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!"

Mmmmm...Cave Snot

"Hey, wouldn't it be fun to take the kids to this?"
Says Paula, The Wonder Red, my bff, and partner in adventure.

Uh, yeah.

Except for one teeny little problemo...

See, I don't have very many fears. I can scale high heights and not even flinch. I can hop up on a horse and ride the ridges. I love roller coasters and upside down rides. I don't LIKE icky bugs but they don't scare me. Water isn't my favorite but I can conquer it...it's...it's

closed in spaces, fear of being locked in, fear of getting lost, fear of getting buried or stuck in a closet, elevator, ummmmm...oh, I don't know...something like...A CAVE!!!!








Actually, it was pretty fun and interesting. The bats were hibernating and they were kinda cute.

Here's a little something for my outta state bff:

The Forest of Wonderland/Adventures in Homeschooling

Tracy has already documented part of our adventure in (what her 2nd daughter dubbed) "The Forest of Wonderland" but I just found a bunch of really pretty photos and a video of that day so I'll post them before I do my Thanksgiving post and my Niklaus' birthday post!

The pictures do NOT do this wonderful place justice. I don't want to tell anyone where it is because it's so pretty, and surreal, and...magical! There were all kinds of colorful fungi/mushrooms and berries. I doubt we could have seen those things in the summer because of the foliage so, even though it was very cold and windy, it was worth the trip. Going into the depths of the forest, the wind died down and we really enjoyed the hike. Even with a crabby Mari who ended up being carried by me most of the way, it seemed like our angels were with us because my back didn't hurt at all from carrying the two little ones for several miles.












We also went to Alexandria again to visit Daddy at work. We stayed in the same hotel we stayed in last year. It was very cold so we were only able to go to the Runestone Museum again and swim a little at the hotel but it was a nice break and good to see Daddy while he was out of town (which he has been for so many weeks this year!). He's going out of town again soon to Red Wing, MN and we hope to meet up with an old friend and her children and see what there is to see there.

One more head on the Nielsen Totem Pole


1800s version of Wal-mart


"Oooooh! A TEA PARTY!"
"MARI! The sign says 'do not touch'! Don't go under the rop...never mind!"






Every day is a tea party day for Mari! Analise and Mari wake up every morning planning what dress they'll wear and what treat they'll make for the tea party. Sometimes Mari wears her dress up dress all day long. Actually, almost EVERY DAY she wears her dress up dress all day long.

For your listening pleasure, our pipsqueak princess, Mari singing "Bye Baby Bunting":

Post Snatcher

I thought I'd take a break from posting about politics and post some pics of the kids and I and some things we've been up to. Thing is, I still don't have a camera so I'm at the mercy of my daughter's Polaroid digital point and shoot and whether she's generous enough to download the pictures so I can use them (insert teenager eye-rolling here).

So, to get her back for being such a stingy sharer, I stole the post she just made on HER blog bwaaaaahahahahahahahaha. I'm the "cool" mom on the block for sure now (as if I wasn't before).
HERE IT IS!:

We got our things ready for school:

We went to Beebe lake (It was too cold to swim, but we walked in the sand, on the pier, and in the woods surrounding the lake):

For some reason, Tommy couldn't take his eyes off of my camera...

"Ooh shiny...."

"Must get camera!!"

"Man, I wish I could chew on that thing!!"

Tommy started sitting up on his own:
Me and Weazy learned how to install doorknobs in the basement. ( And we got the second coat of paint done in my room! Won't be long now...)
...And I got a haircut... Again :)

It's Maple Sugaring Time!

We went to the Eastman Nature Center today.

The kids learned all about Maple sap, how it gets processed, and what it's uses are. They got to try it on pancakes after the slide show, examination of artifacts, going outside to see some tapped trees, and a big cast iron pot boiling some sap. You can see by their faces that they had a GREAT time! They were all very well behaved and helpful toward each other. They also were very grateful for being able to go today. It looks cold in the pictures, but it was really very nice outside and they were out there for a long time identifying maple trees, checking sap buckets, and drilling and placing a tap. Tomorrow, we're going out to the woods near Mom and Dad's and we're going to use the tap that Matty bought at the center to try and get some sap from a maple tree. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Homeschooling rocks! I love days like this! Also, I told them they could have "off" of doing their workbooks, but they did most of their schoolwork anyway this morning because they like to have Friday's free to do what they want.

Niklaus is learning his numbers so he can play "Go Fish" more effectively. He absolutely HATES learning letters and numbers so this is a happy development for us! Also, Analise learned how to tie shoes and is doing fabulous at telling time on the clock.

I learned that if you have a baby in the Baby Bjorn in front, it's much easier on your back if you also have a toddler in the backpack at the same time. Otherwise, you end up slouching a lot. This worked today at the nature center (it probably looked really funny, but I got used to those looks when I had Mari and my sister's Polly in the same situation in D.C. last summer!). It's much easier to manage than a huge stroller that the kids don't like very much anyway. It's much more portable and it's a good abdominal workout to boot!