Wow! It’s been a long time. Since I last wrote:
(1) Beth found a new job
(2) with mixed emotions Beth quit a job
(3) we’ve all been to St. Louis
(4) I flew home for a week while they stayed longer in St. Louis
(5) Anne and her four kids + Earl came to MN for 4-5 days
(6) had a scout rocket launch
(7) celebrated National Night to Unite by driving a fire truck around to many block parties
(8) had 10 yards of mulch and 8 tons of crushed granite delivered
(9) and I’ve been proposed to (yep – and not by Beth)
(10) In writing this list I came up with another OCD type of thing…I hate the number 9. 7 is good. 9 is as bad as it gets.
(11) went to Friday Night Destruction
(12) finished celebrating Megan’s birthday
So where to begin? Hmmmm….I guess in the order above…
(1) & (2)
Beth’s new job is with Beckman Coulter. The best part is that it is exactly 5 miles away from home. The commute was really wearing Beth down so this is perfect. She starts the 2nd week of September – the same week the kids go back to school. I’ll have to get a picture of her getting on a bus her first day too!
(3) & (4)
We went to St. Louis for Beth’s high school reunion. I think we would both say the reunion was 10x better than we expected it to be. It was at a bar near SLU (St. Louis University) close to downtown St. Louis. They only served appetizers so it was great to not have assigned seating or tables and you could bounce around all night talking to everybody. It was a really fun time and Beth got a chance to hook up with many old friends that night and also later on in the week. The kids had a blast with their cousins all week. One of the highlights in St. Louis is going to the City Museum. I know I’ve written about this place before – it is truly an amazingly awesome place – so cool – makes you want to be a kid again.
(5) Anne and Earl, and Anne’s four kids drove up to MN and stayed for several days. It was great to hang out more, and I know Beth and the kids had a lot of fun each day playing and talking and seeing the sights. Having the pool in our backyard has been great for the kids – they are in it every night and any kids that come over are always out there too – great, cheap fun. The Mill City Museum and Mall of America were the highlights (Patrick celebrated his birthday while he was up here and he wanted to go to the Mall of America on his birthday).
Not my fire – I take no responsibility for all that smoke 🙂
(6) Next year I am running the cub scout rocket launch for Christopher’s pack/den/whatever it’s called. This year I paid close attention as there are tons of little details such as alien masks, inflatable aliens, space suit for me (ok, despite what the last guy did I’m not doing this), etc. Because Christopher was going to be in St. Louis and would miss the scout rocket launch we went the weekend before and tried out all of his rockets. Wheeee.
(7) Guess what we handed out to the kids on National Night to Unite??? Give up? There were 112 block parties this night in Eden Prairie and the fire department ended up hitting most of them. I got to drive the big red truck around this year which made it extra fun. There has been a lot of bad weather the past few weeks so I’ve been on a lot of weather related calls. Last night a page went out saying a deck collapsed that was holding 20 people. We ended up sending a ton of rescue squads, fire engines, ambulances, and police cars. There were people everywhere – like a scene out of a movie. Luckily (as far as I know) there were no serious injuries – but this will be a party that those people talk about for a while. The pink fire truck will be in Eden Prairie next week to help raise money for cancer – I’m sure it will be quite a sight.
(8) I’m not as young as I used to be. As Beth says, who works harder than me in the yard? No one. I had two helpers from a landscaping company yesterday – their job was to move the 8-tons of granite to the backyard. My little hill in the backyard was too much for them – couldn’t handle it – said they would be there all day if they had to bring it up the hill. So I told them just to pile the granite around the fire pit at the bottom of the hill and I’d take care of it. A day later and it’s all up the hill and on the paths. Big babies 🙂 I let Christopher help me mow a bit tonight for the first time. He pushed the mower through the middle of the yard, then turned it and curved back up towards the garden – and then I had him turn off the mower. I asked him if he ever remembered me making lots of straight lines and going back and forth – we laughed as we looked at the massive, random “U” he made from one side of the yard to the other.
(9) I took Megan to her first soccer practice yesterday. I’m not coaching this season which I have mixed emotions about but I think it’s the right decision given everything that is going on. As we were leaving and walking to our car in the parking lot I heard a sweet little voice yelling “coach Dave, coach Dave”. I turned around and one of the little girls from last year’s team was yelling to me. She was the one that I wrote about before that I made big strides with. She wanted to say hello and then said something that I didn’t quite understand so I asked her to say it again and she said “I want to marry you”. So sweet. Her parents were laughing – I don’t think she told them what she had planned to say to me. I said maybe she would want to marry her new coach but she said no. Makes me want to coach again – maybe in the spring.
(11) Ok, so this isn’t Beth’s favorite thing to do but she was a great sport this year. I love watching the figure 8 and flag pole races and we got to see school buses race (at one point they were 4-wide going around a curve on this tiny track). As we were driving to the race track Megan was asking if she could be in the race – I think she changed her mind once we got there. The kids had fun picking cars – amazingly Megan picked every car right all night – it helps when you can change your pick at any time to the car in the lead! They even had a pick-up unexpectedly drive out the back of the “short bus” as it was driving around the track. The night ended with the Green Mamba jet car burning two cars stacked on top of each other. This thing has a jet engine and puts out incredible heat. Fun!
(12) Remember that birthday a few years ago when I didn’t tell Beth what I wanted and I got the stone pig for the yard? I guess Megan wasn’t clear to mommy what she wanted this year and ended up with a big inflatable rolly thing that kids aren’t ever going to master. The funniest part about this is that I inflated it indoors and then we couldn’t find a door that it would fit through to get it outside!!!
Wow, you really were busy the month of July and the rest of the summer I am sure. I feel like we hardly ever get to talk to your family, but now I know why. CONGRATULATIONS BETH on your new job. What will you do with all the free time you’ll now have since you don’t have that long drive????!!!!! How great that Anne’s family and Beth’s dad could come and visit you for a few days. It’s great that your kids get to know their cousins. I decided at the last minute to fly to Indiana and Becka and I surprised Beth for her 60th birthday. We had a wonderful time that went way too fast. I start back to work a week from tomorrow. Where did the summer go???!!!! Enjoy the last couple of weeks of summer before school begins.
Love, Mom
I checked out your blog several days ago on the laptop, but don’t think I can respond using it.
We had a nice gentle rain all day today. It’s the first real precipitation we’ve had for about a month and a half. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow too. We can really use it.
Katherine and the girls came up today and Jackie and the boys came over. Daniel stopped for a little while and then went to play golf. Hope he didn’t get too wet.
I talked to Aunt Linda today. She was with Grandma T. so I got to talk to both of them for a little while. Like Mom, Aunt Linda thinks Grandma is doing pretty good.
Enjoyed your up date and the pics:
#1 & 2 – Congraulations, Beth! It’s hard saying goodbye, but you’ll soon have lots of new friends at your new job. We know you’ll do well. I looked at the website, but couldn’t make much sense of the headings, so didn’t explore much further. Too deep for me.
#3, 4 & 5 – Glad you had a nice time in St. Louis and Beth and the kids had a chance to visit with her family. I remember checking out the museum website last year. It does look like a really fun place to visit.
#6 – Doesn’t seem that long ago that we were lauching rockets across from the Bud plant. Enjoy doing things with the scouts. I hope Christopher is having fun and learning a lot.
#7 – Did Eden Prairie set a record for the number of block parties? Visiting that many in one night must have been a challenge, but also lots of fun.
#8 – Now that the weather is a little cooler I’ve started digging more rock out to make room for my pond. I may be approaching 8 tons of rocks. Can’t believe how many I’ve dug out of a little hole.
#9 – Hope Megan enjoys soccer. That was really cute about that little girl. Sounds like you made quite an impression on her. Things like that make it all worth it.
#10 – Is that an OCD thing? I think it is if the numbers are odd. I like 6, but 4 is not so good.
#11 – Preston, Daniel and I went to the Hudson Speedway last Sunday. It wasn’t as good as it used to be (no charriot or spectator races) and no school buses either. Preston liked it. I wasn’t as good as Megan at picking the winners. Most of my picks didn’t do too well. Our “rules” didn’t allow changing though.
#12 – The inflatable thing looks like a lot of fun. Have you and Beth tried it yet.
Hope Beth is having a chance to catch up on things before she starts her new job. Have a great time up north. Thanks again for the update and pics. Hope you are finding some time to relax and enjoy the rest of the summer together.