MN Thompson's

Based on the traffic jams and filled parking lots around the mall this entire weekend I think the economy will turn out just fine. We took the kids out to a nice dinner last night to thank them for how well they have been adapting to all of the changes in our lives recently. Christopher and Megan returned the favor by being up all night with the stomach flu last night. Sometimes you just can’t win 🙂  While they recovered today, Colleen and I went to the annual children’s party at the fire station. It’s always tons of fun for the kids so it was too bad Christopher and Megan missed it. Colleen colored and decorated cookies and made an ornament and watched Polar Express and snacked and jumped in big bouncy things and watched Santa arrive (on a fire truck of course). So…we’ve now taken Megan by herself to Santa and we’ve taken Colleen by herself to see Santa – maybe Christopher will get his chance next week, huh?

I know I should probably wait to show you the kid’s Christmas picture for this year, but it’s just so darn cute I have to share it now. Don’t tell Beth I gave you this sneak peak…

Here’s what I put on a blog at work from a few days ago…

Last night while driving home from work there was an accident on 494 about 10 or 20 cars in front of me. The driver lost control at probably 60 mph and ran into the divider of the highway which deployed both airbags and crumpled the front end of his car. I didn’t see the accident but his smoking car was still rolling backwards across all three lanes of the highway by the time I reached the scene. When it stopped rolling it was sideways on the highway completely blocking the right lane of traffic and the driver was not moving.

Although I do have more medical and emergency training than most people, I’m not trained in stopping in civilian clothes in the middle of a highway at dusk during rush hour. But I stopped anyway. I needed to see how many people were in the car, if they were ok, and if I could help.

Fortunately, only one person was in the car. I helped him un-jam his door and get out of his car and I did a quick medical assessment. Other than being dazed, wobbly, and having some minor airbag abrasions he seemed ok. Another woman stopped and I had her dial 911 which was a minute or two later.

But here’s the part where we can all potentially act differently (and I’m not advocating that it’s safe for anyone to stop their car in the highway). No one else stopped or even dialed 911 before we did, including the people who witnessed the accident. No one else helped or offered to help. While the car was rolling people were creatively (at 15 mph) trying to find any path around this car and through the debris so their lives wouldn’t be disrupted. After I talked to dispatch and the scene was under control the other woman said to me “I can’t believe no one else stopped”. I can’t either. This person could have been seriously injured, or (as you see in the movies) his car could have been seconds away from bursting into flames and just needed someone to help him with his seatbelt and door (however unlikely that scenario is).

I know people were busy and they had just worked long days in the office and they had plans that night and they have a lot of stressful things on their minds – but we still need to take the time to help out others in need. Be it in the workplace or elsewhere, please don’t be in too much of a hurry that you can’t stop to help others. Don’t look back at the end of the day and regret that you had the chance to help someone else out and passed up on that opportunity. It’ll make you feel better too. And of course…drive safe!

How do you know when it is time to put away the Halloween stuff? I give up -when? Seriously – when?

This is the morning of our neighborhood’s progressive dinner. Yes, the pumpkins were all gone by the time anyone came over. Yes, they were solid and rolled like bowling balls down the hill in back. This was also the day I finally found time to hang up the Christmas lights – nothing like wedging the ladder in a snow bank to keep it steady. We finally are getting some real snow. The kids can’t wait to get home so that they can immediately run out to the backyard and sled, sled, and sled. Who would have thought that Megan would suddenly be my biggest outdoor helper – she has helped me shovel the drive the last few nights – using a huge shovel of course. For some reason she keeps calling this “raking” and corrects me when I try to correct her. I’m not sure who is winning this verbal war right now – she might be ahead.

Orca LOVES the snow – she is like a bullet racing around and jumping. Her favorite thing to do is run in front of the sled as it is zooming down the hill, and then as soon as the kids slow down she pounces on them and steals their hats. It’s a riot how good she is at that. What a pest!

We survived the progressive dinner in our neighborhood, and as far as we know there were no casualties from our soup and salad course. Thanks to both parents for providing our recipes 🙂 I bet we have over 50 or 60 people participate – it is great to sit and talk to so many people in the neighborhood.

Colleen’s latest phase is playing geography games online (http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games.htm). She’s kicking my behind on Level 6 of the state game. I’m sure she’ll be up to level 7 tomorrow, and so on. Can you beat her?

We went to Megan’s school program…she decided not to sing once we got there…which isn’t surprising since she had only been there four days total. Santa came…and Megan waited to be the absolutely very last person on his lap…

Only the kids who stay up until 10:00 p.m. get their picture taken…Colleen and Christopher missed it by an hour and a half.

It’s always a good trip to St. Louis if we make it down and back without hitting another deer. We had a great Thanksgiving – great food and it was good to hang out with everyone, even though we were only able to stay for two days. Beth’s dad went crazy with the pies – he made pumpkin, pumpkin with whipped cream, chocolate, banana creme, apple, peach – you name it. Maybe next year we’ll get him making some gooey butters again 🙂 We went to the St. Louis Thanksgiving Day parade – Ava and Helena were in the parade. When we left Minnesota it was 17F and when we got to St. Louis it was 57F – and their paper said the weather was “Cold” – ha!

We also celebrated Christmas while we were there…

Christopher got a lazer tag game. Here they are at extremely close range laying some hurt on each other. He would switch between shooting Colleen and shooting himself (so he could hear the sound effects when he was dead).

We got back to Minnesota on Saturday afternoon and it was 40F with no snow on the ground…I started to get the Christmas lights out to hang outside on the house but most of the strands didn’t work so good…so I decided I’d buy more lights the next day. Had I known it was going to snow that night I might have had more urgency…

It’s official. Beth is back to work!!! Her first day was filled with HR stuff so she’s hoping day 2 is a bit more exciting. We had her chair decorated and she got to eat off of the “You’re Special Today” red plate…and even Orca celebrated by making some confetti (out of her “Puppy Pad”).

We got the annual note from school today saying “We will be going outside to play at recess every day unless the air temperature or wind chill is below -10F”. Sometimes I’m glad I’m not a kid 🙂

Megan with her sled dog. Mush!

Thanksgiving is coming up…so Christopher made an…alien?…hat in school. The things they teach kids these days.

Orca has a new friend in the backyard. He comes to watch her play all the time now. And sometimes screams out a cheery “hello” as he swoops by to wave at her.

Yes we can. It’s a new day. I got it from my mama.

Which of those songs from will.i.am doesn’t fit with the others (yet has millions more hits)? Rock beats scissors, bikinis beat Barack. I’m down with that.

The kid’s and Beth realized that Obama’s inspirational “Yes we can” theme should be tributed to Bob the Builder.  I’m slow and hadn’t made that connection yet although I’m sure punks all over the country caught on to this months (and years) ago…either way it still made me laugh.

We got our first real snow this week. Only a few inches and gone in an hour or so but it was enough to get the kids out sledding and playing for a while.

Several weeks ago we were at Toys-R-Us after Colleen’s birthday. We were pretty clear that the only person getting anything on this visit would be Colleen. At one point Megan came running up with one of those giant plastic Crayola crayons that are actually coin banks (you know, they are like 2+ feet long). She says she wants that and isn’t leaving without it. I tell her no, blah, blah, blah. She then says “I’m licking it, then it will be mine and we have to get it” – by the time I take 2 steps towards her she has already given it several good licks thinking this will improve her odds of having it leave the store with her. Much to her dismay some other lucky kid will get her spit on a crayon.

Remember that corn maze and huge corn pit from a few weeks ago? When we were there they had a magic show and they made a lady disappear. Beth immediately recognized the lady and said she met her recently and she lives a few houses up on our street. When I was taking the kids around the block trick-or-treating there was a house that was handing out passes to the corn maze. The guy said he ran out of candy and I started talking to him. Turns out his dad is Sever Peterson who owns the place (Sever’s Corn Maze). He said that part after I had already inserted my foot in my mouth by saying something like I was glad he was handing these out because I had to take out a loan to pay for our trip there a few weeks before. I did talk him into giving me some corn seeds next year for our garden 🙂

It’s turning into a busy year for the East Coast Thompson’s. Two new babies, an adoption, and a wedding. Plus the Indiana wedding in January. Fun stuff.

We are one week away from Beth starting work. It has been a whirlwind – daycare arrangements, pick-up and drop-off arrangements from school, figuring out meals and bills and doctor appointments and holidays and vacation schedules. I think if we had another month or two to prepare we would just about be ready for all of this. Yes we can.

Time to get ready and go pickup Colleen from a sleepover on the way to church…

Beth got a job!  Her first real interviews in 7 years (ok, she had a few phone interviews two years ago) and she nailed it.  Now come the big changes to our family as we try to prepare for this in the next two weeks – yikes!

Here are the monkeys on Halloween.

Can you believe I wore this 30+ years ago 🙂

This stretch of beautiful weekends and great weather continues. The kids don’t need snow to have fun on our hill!

Here is Megan playing with her puppy (wearing her free t-shirt from the Mall of America)! It’s all fun and games until somebody gets their skin punctured!

We got our first snow today!  The wind gusted up to 50 mph so all afternoon the snow was whipping sideways.  None of the snow stuck to the ground but it looked miserable outside.  That pretty much summed up the weekend.  Purdue lost to Minnesota in football on Saturday so going in to work tomorrow will be loads of fun 🙂  I guess if we only let them beat us at home once every 17 years then I can’t complain too much.  We had to use our 3rd string QB which had predictable results.  Blah. The highlight of this weekend was seeing a coworker’s baby and then going out on a “date” (the church had their annual babysitting night so we took advantage of that). We got some good Italian food in St. Paul. I’m a sucker for places that have tasting menus with several courses – and the food was yummy – even the anchovies 🙂

Last weekend we had some friends from college visit from Chicago – Genevieve and Tom, and their three kids that are the same ages as our kids.  It was a fun weekend.  Of course we toured the fire station, also went to this huge corn maze (and they had tons of other things to do there like this monster-sized corn pit), and we couldn’t avoid going to the MOA too for the rides.

10,000 bushels of corn!!! You can only see half of the pit in this picture – and it was at least 2′ deep too.

Just like you taught me years ago dad…we aimed for the prettiest girls out there 🙂

Orca is getting bigger…and needed a bath…

And finally, a brief first play by Megan.

p20081004-megan-play

Beth’s parents were in town last weekend.  They chose the weekend of the city’s open house so they got to see a few somewhat-controlled car fires, see an auto extrication demo, and go for a ride on a fire truck with the sirens blaring (Christopher was in the front seat and in charge of the sirens – even though he couldn’t quite reach them)!  They also got to see several of the kid’s soccer games, see all of the kid’s classrooms, and we had s’mores by our new fire pit too. We also went to dinkytown (near downtown Minneapolis) and drove over the new 35W bridge that replaced the one that collapsed last year (we made it – whew!).   It was a fun weekend.  And of course the Manhattans (aka “drinking man’s cocktail”) were flowing.

Randy Pausch would be proud of us based on the following photo (which doesn’t show the full story – they had leaves everywhere). Believe it or not, I was NOT the one in charge of the kids as they made countless trips to the basement with leaves from the backyard!!! All in the name of fun – thanks for the inspiration Randy 🙂

Last week Dominos had a promotion during fire safey week. If you ordered a pizza then it may get delivered in a fire truck. If you let the firefighters into your house and they confirm that all of your smoke detectors are working then you get your pizza for free and also get a free sample of one of their four new tasty sandwiches. I volunteered to help with that one (because the fine print stated that all firefighters would be fed). So…I got to be the deilvery driver – I drove my crew and a professional pizza delivery gal on several deliveries. Most people hadn’t heard of the promotion so they were very startled when I would turn on the lights and siren at their house!!! Unfortunately only about half of the people had their smoke detectors working…bummer for them. Here we are with the pizza sign on top of the truck 🙂

We have some friends from college coming up today (Friday) so I took today off. This morning I took Colleen and Christopher disc golfing again to Bryant Lake. It was a great fall morning. They both played the entire course – and kept their own score on each hole. I hate to be a poor sport and rub it in, but…I absolutely whooped them!!! I got a 60 which is par for 18 holes (4 birdies, 4 bogies), Colleen got a 139 and Christopher got a 147. Ha – in your face ya little punks! They love it out there – they also liked watching me climb way up a tree to violently shake Colleen’s disc free. We had two separate people give us discs too – crazy. They found discs and decided to give them to the kids instead of keep them – what great attitudes out there from strangers.

When we got back to home we played outside for a while and enjoyed the day. I gave the kids rides on a tarp filled with leaves – my goal was to whip them around so fast they would go shooting into the yard – which of course they loved 🙂

We planted our dahlia’s very late this year…they just made it before winter arrives…

We tried a new apple place last weekend – Afton Apples. Every year we love going to Sponsel’s but this year I wanted to try this new place that I read about. It was farther away and we found out not nearly as good. But we had a good time anyway…and also picked a ton of raspberries (Beth made 20+ jars of jelly!). Beth picked raspberries for most of the morning and I got to play with the kids which was nice. One of these years we’ll have to get a pile of hay dumped in our yard – the kids would stay entertained for days!