sushi, salad and brownies as I mentioned before), and then we took off. So last night (Monday) the doorbell rings at our house and it turns out that I came in first out of the 40-49 year old males. Coming in the top 3 in a race for my gender & age is on my dream list (check that one off). I think this race is legit and counts – but maybe now I’ll leave that as a recurring dream that I try to achieve each year. I know older and younger people finished ahead of me but luckily none were between 40 – 49!!! I won $20 to a great local restaurant, a $50 massage, $20 at a sports store – sweet!!!

Remember how I said last year that I setup our new pool (10′ x 20′) and put the wrong sized boards under each support bar and that the weight of the water-filled pool overnight bent half of the bars? We took the pool down this past weekend…here’s the damage… 🙂 They still did their job (thankfully!!!).

The football player tonight at scouts talked about eating right, exercising and setting goals. He said parents are right when they say to eat veggies & fruits and play outside. He also said he never had a computer or Nintendo when growing up and that you should play outside. So we’re driving home and I was asking Christopher what he learned. I asked him what the football player said about Nintendo and video games. Christopher’s response to me was, “if you want to play them you have to play them outside”. I said, “What?!?!?!?”. He repeated his answer…and I believe (at least I want to believe) that Christopher knew the right answer and was just being funny. But I never know with him 🙂

After the scout meeting I had Christopher go up to the football player and ask him for a tip. So he asked to see Christopher’s stance. They both got in stances and faced each other. He then told Christopher to move his feet closer together, put less weight on his hand, get his butt up, flatten his back, etc…it was a fun moment to see them working together on that.

And finally, we went to another Friday Night Destruction at the race track recently. We went with some friends and had a great time. This time in addition to figure 8’s, flagpole and school buses they had lawn tractor races. It was insane how fast those things went on the straight-aways. Zooooooommmmmm!

Keep up the positive spirits and strength Dad!!! You’re doing awesome and are in our thoughts all the time (you and Mom both). You’ll be home before you know it so I hope you got through all the movies and books that you wanted to! 🙂

Posted in Children, Life, Pool | 2 Comments »

Fall randomness

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

Here’s a bunch of randomness.

I shook Matt Logelin’s hand at a 5k race last weekend that supports the foundation that he created. He writes a blog I’ve been following off and on for a few years.

Here’s a cute little link based off of the Oprah flash mob event from a few years ago. This month is reading month and the kids are looking for sponsors/donations…hint, hint, hint.

Tell your friends to help Pearson set a new reading record – this year’s book is Llama Llama Red Pajama.

Can you find me in this video ? I may be in the background in a shot or two but the image I’m most proud of is in seconds 50 & 51 (yes, that’s my hand filling out the entry form). These are the trails I’ve run the past few weeks – very hilly and with lots of ruts which for some reason is lots of fun. I ran another 5k this morning that ended with sushi, salad, and brownies – bizarre to be eating that type of food at 9:30 a.m. immediately after a race. But it was yummy!

Christopher and I took in a Twins game a few weeks ago. Does that hat make his head look big? That’s actually the cup that his ice cream sunday was served in 🙂 And now that’s his favorite bowl for cereal in the morning – which is great considering what I paid for it at the ballgame!

At the state fair there was this cool cowboy dude who would have the kids hold out each arm, leg, head, booty and then send these loops spiraling at them and wrap them up. Megan was our only child brave enough to go up to him. He ended up making her look like the Statue of Liberty complete with a crown (just with rope) – it was cool! Here he is in action.

Here’s another freaky dude we ran into at the state fair…the kids loved making huge bubbles.

Christopher and I survived another overnight camping trip with the scout pack. It was a really fun time – great hiking and food and geocaching and campfire – lots of fun for both of us.

I don’t know how she does it but Megan has been catching a ton of frogs (not toads, but frogs). She was even catching 2 or 3 at a time in the net. She’s the frog-whisperer.

Some things never change…

The No Fun Patrol canceled Halloween in the schools so they get around it by celebrating a “Dress Up Like Your Favorite Book Character” day…here’s Darth Vader, Hermione, and ??? (I forget – I can’t keep up with all the characters in all the books that Colleen reads).

Colleen had a fun birthday party. The girls played games outside, had a camp fire, made lollipops, did each other’s nails, stayed up until 3:00 a.m. watching movies and slept in until 9:00 a.m. A fun time was had by all 🙂

And here’s how we spend out Saturday mornings and afternoons lately…

Posted in Birthday, Children, Exercise | 2 Comments »

State Fair 2011

Friday, September 9th, 2011

This is my first post from our new computer…wow, speedy. The old computer has been slowly dying…making it painful to update the blog and do anything else on it. This new one has been up for an hour or so now and it is amazing how much faster it is – wheeeeee! So here’s a quick post. The state fair has come and gone. We went twice and got our fill of cheese curds, deep fried pickles, onion rings, turkey sandwiches, milk, shakes, apple cider pops, french fries, ice cream, etc etc etc. This was my year to try new ice cream…I had honey & sunflower ice cream, honey nut fudge ice cream, chocolate port ice cream, and raspberry wine ice cream. I don’t think I’ve ever had ice cream at the state fair…but it tasted so good this year. We even got a yummy, gooey brownie and I made sure to crumble that in ice cream too. We also tried a few new activities this year…go carts and the haunted house! Although Christopher likely won’t admit it, only once did he drop completely to the ground in absolute terror as a goblin of some sort tried to grab him 🙂 Kristin, Tom and Big A came up again for the state fair which was a fun time as always. It would be awesome if next year everyone can come out and we do a trip up to Grand Marais and also hit the state fair that same week…mark your calendars now!!!

While we were walking around at the state fair this robot thing came zooming up on a scooter. It got off the scooter and started walking around the crowd and interacting with people. This thing was crazy amazing and I have no idea how it worked. It looked to be 8′ tall and based on where its crotch was, how broad its shoulders were, how long its arms were, and how you could see through some parts I don’t see how a person would have been able to (comfortably) stay in it (plus it had great balance). It would talk to people and interact, and its fingers and facial features would move around too. It took a lot of coaxing but I got Colleen to go up to it. It kept asking her if I was her daddy (she smiled back but wouldn’t respond, so he kept asking her), and after he asked her a few times he warned her not to go away with me if she didn’t know who I was. I want one of these for Christmas!

Wally sent some pictures & video of Ellicott City, Md where they live – amazing how much damage the rain is causing. Hope New Hampshire & Mass are being spared this go around. Here are some of the links Wally sent showing their water:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtsT-BIotz4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKCgqvvv_cU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucrheBoUOzc

As of this Tuesday the kids are all back in school. They all had great first weeks of school – their new teachers all seem to be really good and they all are excited to be back.

Our weekends in September are absolutely insane. Soccer, football, dance, pictures, 5k’s, Beth working, Colleen’s birthday party, September 9-11 fire department stuff, Friday Night Destruction at the race track, scout camping trip, plus a few other things…we’re hoping we survive to October. Although the first few weekends of October aren’t much better as I travel to Purdue to see the notre dame game and then I have some wish granter training. Despite our busy schedules we’re keeping everyone on the east coast in our thoughts and prayers. Stay strong Dad!!! That’s awesome about the Cougar – sweet!!!!

Posted in Children, Vacation | 2 Comments »

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