MN Thompson's

Marathon Week 5

February 28th, 2015

This past month has been a blur – I think this is the fewest pictures I’ve taken in a month in a LONG time. So…I guess this post will be more about me and my current dreams 🙂 I have this recurring dream list item to post at least one blog update each month – I need to start making this happen before the last day of each month!!! But at least it’s happening – without my dream list these would rarely get posted.

Thirteen weeks until my marathon. 13 days until my 1/2 marathon. Ran 12 miles today. Crazy to think that the farthest I ran all of last year was 4.23 miles. And insane to think that just five weeks ago I was nervous and excited to run (and planned my afternoon around) just a 5-mile run. I’m following the Hal Higdon Novice 2 training plan as closely as I can – so far it’s working great for me. I only have minor aches and pains that go away within a day of my long runs – hopefully I continue to stay strong (physically & mentally). I started eating Gu on my runs…gooey yumminess to keep the energy up…I’ve been warned by many people that it will cause tummy issues but I’m doing fine so far. I just wish the weather would improve. I am trying very hard to run outdoors for all of my runs but I’m getting sick of the below zero temps on slippery, icy, snow covered paths. I did 3-miles on a treadmill at work which about drove me insane, until I followed that up with 42+ laps around an indoor track to get 6-miles in one freezing night. I likened that mentally to running my marathon – drove me crazy to keep going around and around. My phone app had no idea where I was running most of the time either – it couldn’t track my distance accurately and had me running in mid-air and outside the building – wheeee. Here’s the craziness it came up with:

While I’m training for my marathon I also have finally decided to focus on my dream of finding my 6-pack abs (they say we all have them but we just need to find them!). This is a great goal while I’m training for a marathon because you get back from running and feel like you can eat anything and everything you want. It’s an easy trap to fall into so being even more conscious about what I’m eating now is paying off. And get ready…once I find my 6-pack I’m showing everybody, all the time. Christmas photo – yep. Selfies – yep. Work meetings – yep. Stay tuned 🙂

It was my 10th year heading out to Vail for a ski trip with the guys. The 2015 FIS Alpine World Championships were going on while we were out there so the Vail Village had extra energy and a lot more people which made for fun evenings.

Didn’t scare me one bit. Didn’t even think about it – I just crossed the line and left whatever happened next up to fate.

This is what Beth brought home last week. She got to grade that entire stack of papers. She is the TA and she found out which way the crap rolls. Shhhh – don’t tell anyone in the class – but many of their answers ended up being graded by a 9-year-old 😉

Megan and I continue to have fun with the Candy Chemistry Kit. Not sure if we’ve figured out how to use the candy thermometer yet. It seems like we know what we’re doing but somehow all of our recipes end up looking and tasting about the same. Case in point, this picture is of our salt water taffy which looks a lot like hard candy 🙂 Luckily it all tastes great.

Someone left a pillow on the floor and bad doggy decided it was for her.

Beth and Colleen are out of town at a dance competition all weekend (Fri – Sun). Christopher has a basketball tournament. They have won two games and lost one which means we get to play at least four games this weekend. Every time we get home it feels like we’re getting back in the car to play again. Our next game is tomorrow (Sunday) morning at 8:30 a.m….if we win that one we play an hour later and then we’re done. It’s been a fun season – go Eagles!

Posted in Children, Exercise | No Comments »

Data

January 31st, 2015

Everyone else has opinions, I have data! I give partial credit to Watts S. Humphrey and W. Edward Deming for that one. I met and spoke with Watts on several occasions at Carnegie Mellon and am still influenced by his dedication to metrics and improvement. I know, data & metrics, sounds boring – I’ll try to keep this fun.

In 2014 I completed over 25 items from my dream list. Some big, some small, but I kept moving and focused all year long and had a crazy great year with so much to be grateful for. I have a list of dreams in 2015 that is just as long – and this time next year I’ll have another 25 things completed. What’s the secret? I keep this list visible, look at it all the time, share it with others, know when to adjust it, and constantly keep moving forward knowing that small steps are better than being paralyzed by not knowing exactly what the big picture or long-term plan is. I have smaller, repetitive items on my list. And I have some big, scary items on my list for this year. So what’s big and scary this year? Under the assumption that I stay healthy…I plan to run my first marathon in May. Want some data for why this is scary?

I started using a FitBit last year and also started tracking my runs with mapmyrun. Looking at all the data for 2014, my average run was 2.03 miles and my longest total run in 2014 was 4.23 miles. Yep, 4.23 miles. That’s it. I ran 85 times for a total of 201 miles (including 30+ days of “streaking” at least 1-mile as part of a challenge). Since I typically ran over lunch I just went out and back real quick. Please don’t do the math and tell me how much further I have to run to complete a marathon. I used FitBit for a good part of the year too. Fitbit tracks all steps and said I went 1,668 miles and took over 3.6 million steps when I was wearing it. Sweet. Fun data.

I’m not sure what changed but for some reason a marathon (which has never even sounded close to being a good idea), doesn’t seem that daunting. Funny, given that only just today I finished the official “Week 1” of the 18-week training plan. I’m sure I’ll soon be faced with reality but it’s fun to think “I got this” for as long as that will last. I set out to prove something to myself last week since I had never ever run a total 26.2 miles in the span of one week before. I intentionally slowed down my runs (I still need to slow them down more) and was relieved when the week’s summary came back showing I ran a marathon in just under 4 hours – divided up by 6 nights of rest 🙂

But you can’t trust all data. Christopher’s team played basketball a few weeks ago and they must of had dads from the other team keeping score. Before the first half was over they had the score at 111 to 6. And it didn’t seem to bother them one bit. At least they were consistent, when we should have gone to double digits at 10 they also gave us an extra one-hundred points, so the final score for a 28 minute game was something like 126 to 115.

I got my chance to keep score this morning. My early days with the HeathKit prepared me well for the intimidating user interface of the Daktronics 3000. I think the “3000” stood for how many years old the score keeping system is.

Ready for more data? How many plows does it take to remove an inch or two of snow from the highway in Minnesota? One? Two? Three? More? Looked out my window at work and I almost missed their parade! I now have a data point showing where traffic jams start.

How about this for data…an hour or so of work at Feed My Starving Children, packed enough food for hundreds of meals. Genesis helped us and we packed enough food to feed seven people, every day, for an entire year (or, hopefully help feed their family and village throughout the year).

Colleen collected lots of data over the past few months while working in Beth’s lab. She wrote it all up and created an awesome presentation for the science fair. She did a fantastic job preparing for the science fair and ended up winning first place for her age and area (8th grade Life Science). Nice work!!!

We’ll have to continue to gather data but it appears that the rule is they only let one person win each year whose name either doesn’t contain a ‘v’ or start with ‘s’ 😉 (the other winners were: Spicher; Syed; Varun Saini; Smrithi; Verma; Anvi; Voehl; and Janvi Shah)

Speaking of Colleen…I realized that I asked her a bunch of birthday questions last year but never actually put them on my blog (oops). Here they are:

Colleen’s 14th Birthday

My favorite food is…apple sauce
When I grow up I want to be a…scientist (not sure which kind)
My favorite restaurant is…Punch Pizza
My favorite possession is…phone
My favorite color is…yellow
My favorite song is…Imagine Dragons
My favorite book is…The Selection
My favorite movie is…Fault in Our Stars
My favorite holiday is…Christmas
My favorite season is…Fall
My favorite thing to do is…dance
If I could do anything tomorrow I would…hang out with friends
It would be a really good year this year if…I get on the dance team

Some data is more subjective. Here’s Megan simultaneously using and loving her Christmas gifts (she requested not to be shown in this picture). She’s baking cookies and also making candy from her Candy Chemistry set. There’s a big jar of blue sugar water in front of her to make crystal candy (4 cups sugar to 2 cups water – ick).

Here’s data showing what happened to our backyard when I accidently left the hose on overnight. Yikes. I hope the neighbors don’t notice.

Ice Castles came to Eden Prairie this year. They were cool to see but not quite as neat as I was hoping. We had a fun time and got some good photos.

Megan chose to stay home so we replaced her in this photo 🙂

One down, eleven to go 🙂 In theory you’re supposed to travel all over Minnesota to find these scavenger hunt items, but it would be great if more of them come to Eden Prairie instead.

Here’s a data point showing that Genesis will be in trouble when she is ready to fly back to Venezuela. She arrived to Minnesota carrying two bags…when she brought everything up from the basement to move into the new host family’s house in January it took over 10 ten trips and was about 20 bags of stuff. Uh….good luck with that. We were all shocked. The other host family was worried they would have to go home to get a bigger car…but we packed it in and still had room for their kids too!

Not sure if Megan was going to go bowling or finish the snowball fight with Christopher based on the size of that mega-snow-ball she was building.

Christopher proudly made Tenderfoot in scouts (psst, don’t call it Stinkyfoot or Tenderheart – both are close and possibly accurate, but not quite correct). He actually had it all done months ago but due to football, wrestling and basketball we haven’t been able to make the meetings. Congratulations Christopher!

And here’s some data from Lumosity. Who knows if I’m really getting smarter and if these charts will go up and up regardless of what I do. But I do like that it asks about sleep and happiness. When I first started it I was grumpy most days so that has improved over time (I really needed those two and a half weeks off at Christmas). I also still am reminded that I need to get more sleep…got to make that happen. My favorite thing to do is compare my stats to the age group that mom is in to see how I compare 🙂

Posted in Birthday, Children, Exercise, Life | 1 Comment »

Out with the old

January 1st, 2015

It’s a sad day in the Thompson household (ok, not that sad, but keep reading). I was in the bathroom upstairs and Beth yelled to me. I could hear the concern with a touch of sadness in her voice, so I hurried up and got downstairs as soon as I could to find out what happened. When you’ve been on the receiving end of a phone call delivering tragic news it seems you are always somewhat on guard for the worst possible news. As it turns out…after over 20 years of faithful service…our pre-wedding toaster-oven has finally toasted its last bagel. We could tell in the past few weeks that senility was setting in a bit as we’d choose one darkness setting and the oven would surprise us with some extra crispness. In the past few years we’ve lost our early 1990’s sandwich maker, curling iron, and now the toaster oven – I bet our original blender is starting to get worried, especially as we’ve recently been given a “bullet” and a fancier blender.

I got some year-end statistics from a tool I use when I write these blog posts showing the # of views I got by country in 2014 (not quite sure how this is calculated but I don’t really believe any of it is showing data I’d find relevant). I want to give a sincere thank-you to my faithful blog followers in Uruguay, Gaudalupe, and Finland. Your support this past year has given me the energy and inspiration to continue posting blog updates.

I’ve been off of work for over two weeks. It took me at least a week to unwind, and I’ve finally been able to spend some time relaxing, reading, playing, etc. This includes a few days working on a puzzle. When doing puzzles you can’t help but tell Katherine-puzzle-stories which always makes me feel closer to her. I plan to get another puzzle out tonight or tomorrow too 🙂

This is the time of year when so many people focus on resolutions. I continue to achieve my dreams using a list I keep updated all the time (if anyone ever wants to know more about this or wants me to help them get started following this very simple framework don’t hesitate to ever reach out to me). I committed to at least one blog post per month (which I did). And another one of my dreams/goals in 2014 was to get 100 followers to my Suicide Survivor Pinterest board (that I created last year). I met that goal by July. I still continue to post pins and get followers. I always wonder about the story behind people that decide to follow my board. I hope the positive quotes and the comments I add are able to help people. I’m sure many are having hard times over the holidays. Just this week several new people started following me, including this person who hasn’t ever posted or liked anything else, and is only following me (her stats are in the first row) – the pressure’s on for me to post some good stuff 😉

Genesis (with a bit of my help) made Pan de Jamon on Christmas Eve. It turned out amazing – I loved it. It was great hot that night, and also great cold (or warmed) for the next several days. Yummy! While we were making it (and not sure how well it was coming together – especially with my ham carving skills) I kept calling it pandejamonium which made me chuckle every time but I don’t think translated so well. Guess my comedy career may struggle in Venezuela (and probably here too).

Orca says thanks for the ridiculous antlers that make her the laughing stock of the doggie neighborhood. She’s been scorned – nobody has sniffed her behind all week. Sad doggie.

Christopher and Genesis out catching our dinner. The squirrels and bunnies have nothing to fear. Sigh.

This may have been Christmas night. Nice weather. No snow at all. I was fooling around with the camera when we realized my goofing off may actually create some fun effects. Ready for us to do your wedding photos???

And this was the next day – we got snow overnight!!! When are the next Olympics? Megan will be ready!

Here she is on her new Christmas sled. It lets you turn so she created a slalom course out of boxes and a watering can.

Woof! Woof!

We had a fun time with some friends a few days before New Years. They have a little birdy that likes to pick stuff out of your teeth (yuck). Here’s Colleen with Tater Tot trying to keep her teeth hidden (Tater Tot was especially eyeing her braces!).

And lastly, it was great to see my parents at Thanksgiving. So glad they could spend a week with us and we could catch up on things. Lots of fun that week. Look at that picture – is Megan taller than Grandma?!?!?

Posted in Children, Katherine | 1 Comment »

Global what???

December 2nd, 2014

The rest of the world had a record hot year while Minnesota has one of the coldest falls ever – really? Is that how it works? I still love the winter and our seasons – no complaining here. Bring on the cold and snow!

We graduated from running down the hill to jump in the leaf pile. Now you have to sit & balance on a tiny snow board and get dragged down the hill. Wheeeee!

Another fun night roaming the neighborhood. Christopher is second from the left, Megan is the werewolf, and Genesis is on the right. Christopher and his friend were gone for hours and ended up in another neighborhood with some friends…including a group of girls…first we heard of that happening with him and his buddies. And so it begins.

Colleen and her friends did an awesome job as Alice in Wonderland this year.

Love it. Now get to bed so I can eat all the good stuff!

Beth and I went out several weekends in a row to celebrate our anniversary…a few nice meals (La Belle Vie finally was one of our stops), went to Wits (with Weird Al Yankovic as a guest) and also did Prairie Home Companion’s every-few-years joke show).

We did the zoo on a nice, crisp fall day. This zoo is great for the animals (natural habitat surroundings and lots of land) which means it isn’t always so great for the humans, but this day we got to see several animals fairly close up. We even had a moose come right up to a fence which was fun.

Buca!!!

My version of this is that I asked Megan to take the cattails from the pond and carefully throw them over the hill so that the seeds didn’t all land in our yard…I’ll have to write that down for her next year 🙂

Remember that big rock that used to be right next to the driveway? You remember it. The one that didn’t used to be sitting in the street? We have cars crash into our yard every year – slight curve going downhill in a residential neighborhood – why wouldn’t everyone drive crazy fast and out of control? The lady who moved our boulder last week almost made it a 1/2 mile from her house. She also almost took out me, Orca and two of our kids. Hitting the rock deployed her air bag so I got to be first “on scene” 10 seconds after she crashed. Drive safe everybody!!!

Something about snow on pumpkins makes me want to take their picture every year. Going from scary teeth to old man toothless smile.

It seemed like a good idea at the time to leave the trampoline up for one snow storm. But then the weather turned and it looks like it won’t get above 40 until May the way things are going. Sigh.

Baby got back. Having fun at the intern festival for our school.

The snow chairs are back!

This snow man is going to need an all-over body waxing!

Posted in Animals, Children, Weather | No Comments »

Gesundheit – Hammerblahblahblahgen

October 26th, 2014

Happy October! What an incredible fall! Beautiful every single day – this weather is amazing. Lovin’ it!

Genesis (accent on that first ‘e’) joined our family in August from Venezuela and will stay with us through January. It’s been great getting to know her and show off the area once again. Fall is such a busy time for us with school and sports but hopefully she isn’t feeling too neglected. I guess her culture is different from ours because we took her to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and the first thing she did was start shoving Colleen around…

No rickshaw to be found so Colleen found the next best thing.

These three stink at hide and seek. Worst ever.

This is what happens when you send daddy to the farmer’s market alone with the kids. The lady told us they can live in your home and that they are pack animals so we’d have to take more than one. Duh – who would take just one to live in their home?

You do everything you can to raise respectable kids that won’t embarrass you wherever you go…and look what happens…whose kids are these?

Minnesota Harvest not only has apple picking, donkey butt coffee (I know this will be a shocker, but we tried it and it wasn’t nearly as good as it sounds), and a sunflower maze…but also is the weekend home of Cactus Willie (You don’t know Cactus Willie? Sometimes sings with Boxcar Bob and their latest album is “I Just Don’t Look Good Necked Anymore” – did that help ring a bell? I have to admit I really do enjoy that music while I’m there!).

Largest candy store in Minnesota. As long as a football field. Every kind of candy you can think of. Amazing. We limited the kids to $3 each and somehow that worked out just fine. I ended up spending $20+ on just myself though 🙂

My Christmas shopping is done for all of you.

Dude at Don Pablo’s had Colleen stand on the bench wearing that monster hat and then he shouted at the top of his lungs “Attention everyone – it is Colleen’s birthday and we want you to help us celebrate…”. We were expecting the typical embarrassing song but none of us had ever heard anyone shout that loud in a restaurant like that before. It got everyone’s attention. Fun stuff.

This is what several of the windows in our house look like. Megan has been researching how to grow all sorts of plants. We’ve been buying new fruits and she carefully dissects the seeds and plants them just right. Some are in windows, some are in the freezer, some have dates on the calendar when they need to be moved, or frozen, or unfrozen, or whatever. She is really into it – still not sure how we’re really going to grow orange, lemon, and lime trees in Minnesota but I’m sure she’ll figure that out too!

This is an 8-minute video but way cool. Pearl Jam played a concert in St. Paul a week or so ago on October 19th. Eddie Vedder is the lead vocalist for Pearl Jam and invited Dr. Jakub Tolar onto the stage. Dr. Tolar is one of Beth’s bosses at the University of Minnesota and he does amazing things with pediatric blood and marrow transplants. You can watch the video and see the powerful connections that he makes – so cool! Here is what Dr. Jakub Tolar said at the concert (seriously – how many times do you go to a concert and hear a Dr. speak about transplants, genetic disorders, and gene editing?!?!?!):

VIDEO 1: Cause The Wave: EB Research Pearl Jam Xcel St Paul MN 10/19/14

“You have no idea how the 30,000 of you boil down to a single kid that Ed had in his hands in my hospital yesterday. He’s the real thing. When you listen to his music, his lyrics, you know that it goes to your brain, your heart, to your marrow. I am a bone marrow transplant physician and what I do for a living has lots to do with what he does for a living. What we both do is give people hope. And that is why almost immediately we understood each other because he’s the real stuff…When you go back home to your loved ones remember that this is a man who understands that the essential is invisible – it’s down, down here (heart & inside you) and he gets what we all need to know which is if you want to fight a disease like EB, you go to www.debra.org and you do something about it. You don’t just wait. Thank you!”

Here’s another video on this topic. As Dr. Tolar says…do something about it…don’t just wait.

VIDEO 2: Cause The Wave: Eddie Vedder and the EB Research Partnership

And while I’m talking about Beth’s work – here’s the window sill outside of her lab. I was a firefighter for 10 years and I’m still puzzled over this one 🙂

Colleen and I did a few 5k races this year. This one was to support a nearby fire department. Cool how the fire department draped the flag over power lines, huh?

Christopher’s worst nightmare…not spiders, snakes, or heights…but balloons popping…

It was a busy month for me and Make-A-Wish. Two of my wonderful wish children went on trips. One went on a Hawaiian Cruise and the one below went to Disney World. Amazing kids and families. Do something about it…don’t just wait.

Pick on someone your own size 98 (Christopher did ok holding his own with this guy).

Can you believe that none of these shots went in? Camera angle (and not being able to tell ball direction) make it look so easy. Looks like a ninja is shooting on Megan in the first one!

We went to the St. Paul Farmers Market (and went to the Minneapolis Farmers Market the following weekend) and then walked across St. Paul to watch people finish the Twin Cities Marathon. St. Paul has several Peanuts sculptures. I’m not sure what Colleen’s deal was but she was mad at Lucy for picking on Charlie Brown all those years I guess. Somewhat related – Beth and I went to see Wits this past Friday night and one of the skits was Lucy and Charlie Brown having a conversation. Lucy was in complete denial about ever moving the football and instead turned the table on Charlie Brown and implied he was a bit delusional and crazy (e.g., a kite eating tree, a dog that thinks he’s a war pilot) and she even took it so far as to say that Snoopy had died many years prior. It was a funny skit and I may never look at Charlie Brown the same way again. Wits is always great. After watching the finish line to the marathon Colleen decided that she and I should run a 1/2 marathon next year – I’m very excited to make that happen! Will be a great time for us!

This is the lake I run around during lunch. Check out all the ducks last week – as far as the eye can see. They are enjoying the fall weather too!

We went to the fire open house again. They replaced the car burns with this sprinkler demonstration. It was very powerful and told a great story. No home sprinklers and you lose everything. Home sprinklers and your stuff gets saved. Are you listening?

Of all the cool trucks to get his picture taken next to at the city-wide open house (e.g., fire trucks, swat vehicles, huge snow plows) this is the one that Christopher chose. Made me smile.

The best part about this picture at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is that we get scolded for being within 1′ of the sculpture. Uh, ma’am, please back up if you’re going to stare at the monkey butt. I see now that I had many security guards captured in my photo and yet they still caught us – they are good.

Arepas. Yummy, yummy arepas. Genesis has made these for us a few times now – you fill them with meat or eggs or salad or whatever (just not chocolate sauce – that’s where you draw the line we figured out). Yummy!

Boooo!

Hammerdrunkenwoodandnailgame! Beth and I went to the Purdue vs. UMN football game. We sat 3 rows up on the 40 yard line, right behind the Purdue bench. Great seats, beautiful day, amazing weather. We went to a few tailgate parties of people we knew. Hammerblahblahblahgen is what Boilermakers were made to do!

Our annual picture in leaves.

We went to the arboretum. Took lots of pictures. Had fun in the leaves and on the trails. Genesis’ dad is a professional photographer in Venezuela so she had tons of fun with the camera and showed off her skills.

15 years? Can you believe it? Selfie with mouth full of brownie.

Last race of the year. Way to go Colleen!

Colleen brought home special glasses so we could watch the eclipse. It was sooooo cool. Taking a picture from my phone through the glasses wasn’t nearly as cool. I swear the sun looked like a beautiful, well-defined crescent instead of a glowing blog through the glasses – oh well.

Megan’s green thumb still working this year. Our final harvest of carrots. Nice work all season keeping us fed with healthy food!!!

And this is how you do it!!!

Posted in Children, Life, Weather | 1 Comment »

Random randomness

September 20th, 2014

It’s interesting (but not so much jolting now as it was a year ago) when a moment from the past with Katherine collides with the present. One of the great gifts she got me years ago was a trip to a local brew-your-own-beer place. I’ve been there 2 or 3 times to brew beer and am signed up for the newsletter. I’m not sure if I noticed in the past or if they are personalizing these letters differently now…but this is how the one from last month came to me:

I guess Katherine thought that was pretty cool because she sent me another sign via a sweating gin-and-tonic glass on my back patio 🙂

Who’s on my dad’s team? Anyone wearing red, white, and blue!!! We heard that message loud and clear several times on our Washington, DC trip. I have a huge regret of not taking a picture of one of the first members of dad’s team we saw in Ocean City, Md – a nice young gentleman (picture Kid Rock but more strung out), covered in tattoos and wearing red, white, and blue socks, shorts, shirt, and bandana. We have had some good laughs finding dad’s team members spread out all over the country. The state fair also had some fun team members proudly wearing their colors – and again, I missed my chance to take pictures. So…when I came across this member of dad’s team I wasn’t gong to miss my opportunity again. He ran the State Fair Milk Run…and believe it or not…I saw him two more times that same day amongst the 100,000 people at the fair (how did I know it was him you ask?). I changed clothes after the 5k so I would be more comfortable all day at the fair…but he wouldn’t dare change out of his team uniform! Eyes have been blocked to protect the guilty – who would dare make a grimacing face like that just because someone’s silky running shorts are a little too short and tight?

Found some pictures on my phone from our summer trip to Grand Marais. We love New Scenic Café on the way up to Grand Marais. This is when we first relax a bit, sip a beer, drive along the lake, and have some tastes of absolutely wonderful food. Braised black mission figs, honey, walnuts, sage, bleu cheese. Yummy!

I recently read something about photo faux pas and that you shouldn’t ever post pictures of half-eaten meals…so here’s what this looked like before we started:

World’s Best Donuts EVERY morning in Grand Marais. Possibly followING a jog, and followED by a walk out to Artist’s Point.

Megan and I biked to Culvers. I ordered my turtle sundae with chocolate custard as always. I saw them making it with vanilla so I tried to stop them. They ended up giving that one to someone behind us in line for free. And then they gave me mine, apologized for making me wait (it was no more than 2 minutes and I could have cared less), and they loaded up my sundae with twice as much frozen custard as we usually get to say thank you to me. Thank you Culvers 🙂

We saw a Minnesota Vikings preseason game played at the University of Minnesota’s stadium. Beautiful night for a game outside. Vikings won. We could see where Beth works from our seats too.

Find the one that isn’t a bobble head 🙂

Yes, I know, I have many talents, including graphic art.

After the game Megan was struggling to express her emotions so I got to spend time with her while everyone else went to Beth’s lab for a quick tour. Her self-imposed punishment was to wedge herself into this newspaper rack and stay there a while. Ahhhh, fun times.

Remember the wrestler Bill Goldberg? Insanely overgrown trapezius muscles? Speared people and snarled at everyone? He has always been one of my heroes – been a member of his fan club for years and I have a poster on the back of my door. So…we’re walking down a side street at the state fair this year and there is a trailer with no line and they say you can meet Bill Goldberg. I look over and see what looked to be a tiny guy sitting there who kind of looked like him. But how could there be no line to meet Bill Goldberg? Insane – I know. We watch a video and then afterword sure enough this tiny guy wasn’t so tiny as he posed with us.

State Fair. Kristin, Tom and Big A (aka Boog) came up again to enjoy the fun and food with us again.

Funny that the person taking the group selfie (groupie? ussie?) isn’t in it. Was that by design?

Even I’m confused about who’s holding which beer…all I know is the beer was free because Beth has connections at the fair 🙂

Megan loves, loves, LOVES the corn at the state fair. Sweet. Buttery. Yummaliciousness!!! Love this picture.

Megan got her wubbabubbaball. It is just like on the commercial – bouncy, wobbly, weird sounding…fun for a few weeks and then we had several families over to meet our intern and afterwards we found it popped and hidden under a pillow 🙁 I sent it in to get repaired…which seems to be their plan.

First day of school for everyone 2014. I haven’t talked to Gen about posting her picture on my blog…I’ll make sure she’s fine with that and will maybe share some pictures with her in a future post.

Colleen’s cross country meet. It is rare to get a non-grimacing face from any runners this close to the finish line. Great job Colleen!

Christopher is having a fun season playing football. He’s #73 and has green sleeves sticking out in most of these pictures which makes him easier to find.

Solo tackle!!

I didn’t notice the names on the jerseys until I was looking at all of the pictures afterwards. How cute.

This is how Megan entertains herself with the water hoses while at the football games. Shocking that she’s the only one doing this, huh?

Megan is having a great season playing soccer. She scored two goals in this game. See the ball in the first picture below? Keep looking – you’ll see it. Straight past the goalie from far out and into the net!

Celebrating the goal. Probably asking her friend not to pick her up again 🙂

Guess what happens next with this one? Let’s just say that Megan earned ice cream PLUS a topping for this game 🙂

Posted in Children, Katherine, Life, Vacation | 1 Comment »

End of Summer 2014

September 1st, 2014

Wow does time continue to fly. The summer was great but gone in a blink.

Through a screen and a bit blurry but this goldfinch is a good memory of summer before the snow hits soon enough.

Megan’s hard work earlier this year is paying off! They taste so good straight from the garden.

Beth is feeling bad that she hasn’t aged nearly as well as I have…sore topic for her…don’t bring it up.

Our annual trek to Grand Marais. Gooseberry Falls is one of our first stops – can’t break that routine. We skipped Betty’s Pies this year and ended up paying $25 for a pie in Grand Marais. It was good…but not…well, maybe it was.

I keep picturing a scene from Fantasia with Mickey commanding the water to rise and splash. Christopher the powerful sorcerer making the water rise up and obey him!

Colleen kept saying how comfortable this was and that we should try it. Uh…no.

Love that view off of our balcony. I think I like the weather better on days when it is overcast and a bit dreary…great memories of similar days in New England.

Artist’s Point. Here comes the water…

Splash!

Check out the flags blowing straight out…a very windy day in a very cold lake. I wonder how come no one else was playing in Lake Superior. Hmmm…could it be common sense?

1..2..3..

Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!

Did I just do what I think I did? Or is that hypothermia setting in?

Love it! Sisters having fun and bonding – memories for a lifetime.

While his crazy sisters were dunking themselves he was filling the lake up with rocks. For as many rocks as we throw it is amazing that the lake is still there. Megan learned to skip rocks this year…and the science behind it has me baffled. She throws them slow…and I’m not sure that they spin…and the angle is all funny…but somehow she consistently gets several skips.

Momma’s favorite waterfalls (so…is it really one waterfall or should it be one waterfalls?). We waved at some Canadians on the other side of this river that borders the countries.

My girls.

A beach with awesome rocks behind Nani-nani-boo-boo lodge.

Crabs? Sharks? Alligators? Watch those toes Christopher!

We were on the path to faith and joy – exactly what I was looking for on this journey.

You know how you press the timer button on the camera and then have that panicked run to join the family as fast as you can for the picture? I knew the rocks that I would be sprinting across were wet…but I had no idea how slippery they were. Almost lost it for the sake of this picture but I recovered and still managed to get a smile in.

Judge C. R. Magney State Park – one of our favorites.

Peeking out to see the Devil’s Kettle. We met two guys who had to be at least in their 80’s if not older out there hiking. Incredible to see them walking that far and then up and down 200+ steps.

Getting up for another sunrise. I really liked this single cloud that was also waiting to see the first rays of sunlight.

What shape is the sun in your world?

I’m no bird expert but if your beak is pointing in two different directions then I think you are pretty much screwed. This bird would let you come right up to him – maybe hoping someone would pop his beak back into place – I wasn’t going to be the one to attempt that.

Last shadows before the sun rose even further.

One of the fishing boats was leaving the fish market right after dawn. The noise was incredible – every single bird was shrieking and diving and circling. They followed this boat all the way out to sea (lake) until I couldn’t see the boat any more. I loved watching that.

Scorpion at Artist’s Point

Angry Trout – one of our favorites – yummy! Their chowder is out of this world. Megan and I can’t get enough of it!

Whoa – what’s going on there.

Quack, quack.

Here’s my Hulk moment. Sometimes I have to let that rage out!!!

Dude – that moon was incredible. We saw it the night before and dragged the kids out in their pajamas to see it…but by the time we got outside it was hidden behind clouds. But the next night it came back in full force. Wow. Amazing.

Diving in.

Chris

Here’s that annual picture – they haven’t changed a bit.

We spent the night in Duluth on our way back home. The Canal Park area is great – fun location, restaurants, shopping, etc. We ate chocolate, and got smoked fish and meat, and got great coffee, and even rented a 5-person bike to tour the area. Don’t ask how, but it took all of us half of our trip to realize that Beth’s steering wheel didn’t actually do anything. And once we figured that out she still couldn’t stop trying to steer the bike – heh heh – fun times!

Couldn’t resist taking a picture of this sign…hee hee…

Megan spent some of her $$$ from grandma and grandpa on a balloon animal making kit…here’s one she made 100% on her own the next day! It was a great trip and hopefully some of you can join us in a future year. It’s a great, relaxing, cheap, low-key vacation in a beautiful area of the country.

Posted in Children, Vacation | 3 Comments »

Summer – Part IV (b-day)

July 29th, 2014

Megan’s 9th Birthday

My favorite food is…Mommy’s mac-n-cheese
When I grow up I want to be a…person who makes people have babies (which we clarified to be a nurse who helps deliver babies and helps take care of the mommies
My favorite restaurant is…Noodles
My favorite possession is…Pengui (penguin stuffed animal)
My favorite color is…blue
My favorite song is…Hunger Games I Wanna Go
My favorite book is…Spirit Animals
My favorite movie is…Catching Fire
My favorite holiday is…Christmas (because of presents)
My favorite season is…winter (so we can sled)
My favorite thing to do is…play video games
If I could do anything tomorrow I would…go to the north pole and meet Santa!
It would be a really good year this year if…I met Peeta and Katniss

Hard to have a birthday any more without a dirt cake. It turns out that Megan didn’t even want a dirt cake but asked for it because a girl at her party last year asked her if she was having a dirt cake again. Megan says she doesn’t like cake…she’s realizing it a lot earlier in life than I did…pies is where it’s at.

We had an outdoor beach ball themed party. Here are the girls running through the yard on a scavenger hunt.

And in the pool. And then to the trampoline. And then to the hammock. And repeat, repeat, repeat. We had an absolutely beautiful day for the party!

Look who showed up at the party. The girl that found him and was playing with him remembered about half way through eating her cake, etc that she had been holding him a lot. Hee hee. You ate frog germs.

Dogs don’t belong on couches, laps, or hammocks. Not in my house. No way. And don’t give me that look.

Megan loving her legos.

The ducks didn’t make a nest in our yard or around our pond as far as I know but momma duck proudly marched her ducklings through our yard so we could see them. Thanks momma duck!

On the kid’s dream list for the summer…sleep on the trampoline! Check that one off the list!

Posted in Animals, Birthday, Children | 2 Comments »

Summer – Part III (Maryland)

July 29th, 2014

I think Megan’s face says it all. Swimming in Maryland is like swimming in Lake Superior.

I know, I know, I shouldn’t have. I’ll spare no expense for my parent’s anniversary. Happy Anniversary B & B!!!

Beach time!

Surf’s up!

Colleen walking down the beach trying to be as normal as can be.

Check out the mermaid! Name this movie…”New seashells?” One of my favorite lines from a Disney movie 🙂

Olaf gonna melt.

Serious face. Touching part of 911 destruction. We will never forget.

Poor Evinrude. Megan had this critter on top of her sand pile (look closely) but a wave came and swept Evinrude away. I didn’t see this part but Beth said Megan was chasing this disgusting soggy dragonfly in the water but she couldn’t catch it in the waves. A dad saw her chasing this and must have thought she lost her goggles or something so he put his hand in the water to grab what she was chasing. Beth said the expression on his face said it all when he picked up this nasty thing – ha! Serves you right to try to be nice and help my kids! 🙂

Crabby.

Beth chose the wrong seat at this meal. We went to lunch with Kate and had a fun time catching up with her. She chose a fun place to eat too!

On this trip we had crab dip, crab cake sandwiches, crab balls (those must have been some big crabs – yucka yucka yucka), crab soup (two kinds), and boiled crab. Yummy, yummy, yummy.

Learn English you dumbies. We’re smarter than you’re! Heh heh.

This is what I have written on my dream list for one of my recurring dreams, “See at least one sunrise per year. Sunrises provide a unique opportunity to show how the journey can be as fulfilling as the destination. This is about why I see the sunrise, and what I’m thinking about, and who I see it with, and the effort of getting up early and consciously doing this.” Colleen also wanted to see a sunrise this year. So…we made it happen! We got up at 5:30 a.m. and walked 100′ to the beach 🙂 The morning didn’t look so good at first.

Lots of clouds.

It’s early. Why did I get up so early?

And the sky wasn’t looking so good. Where are you sun?

But then things started to change a bit.

And then they changed a lot! This is what we got up early for! Boom!

Fort McHenry. Sod. Bricks. Big flag. Must have been cool to see that the flag was still there in the morning.

Inner Harbor.

It was really great getting to see Pam and Wally while we were on the East Coast. Fun conversation and cool seeing where they live.

Dragon boats.

What a depressing start to a journey across the country. Hey kids, only 2200 miles to go (on the SAME road!).

Megan using her new birthday gift for hundreds of miles across the country. Thank you B & B! 🙂

We always plan to order Chicago-style stuffed pizza while in Chicago. I was honestly really trying to be a good dad and order a fruit pizza from the menu. It sounded very fruity with fresh fruit and maybe a little healthy after a week’s vacation. So…I place my order and it was hard to hear from a cell phone in the hotel’s lobby. The lady read it back to me and I said to Beth, “I don’t see s’more pizza on the website but I think she might have said “s’more pizza”. I checked the web site again but didn’t see it so we chalked it up to me mishearing it. Uh…we definitely didn’t get a fruit pizza…and I ended up getting more votes in my favor for Father of the Year from the kids 🙂

Posted in Children, Life, Vacation, Weather | 2 Comments »

Summer – Part II (Washington, DC)

July 28th, 2014

How do you know when you’ve officially entered West Virginia? Uh…somehow you just know. And just when I couldn’t think of any great birthday ideas this truck shows up in front of me. We stopped at the West Virginia University exit. We didn’t go see the campus but it looks like an absolutely beautiful area. I have on my bucket list to attend a football game so I can sing John Denver’s Country Roads at the top of my lungs. Who’s with me? Isn’t that song & video great? Love it. On a related note, we had an agreement that we could only call Beth “mountain momma” while driving through West Virginia. But y’all can call me mountain papa or big daddy whenever you want 😉

Hey mom. I’m not 2 years old. I don’t get excited by over-sized, light-up, pastel glasses. They looked absolutely ridiculous. They weren’t functional. The flashing lights were a little much. I would have assumed you know me and my style after all these years but I guess that is too much to ask for. And the biggest disappointment with these glasses…is that they don’t even play Happy Birthday when I push the button 🙂

Maybe I was a bit too harsh…I know it’s shocking but we’ve already used those glasses at our next birthday – we’ll try to give them as much use as we can! Remember when Beth used to take her time and make such beautiful cakes – look what child #3 gets (kidding of course, Megan, Colleen, and Molly (summer nanny) made this birthday brownie thingy that tasted yummy).

We started our trip in DC by having an intern give us a tour of Congressman Erik Paulsen’s office and of the Capitol. He wasn’t in his office so we got to take full advantage of taking pictures and sitting in his desk. Sitting in that desk, his job didn’t feel all that hard yet – we could get used to that.

At one point we were looking for Christopher and I think it was Colleen who said something like, “check the ground – he’ll be sitting somewhere”. Sure enough, that was typically the easiest way to find Christopher. His rear-end touched more of Washington, D.C.’s sidewalks than some people’s feet will ever come in contact with. Washington, DC is definitely a walking town and all three kids were absolute troopers on our daily excursions.

How rude for some old dude to be handing out papers or whatever he is doing in that painting while Megan is trying to get a high score. I know Megan is photogenic but I was shocked at how many people were taking pictures while she was there. Give her some privacy people.

Distract the kids with obstacles (or frozen lemonade) to get from one point to another.

Foreground: some building; middle: another building; far away: pointy building.

Another building.

A few of my lovely ladies enjoying D.C.

Time to act goofy while away from buildings and walking.

Lots and lots of money at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

The face Megan can’t help but make when she is around lots and lots of money.

Whoa – big money.

Error message my dumb computer gives me when I try to open up the previous picture of big money. Uh, yah, I’d like to photo shop this gigantic $100 dollar bill that I’m sure has all of the security features included in it so I can make millions printing copies on my home printer. Is it really that easy once I figure out how to open this in photoshop?

Christopher next to stack of shredded bills. I know it clearly shows he’s worth 1.3 million but if anyone wants this kid for 1.2 or 1.1 let me know and we can work something out.

So we toured the Capitol in the morning. Great tour by the way. Interns rock. While we’re there they say that there is a vote this evening and that kids under 12 can go on the floor and help vote. How cool is that? Sign us up. Biggest problem is that we were at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for a 4:30 tour and had to be 2-miles away at 6:10 for the kids to participate. So we finish looking at money and start walking and looking for cabs. And walking and looking for cabs. And more walking, and no big cabs to be found (no cabs at all to be found). Finally, about 2-3 blocks from the Capitol, Beth hails a cab and we very thankfully ride just those few blocks in air conditioning to arrive exactly on time. As I said before, the kids were absolute troopers as we rushed from here to there. Christopher and Megan got to go on the house floor and hang out with Erik Paulsen, and hold the gavel, and help vote, and walk all around, while the rest of us sat and watched from a balcony with no cameras (they didn’t joke around about security). Erik Paulsen was awesome. Very friendly and great at conversation. They said the kids would be on t.v. Well…I guess that’s true…if you know what your kid was wearing that day. I circled the kids so you can help see them – both Christopher and Megan are circled. They are near those big chairs where people fall asleep on national television while sitting behind the president. Christopher’s head is between the “S” and the “N” and Megan is to the right of 54 and 35 on the screen. Voting was complete chaos. No one listens. No one pauses for anything. Talk talk talk in little cliques. We did see some fairly famous people – I only recognized the mean men though.

And just when we thought this was all done…we hear what sounded like a witch’s cackle behind us (I swear I heard, “I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too”)..and sure enough, Michele Bachmann is on the steps above us saying what a good looking group we are and that she just knew we were from Minnesota. I held my kids extra tight and tried not to look directly at her (I’ve seen Clash of the Titans, I know what can happen). And then…when we thought it was all done…Erik Paulsen leads us outside (until this point we’ve walked back and forth several times underground to get to the Capitol). The interns seemed surprised that he would walk us back outside but as it turns out he was just leading us to a cool photo op. Cool dude – but did he do enough to earn my vote despite where he stands on many issues?

Pointy building.

Another building.

Water and a building.

The highlight of Christopher’s day (and definitely a highlight of my day – love his smile and laugh and energy). Standing over a hot air vent shooting hot exhaust into the air and watching his hat get launched way up. Ahhh…good times in Washington, D.C. I remember doing the same thing with a vent and pieces of paper while waiting in lines in the huge lobby with high ceilings to go up the World Trade Center as a kid in New York City.

Pointy building. It is the tallest obelisk (tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top) in the world. For five years it held the record as the world’s tallest structure, but it was surpassed by the Eiffel Tower in 1889. Glad we didn’t read this article beforehand (that one of the rangers hinted at while we were waiting for the elevator: yikes).

Backyard / house.

We had a great time in Washington, D.C. Two days was plenty of time. Sure, we could have seen more, but this was enough. Arlington would have been nice. Or Mount Vernon. But not with kids – at least not with an 8-year-old 😉 The area we stayed at in Alexandria (Old Town), Virginia was great. King Street was awesome (despite a little bit of rain). Tons of cool shops and places to eat. It was great seeing mom and dad too. And being together for some birthdays. That time goes way too fast, huh?

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