Apparently we just went on a vacation up north. I don’t have any recollection of that trip. Oh, did I mention I have a new iPhone?
Huh? What?
September 6th, 2010Up North – #3
September 2nd, 2010We spent the last several days tooling around the area. Had a nice picnic on Artist’s Point, swam a few times at a nearby pool, played monopoly, watched Harry Potter, and looked at some art galleries when it drizzled just one morning of our trip. Climbed up the mostly dry river bed of the Devil Track River. Spent even longer (2+ hours?) chasing and unlodging our “boats” as they made their way downstream. The kids loved following their boats down this windy river but I didn’t realize how much work it would be to unlodge them from so many low points and crevices and tricky traps the river set for us. And of course we’ve continued to have a lot of great, fresh food…Angry Trout again (and again), My Sister’s Place, Crooked Spoon (with some friends who are up this week too), Coho Cafe, more World’s Best Donuts – yummy yummy yummy!!!
Brrrrrrr!!!
Here are our “boats” preparing to launch…Colleen’s long stick is the only one out of about 10 sticks and leafs that made it the entire way down.
We hiked the Tettegouche trails for the first time this year. It was a bit different from most of the other trails we’ve done in that you are hiking throught the woods and not directly next to a gorge or river that you can tell for most of it. 1.2 miles in you end up at two-step falls which isn’t so impressive. Christopher and I continued on another .4 miles to get the High Falls which was a pretty cool waterfall.
After 3+ miles of hiking the kids got to suck down some well-deserved oreo smoothies 🙂
We also hiked along the Temperance River again this year. This (along with Judge C. R. Magney) is one of our favorite spots to hike and take photos. The water was lower this year than past years so we were able to easily cross the river as a family. Well…let me qualify “easily cross the river” by saying that the two oldest kids crossed the river fairly easily. I was holding Megan’s hands so she would try to step from rock to rock – this sounds easier than it actually is because often you can’t tell which rocks are wobbly and her legs really had to stretch…so by the time I would get her extended onto her own rock in the middle of the water then there wouldn’t be enough room for my feet on that same rock…but we were managing ok. I won’t mention any names (yet…heh heh heh)…but from behind me all of a sudden I hear this huge commotion…sounded like bombs dropping combined with an avalanche and tumbling rocks. I turn around and almost all of the contents of the backpack which had been on Beth’s back were spread out in 5′ radius around Beth and she’s frantically trying to grab everything out of the water before it got swept away (the water was moving pretty good and there is a big waterfall 20′ away). Our good camera was in a bright yellow bag and we both see that as the farthest object from her heading downstream. I quickly jumped with Megan back to shore but Beth was quicker and completely jumped in the water with both feet to grab the yellow plastic bag with the camera. I’ll spare you the details of the camera (so far there isn’t a happy ending – unless you’re looking for a camera that clicks like it’s taking pictures when in the “off” position as soon as you put the battery in) but no one was hurt and we are still giggling every time Beth tries to explain this by saying “I don’t know what happened…the backpack just exploded!!!“. So, can anyone answer this one – why make cameras float if they aren’t going to be waterproof??? Although the camera did the fake “clicks” non-stop I was able to rescue pictures from it, such as this one (look familiar?)…
Up North – #2
August 30th, 2010Our first full day in Grand Marais was great. A few hikes, outstanding weather, great company, and more awesome food.
Started the day with the World’s Best Donuts (duh – how else would we start the day up here) and a quick walk out to Artist’s Point (just a block or so from our condo). The kid’s love playing tag as they run on the jagged rocks with steep drop offs into the water!!! What’s great about the condo is that we can sit on our patio or balcony and watch the kids run along the water and throw rocks and chase seagulls while we just chill and read or sip a little somethin’.
Here’s Beth on the balcony as we came back from our quick morning hike. These condos are perfect – very glad we came here instead of the dumpy hotel across the street again 🙂
Then we headed to Judge C.R. Magney state park to see the infamous Devil’s Kettle! The water was very low so we got to climb on rocks up and down the river that normally are underwater. I need to figure out how I can get paid to run on rocks – I swear I could do that all day every day – wheeee! With the water so low I climbed almost to the edge of the Devil’s Kettle but we still can’t figure out where the water goes once it enters the Devil’s Kettle – or maybe I know now and I’m not telling. They say they’ve dropped dye in the water and other things and still don’t have a clue where the water goes once it drops into this deep hole.
After hiking we ate Sunday brunch at Nanny-nanny-boo-boo, stared at their funky ceiling a lot, and then played in the rocks. They’ve got a great spread on Sunday’s and we sampled everything! Mommy took a little nap on the beach…not a good idea with our kids nearby…
The day ended at the Angry Trout…lake Trout chowder, fish sandwiches, Oatmeal stout, super fresh local fruits and veggies…this place does everything right from saving the environment to supporting local everything to making delicious food. We should have stopped the perfect day right there…instead we went home, put the kids to bed, and started to watch Black Dynamite…don’t add that one to your movie list 🙁
Up North
August 28th, 2010Before I get to “Up North” let me say that the pink fire trucks stopped in Eden Prairie last week to raise money for cancer and they were pretty (and I mean “pretty”) cool. They helped the Eden Prairie Fire Department raise about $7,000 that night which makes EPFD the #1 fund raising team for the Relay for Life for the 2nd year in a row. Take that cancer! I manned the bean bag toss most of the night and Colleen, Christopher, Megan & Beth helped me quite a bit which made it fun. All the cool guys got green mohawks + smilies painted on the back of their heads. Ok, it was one crazy chick with the green spray paint and she got every firefighter that she could find with that green paint. It was all for a good time.
Ok…this morning we headed “up north” from Eden Prairie to Grand Marais. I’m sure you’re all familiar with that saying about the journey being the destination…we lived that today. First stop = Duluth. We had Bob Dylan blaring and stopped to see the lift bridge and to refill daddy’s jug’o beer. Fitger’s Brewhouse has some yummy beer that hits the spot every year. It was 85 and sunny (and windy!) in Duluth – a great start to our trip.
From Fitgers we got less than 10 miles before stopping at the New Scenic Cafe. This is a great little stop on the North Shore Scenic Drive that has great local artwork displayed, great landscaping, great beer menu (seeing a theme?), great atmosphere, and awesome, fresh, local food. Plus their prices are unbelievably low for what you’re getting (shhh – don’t tell them). We had an awesome lunch and then drove probably less than 10 miles to stop at Russ Kendall’s Smoke House to pick up some smoked trout, salmon, etc for daddy & Megan. Got back in the car and drove a bit further before we stopped at Betty’s Pies and bought a few pies. Did I mention we start the trip with a huge empty cooler but somehow it is full by the time we get to Grand Marais?!?!?! Ok…got back in the car again and drove a bit further to Gooseberry Falls. This is a great area that is so close to Duluth that it is usually packed with people – today was no exception. The water was low so you could climb across the river in many spots. Christopher fell twice on flat ground in the parking lot of this place so I was a bit worried that he insisted that he and I climb on this gravel, sloped path high above bolders…but we made it 🙂
We ran into people we knew from Eden Prairie at Gooseberry Falls…climbed around a lot…got a little wet…threw some rocks…and then headed north again. Next stop was one of my favorites…this was a new point of interest for us…and I think we all agree that we can check this one off the list and keep on driving next time…we stopped at the statue of Rocky Taconite. Pretty cool dude…we had to force the kids to leave this statue he was so cool.
Ok…it’s hard to top Rocky Taconite…so at that point we decided to drive straight to Grand Marais…and of course once we got there we were soon at Sven and Ole’s for pizza. The condo is great, the weather is great (although a storm or two may hit in a few days), the pies are great, the beer is great, the pizza was great…looking forward to a great week up here.
Where did July go?
August 15th, 2010Wow! It’s been a long time. Since I last wrote:
(1) Beth found a new job
(2) with mixed emotions Beth quit a job
(3) we’ve all been to St. Louis
(4) I flew home for a week while they stayed longer in St. Louis
(5) Anne and her four kids + Earl came to MN for 4-5 days
(6) had a scout rocket launch
(7) celebrated National Night to Unite by driving a fire truck around to many block parties
(8) had 10 yards of mulch and 8 tons of crushed granite delivered
(9) and I’ve been proposed to (yep – and not by Beth)
(10) In writing this list I came up with another OCD type of thing…I hate the number 9. 7 is good. 9 is as bad as it gets.
(11) went to Friday Night Destruction
(12) finished celebrating Megan’s birthday
So where to begin? Hmmmm….I guess in the order above…
(1) & (2)
Beth’s new job is with Beckman Coulter. The best part is that it is exactly 5 miles away from home. The commute was really wearing Beth down so this is perfect. She starts the 2nd week of September – the same week the kids go back to school. I’ll have to get a picture of her getting on a bus her first day too!
(3) & (4)
We went to St. Louis for Beth’s high school reunion. I think we would both say the reunion was 10x better than we expected it to be. It was at a bar near SLU (St. Louis University) close to downtown St. Louis. They only served appetizers so it was great to not have assigned seating or tables and you could bounce around all night talking to everybody. It was a really fun time and Beth got a chance to hook up with many old friends that night and also later on in the week. The kids had a blast with their cousins all week. One of the highlights in St. Louis is going to the City Museum. I know I’ve written about this place before – it is truly an amazingly awesome place – so cool – makes you want to be a kid again.
(5) Anne and Earl, and Anne’s four kids drove up to MN and stayed for several days. It was great to hang out more, and I know Beth and the kids had a lot of fun each day playing and talking and seeing the sights. Having the pool in our backyard has been great for the kids – they are in it every night and any kids that come over are always out there too – great, cheap fun. The Mill City Museum and Mall of America were the highlights (Patrick celebrated his birthday while he was up here and he wanted to go to the Mall of America on his birthday).
Not my fire – I take no responsibility for all that smoke 🙂
(6) Next year I am running the cub scout rocket launch for Christopher’s pack/den/whatever it’s called. This year I paid close attention as there are tons of little details such as alien masks, inflatable aliens, space suit for me (ok, despite what the last guy did I’m not doing this), etc. Because Christopher was going to be in St. Louis and would miss the scout rocket launch we went the weekend before and tried out all of his rockets. Wheeee.
(7) Guess what we handed out to the kids on National Night to Unite??? Give up? There were 112 block parties this night in Eden Prairie and the fire department ended up hitting most of them. I got to drive the big red truck around this year which made it extra fun. There has been a lot of bad weather the past few weeks so I’ve been on a lot of weather related calls. Last night a page went out saying a deck collapsed that was holding 20 people. We ended up sending a ton of rescue squads, fire engines, ambulances, and police cars. There were people everywhere – like a scene out of a movie. Luckily (as far as I know) there were no serious injuries – but this will be a party that those people talk about for a while. The pink fire truck will be in Eden Prairie next week to help raise money for cancer – I’m sure it will be quite a sight.
(8) I’m not as young as I used to be. As Beth says, who works harder than me in the yard? No one. I had two helpers from a landscaping company yesterday – their job was to move the 8-tons of granite to the backyard. My little hill in the backyard was too much for them – couldn’t handle it – said they would be there all day if they had to bring it up the hill. So I told them just to pile the granite around the fire pit at the bottom of the hill and I’d take care of it. A day later and it’s all up the hill and on the paths. Big babies 🙂 I let Christopher help me mow a bit tonight for the first time. He pushed the mower through the middle of the yard, then turned it and curved back up towards the garden – and then I had him turn off the mower. I asked him if he ever remembered me making lots of straight lines and going back and forth – we laughed as we looked at the massive, random “U” he made from one side of the yard to the other.
(9) I took Megan to her first soccer practice yesterday. I’m not coaching this season which I have mixed emotions about but I think it’s the right decision given everything that is going on. As we were leaving and walking to our car in the parking lot I heard a sweet little voice yelling “coach Dave, coach Dave”. I turned around and one of the little girls from last year’s team was yelling to me. She was the one that I wrote about before that I made big strides with. She wanted to say hello and then said something that I didn’t quite understand so I asked her to say it again and she said “I want to marry you”. So sweet. Her parents were laughing – I don’t think she told them what she had planned to say to me. I said maybe she would want to marry her new coach but she said no. Makes me want to coach again – maybe in the spring.
(11) Ok, so this isn’t Beth’s favorite thing to do but she was a great sport this year. I love watching the figure 8 and flag pole races and we got to see school buses race (at one point they were 4-wide going around a curve on this tiny track). As we were driving to the race track Megan was asking if she could be in the race – I think she changed her mind once we got there. The kids had fun picking cars – amazingly Megan picked every car right all night – it helps when you can change your pick at any time to the car in the lead! They even had a pick-up unexpectedly drive out the back of the “short bus” as it was driving around the track. The night ended with the Green Mamba jet car burning two cars stacked on top of each other. This thing has a jet engine and puts out incredible heat. Fun!
(12) Remember that birthday a few years ago when I didn’t tell Beth what I wanted and I got the stone pig for the yard? I guess Megan wasn’t clear to mommy what she wanted this year and ended up with a big inflatable rolly thing that kids aren’t ever going to master. The funniest part about this is that I inflated it indoors and then we couldn’t find a door that it would fit through to get it outside!!!
Megan is 5
July 21st, 2010Our little baby just turned 5 years old. Thanks everybody for the calls and cards and gifts. She’s having a blast and loving the attention! We had several kids over last Sunday for her SpongeBob party and tonight on her “real” birthday we had Culver’s at home (her choice). Christopher chose McDonald’s at home for his big birthday meal – glad birthdays only happen once a year 🙂 Here’s what’s on Megan’s mind this year:
My favorite food is…Mommy’s mac-n-cheese and Daddy’s egg sandwiches.
When I grow up I want to be a…firefighter, doctor, dentist, and a grown-up.
My favorite restaurant is…Santorini’s (in her words “that one where you draw a picture and they give you money” – if you color in the picture on the back of their children’s menu and bring it up to the hostesses they will give you a dollar – pure genius on their part).
My favorite stuffed animal is…zu zu pet
My favorite color is…blue and green
My favorite song is…Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, Going to the Garden to Eat Worms.
My favorite holiday is…St. Patrick’s Day (because the leprechauns give you yummy lollipops) and Fourth of July (because you see really cool fireworks) and Christmas (because you get a lot of toys).
My favorite season is…winter (because you can go sledding)
My favorite thing to do is…go to the beach in the summer and go to Pump-It-Up
If I could do anything tomorrow I would…go to the beach
Our yard is looking great this year – color everywhere. The kids at the party had a blast as usual running through the yard and up and down paths and getting “lost” and finding treasures everywhere. We had a new visitor this weekend…a hummingbird moth. I guess a lot of people get confused and think they are real hummingbirds. I could get right up close to him (he was busy and moved around a lot but wasn’t bothered by me at all). Super cool to watch him go from flower to flower.
We also all did the Relay for Life last weekend. The whole family came out. Colleen and I made it the latest – I took her home around 11:30 p.m. She was having a lot of fun walking around the track with me and she wants to camp out in the infield next year. Colleen made it over 5 miles – not bad. I slept a few hours at home and then got up before 4:00 a.m. and went back to the track. I ended up with 50 laps (12.5 miles). Not the 60 laps I was hoping for this year but far enough. We raised a lot of money for a good cause. There was a silent auction at 10:30 p.m. All three kids bid on $5 mystery bags from SuperValue. Only Colleen and I were still there at 10:30 – every lap before that time we’d check on the baskets and for some reason no one was bidding on those three (all of the other 50 baskets had a ton of activity). I told Colleen that the only thing worse for daddy than none of the three kids winning a basket would be for ALL three of the kids to win these mystery baskets. As it turns out Colleen and Megan won (Christopher got outbid by 50 cents). And…the value was a lot more than $5 but not necessarily useful – we got Hershey’s syrup (malt flavored and dulce de leche flavored), bags of candy, socks, socks, socks, sprinkles for ice cream, and some other food products. The fire department takes donations and pushes people around the track with flashing lights going – wwwhhheeeeeeee.
#1
July 13th, 2010I spy with my little eye…a strawberry pie!
For the first time ever we truly played a board game as a family. And I loved it. A lot of fun – for all of us. Yes, we’ve played some of my favorites for years but those games either have no strategy (e.g., Pretty, Pretty Princess) or they are stacked in favor of the parents (e.g., Blokus). But this time we played monopoly (the Chicago edition). It took us about a week, but we finished the game. Colleen and Christopher played – and Megan was the banker and official dice grabber/distributor. Christopher started the game off by just going around the board – I don’t think he bought a single property after the first one or two times around the board. He would pause to consider properties but then decided he liked his money too much to spend any of it. Needless to say, I was the first one out, followed shortly by Beth, and then Christopher had no problem trouncing Colleen too. He raked it in. Somehow everything seemed to go his way. He had both get-of-jail cards. He had a hotel on the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower) which was the most expensive property on the board. On each of our final turns we thought we were safe because we ended up stopping just before his properties…but then I rolled a 3 to land on the Sears tower, Beth rolled a 4 to do the same, and Colleen (several turns later) also rolled a 4 to do the same. Stinker. And…he could have cleaned up a day or two ago but he didn’t want to spend much money on houses and hotels. That’s the last time we play with him!!!
Let me ask everyone who lives in Nashua this question? Is being ranked #1 in the country by CNN’s Money magazine a blessing or a curse? Is it the kiss of death? Eden Prairie is #1. We’re #1. We’re #1. We’re #1.
We watched a deer eat whole heads of flowers off of plants in our yard in single chomps…and then we sent Orca after it. Lucky for her it ran off – I’m not sure what she would have done if it had just stayed there.
Another firefighter gave us his old 15′ pool for free. So I found a somewhat level spot in the yard and set it up real quick when Beth’s parents were out here last month. The instructions just say find a “level” spot -they don’t say how level is level. After a few days it became apparent that my definition of level and their definition of level were a bit different. To further complicate my leaning pool situation the side that was downhill is of course where I had positioned the drain plug which ended up being about 1′ underneath the pool and impossible to get to due to the weight of the water. We tried this pool out to see if we would use it but it also had a leak in the air ring that kind of supports the pool…so here’s the picture of me draining the pool. I don’t know why they give you a drain valve – my method seemed to work just fine and was a lot more exciting. Just like watching the huge bucket dump tons of water at the Great Wolf Lodge! We then went out and bought a brand new 15′ pool, I moved just a bit of dirt to give a pool a better chance of surviving the summer, and the kids have loved it ever since. Every night they go out there. And during the day with sitters they are in it all the time. Fun fun fun. I love Christopher’s happy dance – he just needs some country music and a cowboy hat and he’d be all set.
OCD randomness
July 6th, 2010This past year I’ve definitely started knocking more things down. For example, I’ll reach for something in the medicine cabinet and knock over something small like chapstick. But what is super cool is that my reflexes and reaction time this past year have become amazing. I catch 90% of the things that I knock over. So as that chapstick is falling to the ground my hand has already shot out and caught it. I guess if I’m going to get more clutsy as I get older then I might as well improve in other areas.
Who else in the family taps the back of their finger nails on walls, rails, doors as they walk down halls or stairways? Common – don’t hold back. I’ve been doing this forever. Sometimes I have to tap in groups of 3 or some other number – or I have to tap a few times to get that perfect tap (just enough contact with the nail only, but not too much contact). Or how about this one, whenever I pair up my shoes it drives me nuts if they aren’t facing each other properly. The left shoe on the right side just won’t do. Hey, it’s not like I can’t stand the sound of metal utensils scraping against someone else’s teeth? Heh heh. And maybe I do still play with imaginary friends, but if they weren’t so darn competitive then I’d be able to stop – they just won’t quit or let me win – grrrrrr.
I remember as a kid I used to try to double-back on all of my paths (e.g., if I came in a building a certain way then I would want to leave by retracing my steps). I think that was a big thing for me in New Jersey. I also still try to keep my sock drawer as neat as possible. But this one isn’t because I’m obsessive, it’s because I read in a magazine a while ago that guys with neater sock drawers get more action. Every little bit helps 🙂
Ok, enough with all that craziness. Am I alone with that – or am I the normal one?
We had a fun 4th of July weekend. Spent a lot of time at Round Lake for the festivities – bike parade, music, games, you name it…
Colleen and a friend used a big slingshot to launch 9 water balloons at Christopher and a friend (who had 9 of their own to shoot back). Here they are waiting for a balloon to splash over them.
Colleen won the hula hoop contest for her age group at the 4th of July contest. Here she is wearing the grand prize…
Beth wrapped the kids in toilet paper for another event. Hee hee hee.
Buzz buzz buzz.
Weeping willow
June 30th, 2010I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok,
I sleep all night and I work all day;
I cut down trees, I eat my lunch,
I go to the lavat’ry
On Wednesdays I go shopping,
And have buttered scones for tea.
Here’s the rest of it…always good for a laugh: lumberjack
Yes, I now own a chainsaw. I’ve learned a lot this past week. And so much fun. Slicing through anything in my way. The branch that fell was filled in the middle with ants and ant eggs and yuck…I’m thinking the rest of the tree will soon be gone…either on purpose…or by nature (which will likely end up on the shed).
The branch was still stuck to the tree where it snapped and was supported on the ground. I worked my way closer to the tree and thought the huge branch would eventually snap off. But…instead it swung vertical and didn’t fall off. I cut up as high as I could but was stuck. So…my neighbor got a long rope, tied it around the tree, I brought it back over the top of the hill and down the other side, he drove his truck on the sidewalk (and put an orange safety cone out to make it official), and then we ended up pulling the branch off the tree. That branch easily weighed several hundred pounds and he had it completely horizontal and we weren’t sure if it was going to snap off or not…but it finally gave in and fell.
Lot of work cutting that thing up but after a week with the chainsaw my voice is lower and my chest is even hairier.
The kids love the hammock – so does Beth – but they consider it theirs!!!
Smile.
Ok, Katherine. We’ve got to talk. No more disgusting-anything presents. Complete nastiness. Yuck. Definitely disgusting. It’s hard to read the labels in this one but here the kids are with mold-filled dishes a week after they took samples of the following: Christopher’s door knob, Megan’s nose, Megan’s toes, and Colleen’s shoe. As you can see, it’s far safer to eat something out of Megan’s nose or toes than it is to eat out of Colleen’s shoes or off of Christopher’s door knob. Yep – go figure.
This past weekend was the fire department’s second annual car wash and family event to raise money to extinguish cancer. We raised 2K last year at this event (over 11K total for the relay) and did a little bit less than that this year. I helped organize it and spent 8 hours in this parking lot on Saturday. A ton of people from the department pitch in and it’s a fun day but a lot of work. The relay for life is in a few weeks – that’s when I walk around a track for the good part of 12 hours to raise more money. It’s quite an event – powerful and a huge turnout. We had someone else on the department come down with cancer this year so it continues to hit too close to home.
The 4th of July will be here soon…we’ve started doing sparklers or small fireworks every night in anticipation. Wheeee. I think everybody else is going to the neighbors for most of the 4th but I’ll be working at the fire station from 5:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. There never seems to be much excitement (e.g., no blown off fingers or kids catching on fire) but we still have a lot of people staffed that night just in case. I’m just hoping for no rain at this point. Yesterday and today have been absolutely beautiful days – 70’s – perfect.
Rock-a-bye Baby!
June 17th, 2010Just last week the kids were swinging on willow branches from this big limb. I’m going to blame this on them and say they weakened it!!! It’s just a bit windy today (tornados up north). Completely missed the shed and I think even the compost bins will be ok once I can find them again. I think a chainsaw for Father’s Day would be a perfect gift 🙂
