Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Minnesota Nice!

There is a teeny-tiny window of niceness in spring. It comes after the rains and bloomings and before the nasty bugs. It's not as great as the autumn, but it's very wonderful after a snowy, cold winter and it's what keeps us living here after years and years of being punished by the harsh winters!

I haven't had a ton of time to post anything but we've been super busy, as usual. We have done some landscaping, put up a porch swing, re-arranged things around the front yard and porch, built two gardens (thanks to my bro-in-law, Matt, my hero, I love you, Matt and Butch who whipped them up in about an hour!), planted flowers and gardens, went to the Capitol and the Cathedral with Paula and her kids, went to the tax rally a couple of weeks ago, and now I'm trying to gut the house and purge it of all things unnecessary (for the city-wide garage sale...my poor, poor garage!). We have a bunch of re-do things to do around here. I'll take some good before and after photos. Follow Trina's blog for more updates, she's better at getting things posted fast than I am!

We visited our favorite spot for May Flowers (in the woods by where I grew up). Mari picked me a big bunch of them.

Mari got a hold of the camera and took a few pictures of things at the baseball game. We had to do something to keep her amused. Baseball is NOT her favorite pastime.

I took this shot of Matt to illustrate how ginormous he is in comparison to the other kids on his team. It's rare, when he's with his peers, that he is NOT the tallest one in the bunch. He and Bocker both were assigned the number 13, isn't that a funny coincidence?

We filled the sandbox with fresh sand but I have since moved it from the front porch (where the sand would make it's way right into the house) to the back yard where the gardens are. It makes a great container for Tommy while I am watering the garden and dreaming of the day when it provides wonderful herbs and veggies for the family...? We'll see!

I thought this was a funny picture of the van in front of the Cathedral. I think I'll title it "Pile In!" or maybe "Catholic Clown Car".

The whole reason for our field trip to St. Paul was to visit the replicas of the state capitol and cathedral in Legos. We got so much more than we bargained for! We got in on a bill signing with the governor! Paula's rep happened to be at the capitol that very morning to be there for the (ceremonial) signing of her first piece of passed legislation and she was so excited! We toured around the building for a while and even got a private tour of the Senate floor (thank you, senate information office dude!) then we met in the hallway with a whole bunch of my favorite people...old guys and soldiers! OLD SOLDIERS EVEN! DOUBLE BONUS! Apparently, it was some kind of veteran's funding bill thingy...whatever, I was in hog heaven, I tell you! The kids were really angels all day (especially in comparison to the unruly, loud, obnoxious groups of school kids who were there that day)...until the bill signing. Uh oh.


I already felt a little awkward horning in on their special day, but RIGHT when the governor came in to speak and pose for pictures, THAT'S when Mari and Bocker decided they'd had enough of acting niceynicey and started whining "I want to go home!" and "He's touching me!" and "AAAACK!" (that was Tommy, still in the backpack, realizing that his voice echoes nicely in that high ceilinged room!). We were in the far back of the crowd, and were hardly noticed, but if I had superpowers, my kids would be fried by the doom rays that were shooting out of my eyeballs at them. Oh well, we bolted from the room, ASAP but the bigger kids got to shake hands with the governor and Paula's kids got a picture with him!
OH, and there was a sign at the Cathedral that clearly stated "Do Not Touch". It was not an interactive sculpture. Do you think that would stop Matty from going into Lego Zen Mode and trying to fix something he saw was broken on the model? We had to stop him before he morphed the Cathedral into some sort of weaponized, death star, galactic, robot monster, with wheels, and detachable fighter jets.




I'm captioning this last one:

"Yeah, Right!"