Archive for the ‘Exercise’ Category

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!

Read the directions first!

Monday, May 21st, 2012

Now that I hear I have a few more lurkers I’m not so sure that this is a good next post (my manly reputation is at stake)…but you’re all welcome anyway 🙂

Do you remember in grade school when they gave you this read all the directions first” test” when there were only like 2 minutes left in class? And 99% of the class just started writing like crazy…because nobody ever reads directions first.

So…I had to do this dance with other dads and then with Colleen…and all they sent home was a hard hat, construction vest, and inflatable hammer…I thought that was the entire costume. That first dress rehearsal was a little awkward when I showed up like this…yikes!

Got to read those directions first! 🙂 I added a t-shirt, etc to my attire and was ready to go by the time my big day arrived. But…let’s not rush into more pictures of “Dave Thompson trying to steal the show at Colleen’s dance recital” (as Facebook now says – grrrrrr – they should make it easier to UN-friend people!). Here are some pictures of the girls wrapping up another great dance season with Tina.

Colleen did a duet for the first time this year. It was a great routine and they had a lot of fun coming up with the dance and then doing the dance. At one of the performances there was a photographer who did an amazing job capturing action photos in the strangest positions. This picture apparently brought Beth into a fit of laughter (the “pregnancy cackle” is back!!!) in front of the other moms & daughters when the photo was brought up on the screen (ask Colleen how embarrassing that was for her on a scale of 1 to 10)…and so they bought the photo to be used at future rehearsal dinners & graduation parties 🙂

Do you even recognize this woman? Crazy, huh?

Colleen was in 6 dances this year at this past weekend’s recital and Megan was in a couple too. Here’s Megan dancing to “working 9 to 5” – it was cute…and maybe now we can con her into sweeping the floor at home!

And finally, the pictures you’ve been waiting for. I’m still a bit disappointed that I missed the Michael Jackson theme last year and didn’t get to wear a sparkly glove and sequined pants. The father-daughter theme this year was construction workers – and it actually wasn’t even close to as bad as I’ve been worrying about for the past 4 years. We had a lot of fun. So let’s start with the after picture…

Oh yah, we’ve got our moves down! What do you have to say about that Bruno???

And here was our ending pose (everybody got to pick what they wanted to do – at first I was doing the back breaker thing with Colleen laying under me but that didn’t work out so well)…

And, finally, my moment of fame…which I’m sure will soon be going viral at the fire station and work thanks to a fire fighter in the audience of the dance…

Weirdness – video edition

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

GO PATRIOTS!!!

Just got a letter in the mail today from Paul Dean about Sean Neary’s child porn charges. Is this the guy whose house I would go to (alone) to work on my draftsmanship badge while in scouts? Yep, just the two of us, working side-by-side, in his house. I’ll have to contact Nashua police to see if they recognize me in any of those videos (I at least want my royalties!)? Between him and Brother Frank (and wasn’t there someone else?) we sure had a high ratio of complete sickos in that troop.

So, unrelated to sickos, I was cleaning up my email account today and ran across a few funny videos of people I work with. It’s people like this that are the secret to our continued success year after year!!!

1. Scroll down to see the video and then send money to this guy.

2. And here’s somebody I hired last year (here’s his 2nd video too)…going forward I’ve asked all applicants to share any videos with me during the interview process 🙂

3. And of course all of the “Old Man Parkour” videos that inspired millions of couch potatoes around the world to get up and jump, jump, jump around.

Old Man Parkour Vol. 1

Old Man Parkour Vol. 2

Old Man Parkour Vol. 3

Old Man Parkour Vol. 4

Old Man Parkour Vol. 5

Old Man Parkour Vol. 6

Old Man Parkour Vol. 7

Old Man Parkour Vol. 8

GO PATRIOTS!!!

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…

You’ll shoot your eye out

Sunday, March 27th, 2011

Fire randomness…We had a few unique calls at the fire station today. The first one came in as a 6 or 7 year old boy who got shot in they eye with a bb gun. I thought maybe the next call would be a kid with his tongue stuck to a pole. And then later in the afternoon we had a call that there was the smell of a natural gas leak…at fire station #3 (my station!). The paramedics called it in while they were stopping by the station – turned out to be something in the sewer but it was still an odd call to respond to our own station. Every so often we get a page that there is a car on fire in the parking lot of our station. I think people drive to the station and expect someone to be there (surprise – we’re not!). It always is a bit awkward once we get there because we’re used to getting on the truck and having time to get ready while we’re on the way to the incident. When we get there and there is a car there on fire we’re not sure if we get dressed in our gear, or get on the truck, or what. We had to respond to an accident at the intersection right in front of the fire station one time. We got in our gear, got on the truck, the operator put on the lights & sirens, and then he stopped the truck at the end of the driveway to our station and we all got out – we looked like the Keystone Firefighters!!! We had a house fire a few nights ago (we kept it confined to the garage – way to go EPFD!) – here I am (those are my feet) hanging hose up to dry afterwards.

I ran a 7K race last weekend (I think that’s a bit less than 5 miles). My time was surprisingly good (for me) especially considering I was starting to come down with a cold and that I started back in the pack. Over 5,000 people ran in this event – the entire way I was running in a pack of people and felt like I was passing and passing and passing people. They sent out some cool metrics after the race – it’s cool what they can calculate based on everyone’s individual start and finish times. My metrics showed that I passed 1164 people and that I was only passed by 23 people – no wonder I felt like I was passing people the entire way – I was!

Christopher and Megan took their kung fu tests this past weekend for their next belts. Megan is now a yellow belt and Christopher is a 2nd degree green belt. I can still whoop them whenever I want – and all I have is a Sears belt. They are still both enjoying that but we’re going to take a break from it now while soccer (Megan) and baseball (Christopher) ramp up in the spring.

And yes, I’m still living the dream 🙂 These aren’t so bad, right? Have any requests???

Spring break is in a few weeks. The kids are getting excited and into planning mode (meals, activities, etc). Colleen and Christopher spent a lot of time today planning his birthday party too. I’m not sure what the theme is but he put a lightning storm on his invitation, they may watch star wars, he wants to tie dye, and he was talking about building weapons as an activity. Boys!!!

Mom and Dad- you’re still in our prayers all the time. Get those kidneys jump started Dad! We are hoping for great news this week and hope you continue to feel great. I’m sure we’ll talk to you soon. Hope Linda and others were able to make it down and that you had some good times. Hello to all!