MN Thompson's

Clay is gay????  Shocker.  Never saw that coming.  Anything to take the attention away from our gloomy economy or that PTA lady running for VP.  Purdue’s going to trounce Notre Lame this weekend, at Notre Lame.  Sweet.  Played some disc golf after work today with coworkers – again, another beautiful day.  We played at Bryant Lake which can be a bit unforgiving – luck was smiling on me today though.  Here are some pics and a short movie clip to show off both the scenery and my incredibly disciplined form.  Still shots of sports always make you look dumb.

In this one, a coworker is on the “alternate” tee.  We debated whether this was called the woman’s tee or short tee – both of which are clearly very offensive to short women, but then we saw the official “alternate” signage.  The “hole” is past her down the hill as it curves slightly to the right.

Again, note the beautiful form I show in this one.  Every finger, exactly where I want them.  This hole is completely blind – you have no idea who is way down the hill unknowingly in your path.  Not sure what happened to my disc in this picture – maybe it was moving too fast to be caught on film.

This quick clip shows the 17th hole.  You basically throw off of a cliff and have to pray that you’ll find your disc somewhere below.  In this video if you keep watching towards the end you’ll see his (Matt’s) disc way in the distance cross over the grassy area as it comes down.  The “hole” for this one is in the brown area past (and to the left) of the parking lot.

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Finally, here’s a video of Megan (and my voice – could you have guessed that?) that has the kid’s near peeing their pants.  We’ve got it on fast-forward as she does animal noises (can you guess all of the animals?) and then sings “row row”.  The sound is a bit low so you’ll have to turn up your volume a lot.  It’s definitely funnier the louder it is.  Enjoy.

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Grandma T was here and left already. We had a great week – but it went way too fast. She makes me a better person every time she visits – she is a great reminder to enjoy life, to not take things too seriously, to not get worked up over the small stuff, and to not beat my kids. Life gets too stressful and she helps keep me grounded – I just need to stay this way long after she leaves now…which is hard. We had a very busy week…

The Children’s Museum is always fun for the kids.

We had a bad storm one night and it must have been raining toads and frogs…because we found all of these in the window well by Grandma’s bed. I caught several frogs too but they jump way to fast, high, long, far, you name it…no way they were staying in the bag! Grandma woke up to frogs jumping against the screen every morning after this 🙂

Minneapolis Institute of Arts was great. The kids liked it so much better than the Walker Art Center. You’d think the kids would like all of the modern junk at the Walker but they were moderately entertained by the old-time mechanical bank collection, Egyptian artifacts, masks, swords, and armor…as entertained as kids can be in a place like this. It didn’t last for long but it was enjoyable.

The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum is always a fun place and well worth the annual membership – this year’s special exhibit is Treeology (not quite as cool for the kids as treehouse and giant bug themes from past years, but it’ll do).

Getting rocked ever so gently by my loving children…

Big Stone Mini Golf and Sculpture Garden is unlike any other mini golf place I’ve ever seen. It was cool, but not necessarily functional. This was the first time any of the kids have played mini golf – they definitely want to go back…but maybe a place with windmills would be a nice change. Although I couldn’t stop staring at a few of the statues.

Now where could I put this one around my yard?

And of course we can’t forget that this was Megan’s birthday week. We had cupcakes on her actual birthday and then celebrated with friends and neighbors while Grandma was here. It was a beautiful day and we had a lot of fun hanging out with everyone. Beth always plans these events perfectly. Megan had a blast too!

Here’s Sponge-Bob Round Tummy and her birthday glasses and bubble stick…when do these photos get shown next…her graduation 🙂

The kids put on a fashion show while wearing all of their new school clothes – straight out of a Sears catalog, huh? In record time Christopher has already misbehaved and the shoes are on the ‘fridge until school starts. His first pair of Skechers…one of the cool kids.

Chillin’ in the hottub…that no longer leaks…yahoo…

The 2008 Relay for Life is over. I made it. 11 hours walking. 1 hour of sleep. There is a bucket of beads that you pass every lap around the quarter mile track. I grabbed one every time around. Count ’em…

I ended up with 59 beads (plus a few walks back and forth to the truck to pack things up)…or 15 miles. Not bad for a midnight stroll. I think I pushed passengers (who donated $) on the gurney around about 15 or 20 of those laps.

Otherwise, I probably only did 2 or 3 laps the entire night without talking to someone on the way around. Amazing. Several friends and coworkers were there – we had a lot of memories and inspirations to walk for this year. The firefighter who lost his wife to cancer a few months ago was there all night with his two kids. His youngest, Sam, is probably in 3rd or 4th grade. At 2:00 a.m. Sam came running up to us with a bag filled with junk (straws, corks, cloth material, velvet material, stickers, license plate holder, binder clips, newspaper, 2XL t-shirts, etc.). He said we had 45 minutes to dress him up for a ‘runway walk’. Ok. We did the best we could – he looked ridiculous and at the end started asking if he looked too goofy. We told him ‘nnnaaaahhhhh’, wadded up some newspaper to give him some massive biceps, and sent him on his way with his purple velvet cape flowing, cork stuck with stickers to his forehead, straws coming out of his fingertips, and both of his legs stuck through arms of an upside-down t-shirt so he looked like he was wearing monster diapers. At 2:45 a.m. the “walk-off” started. There were about 15 contestants and they all had to one-by-one say their name and their team and then strut their stuff across the stage. There were some pretty creative entries – most notably was a dude decked out in a bikini-looking number, complete with lipstick, etc – the competition was tough. When it was Sam’s turn he took the mike and said he was “muscle man” with the fire department. He walked across the stage and then stopped repeatedly to pose. After everyone had a turn the judges gathered together and had 3 prizes. They gave the first one, “most artistic” to a young girl – clearly a sympathy vote :). The gave the second one, “crowd pleaser” to the dude in the bikini, and…the last prize, “best overall costume, whatever” to………Sam. You should have seen the smile on his face – priceless. That is what the night was all about. Sam is already talking about next year. I’m definitely in too!

Can anyone guess what is causing the leaves in our hollyhocks to get a bit shredded? These little buggers are everywhere on our hollyhocks. Sawflys maybe…which I can tell because (1) the larvae clearly have six or more pairs of prolegs on the abdomen (and, duh, caterpillars have five or fewer), and (2) they have two stemmata instead of a caterpillar’s six. Alex, I’ll take ‘bug facts’ for 400…

And, of course, the daylillies are out in full force now…I swear they will be deemed a noxious weed someday…but until then we will enjoy them.

Grandma T gets in tomorrow…we can’t wait to see you!!!

We just got back from an awesome trip!  Every few years we do this loop through Chicago and Indiana – it isn’t very relaxing but it is a ton of fun.  In six days we stayed in four different beds each, saw fourteen friends, and mooched off of sixteen relatives ranging from age 6 months to 96 years. Whew!

I hypermiled the whole way so I got 89 miles/gallon by pulse-and-gliding and auto-stopping and never had to fill up the car (mom – don’t believe everything you read on the Internet).

Favorite parts of the trip:
Colleen…the lazy river in a water park at Six Flags Great America
Christopher…buying a souvenir bear and sunglasses in Chicago
Megan…going on the double-decker grand carousel at Six Flags Great America (10 stories high!)
Beth…jumping on the beds everywhere we stayed
Dave…friends, family, food, fun

Ok…here come the pics…go get some popcorn and enjoy the show…

How often do you get to hear a macho manly man say “I hope you enjoyed your ride. I’ll be around momentarily to unbuckle you from your fruit cup.”?

Scary ride – cliff ahead!!!

I used to work with Millie in Chicago at KPMG. She and her husband, Bugz (Bogdan), are 110% Polish and made us a great meal…pierogis, golabki, kielbasa, and lots and lots of vodka (well…not so much on the vodka). It was an awesome meal -and another old coworker from KPMG (Dave A.) and his wife also came over. Dave and I were actually roommates on my first big assignment in Pittsburgh – it was fun talking about old times.

We spent the day at Six Flags. Megan kept calling Millie – “Mrs. Bugz” – it was funny.

Beth grew up with a goofy looking Aeridale Terrier and I grew up with magestic, elegant Miniature Schnauzer…and here are Millie and Bugz’ dogs…what a coincidence!

Two years ago we bought reading glasses at the American Girl Place store in Chicago. No lie…within 1 minute of getting home they were broken. Colleen bought glasses again…hopefully they survive the trip home.

We spent a night in downtown Chicago. We ate at a few of our old favorites…Giordanos (Beth’s favorite Chicago-style stuffed pizza), Bela Bacino’s on Wacker (Dave’s favorite heart-healthy Chicago-style stuffed pizza, and Scoozis.

Christopher had to use the bathroom at Giordanos. I thought we were doing a #1 but soon learned that wasn’t the case. So there I am left to hang out in the bathroom….but I soon wandered outside of the restroom to look at some photos on the wall so as to abide by the unwritten rules of urinal/male-bathroom ettiquette (caution for the kiddies – a bunch of crude stuff on this site too):

(1) NO Talking, unless it’s a good friend… but even then, keep it terse and unemotional. This ain’t no clubhouse.
(2) I don’t think I need to tell you, absolutely NO touching of anyone other than yourself. A touch of another’s elbow is of the highest offense.
(3) NO Singing. Period.
(4) Glances are for purposes of acknowledgment only…”Yeah, I see you there. I will not look again”.

After a few minutes I walk back into the bathroom and another guy (older than me) follows me in. Christopher is in a stall and I shout out to him in a slow, drawn-out, sing-songy type of voice that you use when speaking to a child – “How ya doin’ buddy?”. The guy who followed me in to the restroom in the meantime had gone to a urinal and had already started his business…but instead of Christopher replying to me this guy replied to me instead with a “pretty good and you?”. I was clearly in violation of rule #1 (had I been talking to him), but if somebody else calls you buddy while you’re at the urinal and asks how it’s going you…you never, ever reply to them. It was funny when Christopher then replied to me and I could hear the guy at the urinal chuckle to himself (which should be rule #5 – no chuckling to yourself while at the urinal). And, of course, I never said another word to him…because I know the rules.

Here we are playing at the ESPN Zone.

I turn my back for one second and Beth has the kids jumping on the beds. This almost makes up for the $350/night + $55/parking we spent. I hope they have to replace springs in all 3 of these beds!!!

Millenium Park was finally open (parts of it were under construction on the last two trips through town – how hard is it to make a 110-ton, 66 foot long, seamless, shiny jelly bean anyway – common!). Here we are at Cloud Gate – you can walk under it and look at it from many angles. It is actually really cool – I may try to make one out of tinfoil scraps in the backyard.

We told the kids not to get wet because we had lunch reservations in 15 minutes…they all nodded and said they completely understood…and here they are about 10 seconds later playing in the water in the Crown Fountain.

Chicago really energizes me. I love the town and people and food and atmosphere and activity and friendliness and safety and sights and smells. We would both like to live in Chicago sometime again in our lives. Driving anywhere near Chicago is the complete opposite – blah!!! I don’t know how people stand to have cars and sit in all of that traffic.

An hour into Indiana I start to feel home (as much as any place feels like home to me). Here is Lobdell-Emery where I spent a summer working. I was a union worker on a car line – greasy, dirty, hot, and sparks flying everywhere and burning your skin. My dad said I should get a job in a factory so I would know what I didn’t want to do for the rest of my life…it was a fun/interesting/learning experience but I think it can quickly take years off of your life. For instance, count the windows in this building…

Mmmm…greasy giant tenderloins.

A trip to Grandma’s wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t cross the dam road and throw some dam sticks into the dam stream.

My dad’s 69 Cougar has been in Rochester for the past year or two getting worked on by my cousin. This is his baby and it is looking good – except for the fact that you have to open the door with a coat hanger 🙂 My cousin Brent is doing an awesome job – it will be the coolest, green, 40-year-old car out there soon!!! And throw in the blip-blip-blip turn signals – that car is cherry. Dad- the bad news is that www.69cougar.com is already taken. The good news is that his car looks like crap compared to yours, although I must admit some of his Sturgis pictures distracted me…

I don’t know how my dad or any of his siblings still have all of their digits. This is the fan that they grew up with. Solid metal blades with no real guard to prevent little fingers from wandering. I guess it only takes once and you learn where not to put your fingers again…

They don’t make ’em like they used to…(thankfully)…yikes…I didn’t see any of these in the American Girl Place!

And here’s that other special woman in my life…Grandma T! I’ll have to write more about her later – truly an inspiration in my life. Just got her driver’s license renewed for two years and has been out racing for pink slips 😉

Aunt B. Go Purdue!!! Boiler Up!!!

A trip to Rochester isn’t complete without visiting the Flagpole. I guess their ice cream has changed (for the worse per the pig’s dinner experts) but we ate it just the same.

Our only real daytime rain of the trip. Amazingly the rain kept missing us the entire week. The sun followed us around despite the pessimistic weatherpeople.

This sign has been here for years and years. It’s fun to watch your kid’s faces light up when they “get” it. Bodily function humor never gets old.

And we finally made it to our last stop – Indianapolis. Home of Aunt Becka and “the shark” (as Megan kept calling him). It only took him dunking her once in the pool for her to now run in fear every time she hears his voice. The shark told me repeatedly that he will never visit this web site, which is good, because now I can say whatever I want about him 🙂

Megan with her new baby 🙂 I think the tongue-sticking-out thing is all from Beth…did I ever do that growing up?

Colleen getting braver…

This doll looked so life-like it freaked all of us out at some point during our stay.

I didn’t know who all would show up until we actually got to Indy, but three old roommates were able to drive over and spend some time hanging out (from Bloomington and Lafayette). It was a great day – hanging out by the pool, relaxing, catching up on some old times, perfect weather, great food & drink – that’s what this trip was all about and this was a perfect way to end it. I am very grateful to Aunt Becka and the shark for opening their home and pool up to us. Thank you!!! Here are most of the kids from that day…Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Doc, Happy, Bashful, Grumpy – note: the order is taken from here so save your hatemail 🙂

Colleen and I rocked out on the Wii. This was our first time playing on the Wii – it was fun!!!

The shark getting Megan…

Getting ready for the big fireworks show (thanks cousin Tom!)

Double trouble…

And finally, one of the very few signs of intelligent life in Indiana 🙂

Sunday we did the March of Dimes walk. A giant loaf of bread slapped stickers on the kids right before this picture – yes, we love bread, but not enough to wear stickers everywhere. We’ve done this for over 10 years (since we lived in Chicago). This year it was 6 miles. Actually there was a shorter 4-mile version that I was shocked so many people chose – we didn’t see many strollers on the 6-mile version. Over the years we’ve pushed multiple strollers, walked in snow, walked in rain, got served Eli’s cheese cake in Chicago, lost a first tooth…this year started a bit chilly but turned into a beautiful day. Colleen and Christopher brought their scooters. Colleen walked more than she scooted, but Christopher probably covered 7 miles on his scooter – he would zip and zoom way ahead of us, and then come back to us, and then go out of sight again, and then come back – he was non-stop!

Already this year I’ve climbed 35 flights of stairs (in full fire gear) for the Lung Association; did the 50k race a few weeks ago for the parks district; did the fun run Saturday for the schools; and did the March of Dimes 6-mile walk. Coming up I’ll do several 5k races for various causes, bike rides for the MS society, and the Relay for Life all night walk for the Cancer Society, plus who knows what else. Money for a good cause + exercise for me = perfect combo. Can you keep up – what are you waiting for?

Here’s Colleen fixing Megan’s hair up just right.