MN Thompson's

Colleen had a tropical sleepover birthday party this year.  Only girls were invited, and I think there were 8 total.  Four and a half ended up spending the night (one left at midnight which wasn’t a complete surprise).  The party went great – Beth has always been a master at planning and running the kids’ birthday parties.  To keep with the tropical theme we played musical beach towels, pass the coconut (complete with a real coconut), and some kind of bizarre drag queen relay race including goggles, lei, grass skirt, and Beth’s old swim suit tops – the girls loved it!  They had a treasure hunt in the backyard and did some other things too.  It’s fun watching her friends grow up from year to year and seeing how they think and interact with each other.

It’s been busy lately. Watching the debates, watching SNL make fun of the debates, watching attack ads, avoiding all of the political phone calls – fun times. My mole was a blue nevus. Completely benign. I miss it already. I was relieved to see that when I googled ‘blue nevus’ that mine didn’t look anything like most of the ones out there – if so I think I would have removed it long ago! Beth’s parents will be in town this Thursday. Next weekend we have some college friends coming up. The weather is still great – getting colder at night but they’re saying we’ll have some more days in the 70s.

I coudn’t believe I got a call the other day asking for Uncle Dave. That was great news (although a month earlier than we all expected)! Congratulations Katherine and Erik, and welcome into the world baby Sarah!!! We look forward to meeting you in January at the wedding!!!

One final picture of our tired little baby…eating a lollipop.

Colleen will be ocho tomorrow.

Here’s what’s on her mind…

My favorite food is…mommy’s chili and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

When I grow up I want to…be an artist

My favorite stuffed animal is…all of my Webkinz

My favorite color is…light green

My favorite song is…Crazy Frog

My favorite holiday is…Halloween

My favorite season is…Winter (because I like to sled)

My favorite thing to do is…play with friends

If I could do anything tomorrow I would…go to Build-A-Bear workshop

We had her birthday dinner tonight because they eat dinner at church after choir tomorrow (every Wednesday).  Things are good.  The kids are all enjoying school.  Christopher is mastering the bus (all he talks about is getting to trade Pokemon cards on the bus now).  The puppy is still keeping us busy and happy.  We had an absolutely beautiful week this week.  The days are getting shorter but we’re making the most of it.  Here’s Megan in the stream.

And our beast on the Bosu (she’s king of the hill).  She has actually used this to launch herself onto the couch.

Recognize this costume?

I was in charge the other night while Beth was at a meeting so Megan and I decided to try on some costumes. Hard to believe that I wore this same hand-made one over 30 years ago. Megan was excited to wear it – we’ll see if that lasts for another month. I think both Colleen and Christopher wore it too at some point. She didn’t want to take it off and tried sleeping in it. We found out pretty quickly that Orca really liked it too – the mouse’s tail was irresistible to her!

These past few weekends have been very busy. Last weeked was soccer pictures so we had pictures at 11:00 and 12:30 and then games to coach (and play) at 3:00 and 5:00. This weekend was just the two games to coach, but I ran a 5K this morning and had a fire call in between. The weather is absolutely perfect. 70’s and dry and sunny. I got mad at myself for being lazy a month ago and registered for several 5k races and a bike ride. For 5 consecutive weekends I have either a 5k or 30-mile bike ride. I’m around 26 minutes for each race – I doubt I’ll ever run much faster than that – too much work. This last one was great because instead of posting the results as minutes per mile they posted the results as minutes per kilometer. 5:06 sounds a lot better than 8 something.

Colleen scored a goal in soccer the night after Christopher did – I love the feeling of watching them do that. It was awesome to see Christopher’s first goal ever. It’s a lot more common for Colleen but she still gets excited. We treat them to ice cream afterwards so we are all rooting for a lot of goals 🙂

Colleen’s team is the bumble bees and Christopher’s team is the frogs.

Fall is such a wonderful season…lipstick, pigs, pit bulls, subpoenas…who could ask for more.  Just when we were starting to think this was going to be another boring election year.

So Christopher’s first day of school last week couldn’t have gone better.  It turns out his bus driver didn’t know where the route was so he waited at the other end of the block…and also was early…so Christopher missed the bus going to school.  And then when it was time to come home the bus pulls up and Colleen gets off…but no Christopher.  Beth asks Colleen “where’s Christopher?!??!”.  Colleen says she never saw him get on the bus…so Beth runs after the bus and calmly (yah, right) let’s everyone know they need to find her son who was supposed to be taking the bus for the first time.  The bus driver asks out loud on the bus if anyone is Christopher…he’s not there.  A bit of time passes and the bus driver goes from kid to kid on the bus asking them if they are Christopher…sure enough, this time Christopher decides to respond and he gets off the bus (whew).  But then Beth asks him “where’s your backpack?”.  He says he must have left it at school…at which point another kid walks up behind him and hands him his backpack…it’s going to be a fun year 🙂

Megan started preschool this week.  She is naturally more outgoing and loves it.  I’m guessing this is what I must have looked like on my first day too.  We’ll have to dig out some of my old photos.

Today Christopher scored his first goal ever in soccer.  It was the first (and only) goal of the season for the frogs.  He was stoked – so excited.  And even more excited to go get ice cream.  He also proudly told me today on the bus is the first day he ever got a pokemon card!  Big day for him.  Here’s our proud goal-scoring, pokemon collecting, bus-riding kid.

And here’s our fleabag…

I promised I would put some pictures up from Beth and the kid’s trip to St. Louis. The week they got back is when Raja died, and then we went on vacation, not to mention focusing on the Olympics, and then we were distracted by political BS for a few weeks, and that’s most of my excuses for waiting so long.

I searched the Internet but I couldn’t find a rule that says if you went to a certain school in northern Indiana that you always had to force at least one of your kids to wear a t-shirt from there.  That made it challenging to find pictures to post, but I think I managed to avoid most of it.  Go Boilers!

Megan and Hayden in the backyard.  He’s half as young and twice as big as Megan 🙂

Colleen and Helena in a hot air balloon at Six Flags.  This was right after Colleen got stung by her first bee ever – in the ear – she didn’t even realize she got stung.

Chillin’ back at the crib.

 At the zoo, hanging out with the penguins, getting wet by the water misters.  The St. Louis zoo is great…and free!

Everybody at Grant’s Farm.  The kids got to feed goats and see clydesdales and play in water and ride a tram.  I have never been there, but Beth says she found out they serve free beer…bingo!

School started this week.  Yes, this week.  Yes, I know everywhere else in the country started a week or two ago.  Why so late?  Because Minnesota kids are so smart the rest of the country needs a week or two to catch up.  So what do you think of Palin?  Caught fishing without a license – totally unacceptable – that’s where I draw the line.  I can’t stop laughing at the comments now about her and the situation her daughter is in…this makes her more real…this makes her one of us…we love her even more now.  I don’t remember Bill Clinton suddenly become more real or becoming one of them after he got caught doing you know what with you know who.  The nude photos are coming…you just wait.  While I’m on the border of political topics, here is Megan at the state fair with her new hero in the background.

And we managed to get a picture of Christopher and Orca…he isn’t as camera happy as the other two.

Megan still won’t put her down…poor little puppy.

Here’s why we call her Orca…or maybe it should have been Jaws.

Ok…the one’s you’ve been waiting for…the first day of school (which was yesterday for Colleen and today for Christopher).

After a rough first week of school why not come home and relieve stress by swinging uncontrollably over a mud filled pool.

We just got back from 5 days on the North Shore. We stayed in Grand Marais at Cobblestone Cove. The condos were beautiful and had a great view…

The kids were so excited for this place because it had a kitchen. Incredible…a kitchen…as if they had never seen a kitchen before. That’s all they were talking about before we got up there. Once we got up there their new favorite part was this big, finished attic space that looked over the master bedroom. Here they are in that space pretending they are in jail.

Since we had a ‘fridge for the week, on the way up on day 1 we made several stops (all for Beth – can you believe it?!?!)…picked up some beer at Fitger’s Brewhouse, some smoked fish at Russ Kendall’s Smoke House (which I later made into fish pate…those three years at the fish market paid off!), and a few pies from Betty’s Pies. We also ate at the New Scenic Cafe (I have no idea what I ate but it was fresh and better have been good for me) and then stopped at Gooseberry Falls.

Here’s Colleen making her parents very nervous…

We’re way up top in this one…

Dinner our first night was at the world famous Sven and Ole’s where we got the Haviian Zah (other choices were the Uffda Zah, Vild Vun, etc – you get the picture). The world’s worst bartender works at this place – complete moron. If you’re ever in the area definitely order a beer…stay away from the mixed drinks…I learned a valuable lesson by watching him struggle with the people in front of me (bloody mary in a paper cup and he was very confused about what else to add to the scotch on the rocks).

The North Shore is a stream-crossing, rock-climbing, stone-skipping dream come true. You could throw as many rocks as you wanted into the water all day long and somehow the pile never dwindled. The kids never tired of taking off their shoes to practice jumping from rock to rock while crossing many a stream – it was fun to watch our monkeys in action. Christopher threw more rocks than anyone and had a blast.

Day 2 we started at the Grand Portage National Monument.

And also visited the Grand Portage State Park which is about 100′ from the Canadian border – you turn right in front of the check point. This area was deemed the “grand” portage due to a 9-mile trek necessary to avoid the highest falls in the state (120′).

For lunch we ate at Nanny-nanny-boo-boo, or something like that. Food was good – great soup and fish sandwich. The kids could have thrown rocks all day…

We spent the afternoon at Judge C.R. Magney State Park. This was one of my two favorite parks – great hiking and views. The Devil’s Kettle is located here…tons of water pouring into a hole and supposedly they don’t know where it goes (other than straight to hell apparently).

Day 3 started at the Temperance River State Park. This was another great park that allowed the kids to play in a stream and had some great views of the water. Water levels were pretty low while we were there – I think it would be amazing to see some of these sights after a good, strong rain.

The trails in all of these parks were very clearly marked and they even built stairs to get over rough parts (I sure don’t remember any man-made stairs when we climbed mountains in New Hampshire the last few summers -that would have been nice!).

After lunch at the Coho Cafe in Tofte (which unfortunately would have been better had the servers spoken english and been knowledgeable about their menu) we spent the afternoon on Artist’s Point in Grand Marais. This was another spot that the kids loved. I jogged through this whole area the morning before and knew this would be a great hit. They could explore as much as they wanted without getting in to too much trouble.

We spent Day 4 at Cascade River State Park. Easy hikes – we looped around on a few trails and threw some more rocks 🙂

We had a superb lunch at the Angry Trout Cafe. The food/drink, location, decor, service, etc was perfect. Highly recommended. The Dockside Fish Market next door supplies most (all?) of the restaurants in the area with fish – we had great service there too on our stay.

Imagine that, throwing more rocks in Grand Marais…

Megan loved walking past this modified mower-bike…it was right next to where we stayed and she stopped to talk about it every time we passed by.

I’m not sure why Beth went out of her way to get a picture of Christopher giving two thumbs up in front of this place 🙂

Grand Marais was a relaxing getaway. I’m glad we went and saw more of Minnesota. I didn’t realize how few cities (and people) exist on the North Shore. It’s basically one single-lane road up north…the whole time I kept comparing it to the coast of New Hampshire, Mass, or Maine. Land on the left, water on the right…the sights were good on the North Shore, but not even close to what you see driving up the New England coast. The food was good on the North Shore, but got to be predictable after the first few stops…nothing compares to the variety of seafood coming out of the ocean. IMHO, the cities and character of New England are second to none…anyone who enjoys the North Shore should definitely get on a plane and do their own comparison.

Day 5 – One final stop on the way home…the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth. Here the kids are feeding the big fishies.