MN Thompson's

Happy Anniversary everybody. Hope you went out and had the times of your lives. Things are still out of control here and I’m losing ground. Had a great trip and got to see Grandma T. She was still quite with it – but the hearing thing makes it hard. She had a sense of humor and I’m glad the kids got a quick chance to see her. It’s hard to do such a quick visit – glad we did it but am left wondering if we should have stayed longer even though I know that wasn’t very realistic.

Surprised the kids with a trip to the Wisconsin Dells after Rochester – went to a new place this time – Wilderness Territory. It was huge but not necessarily better. We got to play outside this time though. Wheee.

Christopher has been in this phase where he wants me to take two pictures. And then smiles differently in both of them. He never asks to see the pictures afterwards – but he always wants two taken as he experiments with which look will get the ladies. Hey ladies – which one drives you crazy, the one above or this one?

Keeping gaining weight. We have to go out for ice cream every time Colleen scores a goal and she’s on a roll now – 1 or 2 goals each the last 3 or 4 games. Plus Beth bought herself a cake for her birthday – at Costco. The thing barely fit on our counter. Supersize me.

Kids are getting richer. Colleen lost two molars in the past few weeks. Christopher keeps losing teeth too – I think he pulls them on purpose just to make a quick buck. Not sure he understands his supply will run out soon at this rate.

Go Celtics. Common KG. Get your act together.

Tomorrow is the last day of school. Woohoo. Raa raa.

Couldn’t fit plates or bowls in our cupboard so I paused a minute and carefully analyzed the situation. I think the problem is that we have enough gum scattered throughout the cupboard to fill an entire freezer bag. Stay with me here…[me] Alex, I’ll take compulsive shopping for $400. [Alex] The answer is “Zero”. [me] What is how many of those packets I’ve bought? [Alex] Correct.

Went to Schooner Days again (or Scooter Days as Megan keeps calling it). Megan loved every ride and went or more than anyone. I just ate cheese turds by the fistful.

I forced Christopher to ride with Megan – he was very glad to do this and couldn’t contain his excitement (hey buddy, keep that attitude and I bet that other guy in the picture can tell you where you’ll be in 15 years).

How about this one -my camera takes amazingly fast pictures – not a blur at all. Or maybe it’s because the kids came to a complete stop on the slide. Lamest slide I’ve ever seen. The dude even let them go again – he sprayed Pledge all over the hilly parts before they went – didn’t help Megan at all. Boooooo.

Life has just been too busy lately and I can’t catch up and work is a lot of work and I get zero sympathy at home and I could go on and on…and I really, really needed my spirits recharged. It’s amazing how sometimes things just happen to fall right into place exactly when you need them…and this time it was a string of little, tiny things just to remind me to keep at it and that in some way I am making a difference. For instance, little thing #1. I’ve been working harder with one of the 4 year olds on Megan’s soccer team…she has been shy and reluctant to come onto the field and didn’t want to play…so I keep gently nudging her to join us. This past week she started warming up to me bit by bit and when it came time to choose teams for a scrimmage she came over to me and asked if she could be on my team, I said sure, and she was very happy about that and said “I love you”. It was sweet. The next day was her birthday and she came over to kind of tell me about it. It was funny when the other coach chimed in and she wouldn’t say a word to him or even really acknowledge him.

Little thing #2 – the next day at practice I stayed late to answer questions that one of the mothers had. They are from Somalia and she wanted her son to improve his skills. We talked and ended up being the last two cars in the parking lot. Sure enough…she went to start her car and it wouldn’t start. So Christopher and I gave her a jump. By the time we were finishing up other cars had started to pull into the lot for the next round of soccer games. I was wearing a coaching shirt and one of the moms came over and said there ought to be a special award for coaches that go above and beyond.

Little thing #3 came tonight at cub scouts for Christopher. The fire department brought their ladder truck for the egg drop. I wore my EPFD t-shirt but didn’t ride on the truck. I went over to talk to the guys on the truck and they said I should go up in the bucket to drop the egg contraptions. That’s always a fun job (even with storm clouds approaching in the distance – yikes) so of course I did it. Not sure if we went 90′ up or not but we were pretty high and had fun watching bags, boxes, cans, turtles (cardboard), etc go splat. We came back down and the truck left and we’re walking into the meeting when one of the scout masters walks up to me and asks if I want to do a talk on fire safety. I said – yeah, I could do that sometime – and he said “how about now?”. Gulp. So I walked in front of all the kids and parents in the troop and talked for 10 minutes about this and that and had the kids practice a fire drill and stop/drop/roll. It ended up being fun and I got huge thank you’s afterwards. Another reminder to keep doing the small things and be spontaneous – things will turn out ok.

Ok, enough blah, blah, blah. Here are some pictures. Christopher and Colleen debate who has to sit through more boring performances that the other puts on (Kung Fu versus dance performances). Not that I would ever take sides, but don’t listen to a word that your sister says about kung fu Christopher. 2 years and counting for the father-daughter dance recital. Buy your plane tickets in advance for that one!!!

We head to Rochester on Friday at noon (and head back Saturday at noon – don’t ask). Keep us in your thoughs as we drive on those busy roads. There was a bizarre accident in Minnesota yesterday. Two cars got smashed between two semi trucks – nasty, two people died. The crazy part is that the truck in front was carrying 17 million bees. Luckily only 6 million escaped during the accident!!! Fire fighters had to stay on scene for hours spraying water to keep the bees either away or calm. Glad that one wasn’t in Eden Prairie.

GO PURDUE!!! You show Obama and all the other doubters. He hate me.

The weather is still fighting to stay between 40 – 50. Warm enough for the kids to stop wearing jackets in the backyard (they’ve been out playing in their pajamas the last few mornings) and for the whole family to take a long bike ride today. Our Minnesota kids are tough. I was telling a co-worker about our vacation plans this summer (where the kids decided that they would rather go up north than to Disney World). Her response was great – she said we “managed to raise true Minnesota kids” – she’s absolutely right. All people in Minnesota want to do is go up north to their cabins – and there’s nothing wrong with that at all.

Here are a few pictures from before the ice melted.

Christopher and I went ice fishing with the cub scouts. He was excited beforehand…and I’ll leave it at that. Here he is cleaning the bits of ice out of the hole so that your line wouldn’t get caught. The ice was close to 3′ thick.

Not sure who this old man is on the bucket.

The kids didn’t have school a few Friday’s ago so the YMCA had a “pirate day” theme. Megan wasn’t included in that yet she is the only one to give me her best pirate face in the picture. Yeah Megan!!! Thanks for not being too mature yet for daddy’s goofy requests.

Colleen and Megan had another dance show at the Mall of America. I think these shows rank right up there with ice fishing for Christopher.

After the show we got to play on the rides – wheeeeee.

I would like St. Patty’s day a lot better if the leprechauns wouldn’t color our milk green. Grrrrrrr.

Lucky Megan gets to play with mommy’s doll from childhood. The doll creeps me out and somehow Megan managed to get her hair and expression similar to the doll’s in this photo. Now they both are creeping me out.

Walk softly and carry a very big stick. Spring is here…maybe…

I just skimmed through the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Familes”. It’s similar to “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” but is geared for families. Not sure how truly accurate this is but there was a chart showing the top disciplinary problems according to public school teachers. Crazy how far the world has come (and not in a good way):

1940 – Talking out of turn, chewing gum, making noise, running in the halls, cutting in line, dress code infractions, littering

1990 – Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, assault

And I’m not letting Beth talk to mom anymore on the phone. Everything is fine when I talk to mom and dad, but when they talk people break their ankles, animals go blind, and the economy starts to hit way to close to home. You’re all in our thoughts and prayers.

Let’s just start by saying…Boiler Up! Drew Brees blowing away payton and the colts. Purdue beating iu in bloomington. Purdue beating michigan state in east lancing. Boiler Up!!!

Seems like things just keep getting busier. This past Saturday I started the day by running up 50 flights of stairs with a bunch of fire fighters to the top of the tallest building in Minneapolis. I did it under 11 minutes so I was happy with that. While I was doing that, Beth had the other three kids downtown before 7:00 a.m. to rehearse for a dance performance that night. The girls danced at the Timberwolves game (we watched the T-wolves win their 4th in a row for the first time this season) – they girls did a great job. I don’t know if they’re getting better or my standards are getting lower 🙂 (I’m positive it’s the former).

And Megan smiled during her performance this time…small steps…

Megan’s favorite part of the night…her cotton candy reward after the performance…

Here’s a link to a video of the entire performance (Per Beth: Megan is wearing white, pink and black – the first minute Megan is in it a lot. Colleen is wearing purple and black – minute ~3:17, ~3:40 and ~4:50 you can see Colleen up close).

Christopher also had a presentation at school – this is when his career as a drummer starts!

And then…Colleen and Beth spent all day Sunday afternoon (yes, Super Bowl Sunday – think a woman was in charge of setting that up?) at Girl Scout International Day. Here’s Colleen looking very International!

I feel like all I’ve done the past few days is shovel snow. Every time I get back inside I turn around and go shovel again. But I love snow. I love shoveling. I love watching it pile up and cover everything. Bring it! I spent 5+ hours at the fire station last night on standby just in case we had to get somewhere in a hurry. The most exciting call was that a roof partially caved in on a house that also had squatters in it. In Eden Prairie no way? And even if it was in Eden Prairie our dispatcher has to know you don’t say things like that over the air about Eden Prairie. Common.

And I’ve got some great news somewhat related to winter. We did it. There is a new Christmas light champ on the street. Our neighbors across the street have been winning this one for years. But this year we held out. I left it up to the kids and asked them if we should give in and take our lights down. They said no way. Actually, they said we should leave them up all year. So…on the 5th of February we were the undisputed last house on the street with our Christmas lights up. Do we have to call them President’s Day lights if we go another week or can we still call them Christmas lights? Who cares – we win, you lose, now you get a big bruise!

Ok…help me out with this one. Tonight at dinner I asked the kids where they wanted to go on vacation this year. I said they could go anywhere. They said “the Wisconsin Dells”. We can do that. They know we’re already doing that. Easy enough. Then they asked “the State Fair?”. But of course. Not really a vacation…but we can do that. They said “up north?”. Yep we can do that. So I said, anywhere, you name it, where do you want to go? I listed some places (Grand Canyon, Mexico, Disney World). They didn’t even pause and said “how about up north for a whole week?”. We said “no Disney World?”. Nope. No interest at all. They had their reasons. Up North for a whole week wins. So…the question is…if the kids could care less about Disney then do we force it? Will their childhood be any less fulfilling? Up North is great (I like it more every year) – in fact, we’d love to have any of you join us up there in the summer. I guess we revisit this later on…I tore out an article a while ago saying that most parents take their little kids to Disney for themselves, not for their kids (i.e., the memory of how you picture your kids at Disney is more rewarding to parents than the experience of Disney to the kids). Whaddaya think?