Merry Christmas!!

It's been an interesting couple of weeks over here to say the least... After weeks and weeks of practice, we finally finished our performance of The Messiah at Lincoln High last Sunday. Immediatey following that, I came down with a bad cold and spent a week getting reacquainted with Kleenex. I was pretty miserable, but managed to drag myself to each of the boys' three basketball practices last week at school, though I only coached one of them for Daniel on Wednesday. Just when I thought I couldn’t feel worse that day, I was leading Daniel’s Wolverines through a practice scrimmage and one of is female classmates ended up behind me just as I was trying to get away from an errant pass and next thing I know I’m doing a half cartwheel over the girl landing rather heavily on the gym floor. I think I got tangled up mostly on her foot, though, so I didn’t really do any damage to her, just my low back, so I’ve been having a great time trying to stand up straight every time I’ve bent over or had to sit on a straight chair. Advil is my best friend this week, I’m afraid. The week hasn’t been all bad, though, as I have been preparing for the Christmas festivities. The boys helped me get most of the out-of-town deliveries to the Post Office in time to arrive by the big day and we managed to get ourselves a nice artificial tree this year, a white Norwegian pine already strung with clear lights, which really looks better in our living room than a traditional live tree. We’ve been slow with the decorations, though. The boys hung candy canes all over it to get it started.

Daniel spent the night at a buddy’s house last night a couple of blocks away, so it was just Aaron and me and an evening of snuggling on the couch as we watched Christmas programs on TV. We didn’t do much of anything today (Saturday) other than hanging out around the house. I did meet my former gym teacher’s son today, Joe Folger, who mentioned Dad was his favorite teacher. He really liked the video Dad made of an old school performance back in the day. He came up from Texas for the holidays, so it was nice to meet him and his son, Brayden.

We’ve been testing out the telescope Aunt Mary Jo sent us and have yet to see the moon over here, though we’ll probably be outside the first night it reappears. I took it out on the street this afternoon here in front of the house and was able to read the license plate on a car some six blocks down the street. Depending on its configuration, it can magnify images to over 500 times their original size. I’m looking forward to seeing the craters on the moon for the first time and showing the boys what’s up there in space.

The boys are now on Christmas break from school for a good week and a half and they’ll be starting their official basketball season in terms of games once they return. Aaron’s practices will be on Mondays and games on Thursday and Daniel’s will be on Wednesdays. I’m one of two coaches for Daniel’s team, the Wolverines, and I’m one of many for Aaron’s team, which at this point is yet unnamed. If you want to see how they’re doing in school or just want to say hi directly, you can now e-mail them at their own e-mail address. If you need their address, feel free “add a comment” to this blog post and be sure to include your own e-mail address in your comment and I will e-mail you their current address. I figure that’s the best way to cut down on spam and ensure they only hear from people they know.

The boys already had their Christmas program about 10 days ago, so we only have the Christmas service to go to at Trinity tomorrow and Christmas Day. I think they may get a break from Sunday School tomorrow, which they really deserve, as they each were recognized this week for a fourth month in a row of perfect attendance. Speaking of church activities, they both participated in the “Candy Cane Lane” program this past Wednesday night at Trinity that was put on by the 6-12 youth for the kids in K-5. They learned the significance of the candy cane colors in Christianity and followed the program with a dinner of mac & cheese with hotdog slices and dessert of their own homemade white chocolate treats sprinkled with candy cane bits.

I’m looking forward to Christmas Eve and no longer having to say “no” several times a day when the boys ask, “Can we open a present???” We will be heading over to the Wignesses on Monday afternoon and spend most of the day over there, so the next couple of days will be pretty fun and entertaining for us. Unfortunately, it hasn’t really snowed up here in weeks, so we just have some ice on the roads and patches of snow here and there, nothing like what it was last year. Not that I’m complaining by any means, though.

May you all have a very merry and blessed Christmas this year and a great start to 2007!!

Great Job, Aaron!!

  

Daniel Hangin With The Home Team... (Look at his buddy's Prowler Hair!)

  

Hunter, Daniel, and Parker

  

Daniel and Mateo Enjoying the Minnesota Winter

  

  

Hallelujah!!

We are now in the midst of a genuine Minnesota winter having sustained snowfall in excess of six inches and subzero temperatures for a while now. I didn't think I'd be comparing winters to Seattle this early, but it appears Seattle may have had it worse than us, at least for a while. Today was an aberration, though, as the temperatures climbed well into the 20s and 30s and we had a bit of slush out on the roads. I doubt it will last for long, though. The ice houses are back in force on the river just a quarter mile away. I don't know if I'll ever get used to seeing half and three-quarter-ton pickup trucks parked out on what used to be a river less than a month ago. Takes a bit of a mind shift.

I imagine some of you are wondering again why it's taken so long to get this site updated. I can tell you it's been a rather tremendously busy few weeks since I was last on here what with the recent visit of Mom and Dad and getting into the thick of winter basketball. I have been out at Challenger a couple of days a week for several weeks now helping coach both the second and fourth grade teams along with the Thursday after school Kingdom Kids program and combining those activities with all the rehearsing I've been doing for both Trinity Choir and for the upcoming performance of The Messiah, it doesn't leave much time for routine things like updating a blog. Speaking of The Messiah, it's now one week from tomorrow until the performance and I've only practiced twice with the community adult performers, the rest of the time practicing with the kids at Northland with the Northland Chamber Choir. I think I'm about as close to ready as I can get, though. We will have four days of practice this week to wrap up the loose ends and then Sunday, the boys will be spending the afternoon at their friend Mateo's place to celebrate his birthday as I sing at Lincoln High. After the performance, there's going to be a "cast party" of sorts for the performers with meat, crackers, cheese, etc. and after that is the annual Trinity Senior Choir Christmas party, this year being held at the home of Steve and his wife. Joe and Jodi said they would watch the boys so I can attend the party this time around. This will be my first attendance at that annual shindig.

The boys continue to make progress in basketball and last Wednesday they picked teams for Daniel and he was selected to be a "Wolverine." All teams are named after Big-10 teams, i.e. Gophers, Buckeyes, Badgers, Wolverines, etc. He has a grey (though he calls it "ash") colored t-shirt with "Wolverines" on the front and his name and the number 11 on the back in black letters/numbers. Aaron won't start playing his games until the first of the year. Right now they're still working on fundamentals, but getting in some scrimmage time as well. I prefer scrimmage time, as I don't have to know too much about the game other than being able to spot a double dribble or travel whereupon I can blow the whistle. I did pick up a couple of DVDs, though, put out by Magic Johnson that teach the fundamentals of basketball skills and basketball conditioning, which the coach of Aaron's group said he would show the kids and I plan to watch it several times to pick up the knowledge I lack of the game.

I already told some of you the story about choir practice last week, but I'll recap here for those who haven't heard. I was sitting down in the youth room with the choir keeping warm by the new gas fireplace down there and I moved over to a couch alongside the choir where Daniel was sitting. I plopped Daniel's legs across my lap and wrapped an arm around him as I sang along with the Hallelujah Chorus. Halfway through, Daniel started singing the "Hallelujahs" right along with me until the end of the song. Some of the choir saw/heard him and thought he was pretty cute with that. He really enjoys music, as was evidenced in his recent informance the end of November.

The boys got their report cards on Friday for the first trimester and both did pretty well in their studies. Perhaps equally or even more important is they both earned high marks in areas of social skills (the "plays well with others categories). One of Aaron's strengths was stated to be his willingness to work hard at achieving the goals set for him. Daniel is presently reading at approximately the end of third grade level, a whole year in front of where he is supposed to be for his age, so he continues to make leaps and bounds in that area. Aaron received a postcard in the mail the last week or so from the Principal and Assistant Principal of Challenger commending him on his work ethic as indicated by his teachers. That was an unusual surprise to see that in the mailbox and a most pleasant surprise at that. I've posted it here for interested parties to see.

I learned a little more trivia about the "who's who" in TRF this past week. On Friday, I went for my usual lunch engagement with Aaron at Challenger. As I sat eating at his table, Francis, one of the girls who played on Aaron's Orioles baseball team this summer and who plays the cello at Challenger just starting this year came and sat down across from me and engaged me in a Minnesota "sidebar" of sorts just chatting about the cello, asking me how long I've played, etc. As we were sitting there, she mentioned something about her mom and I asked what her mom's name was, as I had never seen her at the baseball games this past summer only having met her dad who told me they spent a lot of time out in Seattle and more specifically Whidbey Island in the past. Turns out her mom is the new (since this summer) CEO of Northwest Hospital credited with turning the hospital's financial situation around in a few short months bringing it back into the black again for the first time in years. She's an RN with an MBA and years of healthcare management experience. I had not put two and two together before as her last name is different from the rest of the family's, perhaps retaining her maiden name. In any event, it was interesting to finally make the connection there. Speaking of lunch, I suprised both boys on different days last week. I went to Wal-Mart one day and picked up one of those Icee drinks on the way out and brought it to Aaron at lunchtime so all the other kids were jealous. Then I figured I'd surprise Daniel with the same thing. It was a quite unexpected surprise for both of them, though I made sure they know it's not going to happen every week... It's nice to just shake things up every once in a while.

I think that's about all I can come up with for now in the way of updates. I have to get up bright and early for choir tomorrow morning, so I'm going to cut this short. I imagine my next update may not be until after Christmas with all the upcoming music events and if so, I wish you all a very merry Christmas.

Sunday, December 17, 2006, 4 p.m. at Lincoln High

  

And Another Thing...

I guess I wasn't busy enough... At rehearsal before this morning's early service, they announced they are gathering those who play a brass or string instrument to perform in the combined Thanksgiving service at Trinity on th 22nd, so I will be dusting off my cello and hauling it to practice this Wednesday night. Thankfully, the group will be from middle school on up, so I should be able to polish off enough rust to perform at the 8th grade level (knock on rosewood). In other news, as I was on the ramp leading into the sanctuary this morning, Daniel's Sunday School teacher came up to me and told me, "Daniel's really starting to talk to me a lot now. He's come out of his shell!" She was tickled pink with his newfound courage to open up in class, something that surprised even me. She was his teacher when he first moved here, so she's had the opportunity to watch him grow since the latter half of kindergarten. I'll have to ask his teacher at school if he's been more outgoing there as well. Of course he has his fall/winter music informance in just a week or two, so it'll be fun to see how he does with his class for that.

Carpe Turkem....

Turkey Day is just around the corner and with each passing day we seem to get busier and busier. Basketball is in full swing now for the boys and with that I've been drafted to help coach both the 2nd and 4th graders, the most difficult task being the 2nd graders as it's a constant raised voice for the full hour over the noise of all the kids talking at the same time. We spent the first week going over pretty much only the fundamentals including passing, dribbling, defense, and only minimal shooting. Daniel appears to have a knack for shooting, getting I'd bet at least 80 percent of his free throws. I think it's a fantastic opportunity thus far for Aaron to learn eye/hand coordination and understand that basketball isn't all about "shooting." It was kind of funny when we went the first couple of practices and some of the other coaches were asking about my experience to which I would reply, "1978 St. Hilaire boys' "B" Squad." Now that they're in basketball, though, they have to split time on Thursdays so they go to Kingdom Kids for the first hour after school and the second hour is Aaron's practice. Daniel thankfully only has practice once a week.

I think the most time-consuming activity at this point for me is all the singing. I've been attending Messiah rehearsals very regularly at Northland lately with Jerry and Marilyn joining in the last week. I spoke with Les Torgerson last Wednesday who is presently directing the area honor band in place of Linda Samuelson, my director from Trinity Choir who is presently on Sabbatical from her position as band director at Northland. Les is actually retired from his former position as band director at Northland. Linda's son, coincidentally, is in basketball with Aaron. We're down to about three weeks now until the performance, which will be in the Lincoln High auditorium. We start our combined choir rehearsals next Wednesday for the combined Thanksgiving service at Trinity, including Redeemer, Zion, and Trinity.

Today has been more leisurely than most days. I took the boys out for brunch at Dee's and then we drove out to Black River Lutheran to join in the celebration of Donald and Ruthie Mosbeck's 50th wedding anniversary. We watched a very nice computer slide show with many pictures of the Mosbeck clan, mostly Diane, Alan, and Marcie and all the grand and great grandkids. In the midst of watching the slide show, Melvin Meline came up to the area leading to the sanctuary and sat down so I had a nice chat with him. He complained his "recall isn't quite what it used to be," but with minimal prompting he was able to come up with the location of our old farm and mom's name, etc. After talking with him a while, I went back downstairs to the fellowhip hall and Diane Mosbeck Johnson introduced me to Alan (a little different than I had remembered him) and I had her introduce me to Melvin's wife Rayma. Rayma is now confined to a wheelchair and is living at Oakland Park while Melvin remains on his farm, though one of the Mosbeck clan now farms the land there. Rayma, although getting up there in years is still pretty alert and clearly recognized me, though it has been quite a long time since I last saw her on their farm. Donald and Ruthie were standing near the entrance of the fellowship hall and I walked up and asked if they were the guests of honor and Ruthie looks up at me with a big smile and wonders, "Who is this?" It was instant recognition when she heard my last name, though, and they were both very pleased to see me again. They mentioned visiting quite often with Phyllis these days and how they've enjoyed Bob's cooking (I gotta make my way over there sometime...). Sam Mosbeck from Daniei's grade and a few other Mosbeck kids we recognized were there as well. I think we stayed and visited about an hour before heading home. We're now inside on this cold autumn afternoon/evening watching some quality family entertainment on TV (will be the original Wizard of Oz tonight followed by Home Alone).

Almost forgot... This week was also momentous for one significant thing: I voted for the first time ever as a Minnesotan in the midterm elections. I'm still learning the political landscape of Minnesota, i.e. not the Democratic Party here, but "Democrat-Farmer-Labor" Party. We voted in a new mayor of TRF, Steve "Beaver" Nordhagen who had radio ads the past few weeks with the theme music of Leave it to Beaver in the background. I voted for a councilman who used to be a custodian at Washington Elementary. I didn't really know much about the council candidates there not being much of them, but Mr. Folger said he was a good guy, so.... The polls were at Zion and I brought the boys with me. They have something really neat here in Minnesota where the children are allowed to vote in their own mini-election of sorts. I went one direction and they went the other at Zion and each got a certificate that they had voted, so it was a nice learning experience for them about democracy and elections.

I think that's most of the highlights of things going on around here the past two weeks or so. I don't think I'll be on here much until after Thanksgiving, so I wanted to get at least this update done before then.

Trinity Youth Trip to Valley Home 10/29/06

  

Star Wars Clone...

  

The Red Ninja...

  

So Much Fun... Is It Christmas Yet?

It's hard to believe both how quick the weather has taken a turn for the whiter and colder and how quickly our fall schedule is filling up. We managed to take some time out, though, for a number of Halloween festivities. Aaron had his first party last week at school, so got to wear his costume earlier than Daniel. He went as a Star Wars clone this year, Daniel as a red ninja. This year was unusual with all the holiday activities, as they were able to wear their costumes at least four different times. On Sunday, we had a Halloween party of sorts at Trinity. We piled on the bus and in cars and drove over to Valley Home and Oakland Park (see picture) to visit the nursing home residents. It was kind of humerous at the first stop... As we get there, almost no one is in sight, so the nurse on duty gets on the PA system and says, "The kids of Trinity are here in their costumes and they will be singing you some songs..." Little did we the adults know we would be singing... Oh well. We managed to scrape together the words to a handful of songs nobody could forget, i.e. Jesus Loves Me This I Know, Go Tell It On The Mountain, This Little Light of Mine, etc. We didn't do too shabby given we had absolutely no warning or practice.

After the nursing home visits, we went back to Trinity and chowed down on some pizza and played musical chairs until it was time to go home. It was about a three-hour event and all the kids appeared to enjoy the pizza and games.

Yesterday was the official Halloween party at Challenger Elementary and last night we went out Trick-Or-Treating, but chose a different neighborhood this year. I drove the boys over to the old stomping grounds, i.e. Kneale Ave. S., Maple, etc. The Drevlows weren't homw so we ventured out on our own. We stopped out at Grochows, including Don and Shirley and they had these big Zip-Loc bags chock full of goodies for the boys. We managed to get to bed at a decent hour too (well, the boys at least).

As for my schedule, I've been getting busier in the area of music these days... As of last Thursday, I started practicing for Handel's Messiah over at Northland Community College with some other members of the community, i.e. Jerry, Marilyn, Tom Kays, etc. We will be singing together with a professional choir out of Grand Forks, the Master Works Chorale, along with the Grand Forks Symphony and will sing about 7 selected pieces of The Messiah including the Halleluja Chorus. I practiced last Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m., but that kind of is a stretch with keeping the boys occupied and all, so I elected to attend a daytime rehearsal today instead at Northland with the Northland Chamber Choir. I was somewhat out of place, what with 95 percent college-aged kids and just one other adult from the community. I sang bass this time with one other student behind a row of just three tenors from the college. Cathy Hagen was the accompanist, so it was nice to have a familiar sound to key off of in rehearsal. The daytime rehearsals are M-W-F 12 to 12:50 or 1:00, so it's a nice break in the day to go have some vocal fun. Today kind of brought me back to the days of Melloaires at Edmonds High and freshman concert choir with Mr. Morken. It's kind of invigorating to be back in the thick of music performance.

As for what's on the horizon, we are looking forward to hockey season and tomorrow night is the lutefisk dinner at Trinity. I believe on the 22nd is the combined Thanksgiving service with the congregations of Trinity, Redeemer, Black River, and Zion all worshiping together and this year it's going to be held at.....TRINITY!! It'll be nice to see the sanctuary and chapel packed once again for a change. The combined choirs will also be performing that night, so should be fun. The boys start their basketball season next Monday (I was off a week) and are continuing with Kingdom Kids after school every other Thursday. Other than that, I think that about covers it. Now to get the furniture moved in before Mom and Dad arrive for Thanksgiving...

Did I mention it's white over here??? It snowed twice this week already and the temperatures are down in the 20s again. I think the trampoline has run its course at this point. No more lawnmowing either... Well, off to choir practice now. Take care all!

Barren Trees, Autmn Leaves, and Cold Nights...

The leaf piles have rapidly grown around town and as of last Tuesday, the City of TRF trucks have been coming through and vacuuming up the piles along the side of the streets. both the big Dutch elm out front and our backyard tree are completely barren of leaves and we've had a dusting of snow here and there, though today was a wet day of drizzling rain. Aaron had his last day of football practice tonight (until dark) and his last game will be played on Saturday (actually two games that day for his team, the Panthers). Basketball will begin for the boys the first week of November, so the gym will be a nice change from the cold and wet football fields.

Last Tuesday we attended the "Running With Reading" program at Challenger, a monthly family activity at the school where they have a sporting activity the first half of the time period followed by time spent in the school library reading books, playing chess, etc. It was a very cold and windy night, though, on the first night of the program, so only about a dozen of us showed up (parents included). They plan on having the event once a month and next month's activity may be floor hockey, so that should be fun.

Yesterday was entertaining, as the boys both sang a song for the congregation at church. The church was almost as full as it gets at Christmas and Thanksgiving, so that was nice to see for a change. I sat near the front this time with Joe and Jodi and their many kids. It was a nice break from singing myself. Speaking of that, the pastor and his wife will be out of town this week, so I don't have any choir practice this week, though with the boys out of school all week, I get a week of fun with them at home instead. In terms of fall activities to look forward to, the annual Trinity Lutefisk Dinner will be held in just a few short weeks in November. They had sign up sheets for serving and donation of Cool Whip, pies, and 70 pounds of butter. I looked at the sheet for the butter and thought to myself, "Is 70 pounds adequate to cover the horrendous tastebud overload known as lutefisk??!" The thought also crossed my mind, "Has Jeff introduced Katrina to this Norwegian culinary delight?" Okay, that's enough lutefisk dissing for now... I think I'll quit while I'm behind.

The boys both had their parent-teacher conferences today and they went well. Both are doing good, particularly in their reading. Anybody looking for gift ideas in the future, feel free to consider either sending chapter books for them or a gift card to Barnes & Noble or Amazon so they can pick out their own (Aaron's already got the whole set of Narnia books and is just starting in on Lemony Snicket).

The boys with Austin on their first day of leaf play this year...

  

A new friend - Mateo

  

Drew's last week on the trampoline...

  

Dorion as "Superboy..."

  

Autumn Leaves Are Falling...

It's been a very pleasant start to the fall season here in Thief River. After just a handful of leaves coming down in the past two weeks, this week it's really taken off. The Dutch elm in front of the house here has dumped about 8 lawn bags full of leaves on the front lawn and the streets are covered in yellow, orange, and red leaves. It's nice to look at, but of course then I got the challenge of the back yard... If I don't stay on top of the leaves, the doggy calling cards get covered up and then we get a surprise later. :o( Today I picked three rakes at Wally World and outfitted the boys with them after school so we were all out front raking this afternoon and got some pictures of the boys in the leaf pile. The temperatures have been dipping at night into the mid-30s and low 40s as well lately and it probably will be a cold Halloween like last year. Hopefully the snow takes its time showing up, though it would be nice to have a white Christmas again.

The boys have been busy this fall with their school activities. They have their usual Awana youth program on Wednesday nights, but have also added Kingdom Kids, an after school program at school where they have an outdoor recess for almost an hour followed by activities inside. I was volunteered for that activity more or less as one of the leaders so that keeps me busy as well, though it's not every week, but every other week. Aaron is having fun in his flag football program with Braeden Drevlow and has finally found a position he likes (and the coach likes too). He is presently playing center, so he just has to snap the ball and do some blocking. He got a lot of playing time last Saturday morning and actually made a great "tackle" (taking the ball carrier's flag off). It was kind of funny... His teammates had actually blocked in the ball carrier and Aaron was right behind him so the other boys just yelled, "Aaron, grab his flag!!" and Aaron just reached forward and ripped it off. He was beaming from ear to ear after that play! At first, it seemed as though it was going to be an unorganized program with only one adult coach and one or two varsity football players coaching, but as of this past Monday, they've put it in high gear with brand new color-coordinated practice vests and balls with five different teams of boys including red, orange, yellow, green, and blue and they had more varsity players helping out, so nobody was standing around not knowing what to do. The varsity players are really good with Aaron too, patting him on the back, throwing an arm around his shoulder, etc. to offer encouragement to him, so that's been really great for his confidence.

I've continued having lunch with Aaron, today having my personal favorite: Nachos with taco meat, salad, and strawberry milk. One of the boys in Aaron's class walked up to him in the tray line and asked, "Does your dad ALWAYS eat lunch with you??" Come to think of it, I think I'm the ONLY dad that eats lunch there, so perhaps his classmates are envious. I try to just make it on Friday's, though, so it's still a special thing, not too "routine." I went today because they have no school tomorrow. I can safely say it's the best $2.85 lunch in town, though. :o)

The boys continue to do well without their old friends here in the neighborhood keeping themselves busy on the trampoline after school with the remaining kids around here and now with raking the leaves up and other fall outdoor activities. We may go to a Northland College football game this weekend time allowing, but Aaron's got another game that day. Speaking of sports... Aaron just dropped a half dozen flyers from school on my lap to look over and one of them is for the "Backcourt Club," the basketball program at Challenger. Practices are on Mondays and Thursdays, so it looks like he's going to be even busier... He wants to do it, though, so he will be practicing from 4 to 5 on Mondays and then 6:30 to 8:00 for football. I have to "volunteer" too to help out at practices, so there's another activity to tack onto my calendar. Looks like the skate lesson program is also new this year with a new director and format, so we need to go to that planning meeting next week and hopefully get them into that this fall/winter. They have a skate exchange program too, so if they've outgrown their skates, they can hopefully trade them in for a larger size. I think for now, though, we're going to head out and get a take-n-bake pizza and retire to our couch of perpetual indulgence for a relaxing non-school night evening.

Back In The Swing Of Things...

Well... The boys have been back in school for a couple weeks now and all is well thus far. Aaron is learning cursive writing and some new outdoor games thanks for Mr. Shafer. I had e-mailed Mr. Shafer about Aaron's homework and Mr. Shafer told me about Friday's game, "Predator v. Prey that Aaron apparently had a great time playing out on the prairie. So when Aaron came home that night, I asked him to "tell me all about Predator v. Prey" and he got this confused look on his face mixed with a grin trying to figure out "How did Dad know about that?" Daniel hasn't talked much about school, but has apparently been enjoying it nonetheless. He has made new friends this year including a boy named Samuel who moved from Fargo this school year. Although the Widerski boys moved away, the boys haven't seemed to miss a beat in terms of finding things to do around here with the other neighborhood kids. I restarted the weekly lunch tradition yesterday with Aaron having "the usual" chef salad. It was particularly delicious that time as they had homemade applesauce, the best I've had since Grandma Judy's in Crystal and for $2.90, it's a good deal. Aaron has a whole new set of teachers in addition to Mr. Shafer and since Ms. Knuttila retired, Aaron has Mr. Wiggs for music and Daniel has Mrs. Johnson and later in the year Mr. Wiggs. There's one less Drevlow they have to attend school with, as Brett moved on to Franklin this year. Speaking of Brett, he is the only string bass player in the orchestra, so he apparently has his pick of all four bass instruments. Therefore, he has one he keeps at home and one at school so Joe doesn't have to cart on around everywhere, which is nice. I can't remember who it was that told me, but I figured out why Joe has done so many things like piano, knitting, string bass, etc. It's because he has his kids teach him everything they learn at school. Kind of a novel concept for an Ivy League grad, but a great idea for lifelong learning.

We started the new choir season at Trinity with a new director and we've sung at one service already, last Sunday. We've done pretty well so far and last Wednesday was a very pleasant surprise. After "retiring" so to speak last year, Ormond unexpectedly returned to the fold and sang with us last Wednesday night. We had so many guys that we overflowed two guys in a second row behind the first, Terry and I. We practiced Simple Gifts again and several new ones I haven't heard of before, but we seemed to pick up on them all rather quickly. Mike was finally back from a long summer of work, so it was nice to have a full tenor section again. I had learned one song last year as a bass and a couple weeks ago, I had to sing it as a tenor and was pretty well lost. It was nice to fall back in my comfort zone as it were and sing bass again last week. We're still working on getting the youth room in order down in the basement level trying to mount a television and DVD so the kids can watch a football or Twins game or have a movie night before long. It's a one day at a time project, though.

Aaron has started his 4th/5th grade flag football season with two practices now. He had his second practice today at the old Prowler Field where "Uncle Bill" used to play. They've kept the field in pretty good shape over the years with a nice lush grass surface and yard lines carved out with a short length mower instead of the white paint. Today's practice was a bit wet, though, as we experienced a bit of a Minnesota downpour halfway through. Daniel hid under my shirt for a few minutes, but nobody seemed to mind the rain much. It was a good two-hour practice and Aaron had a great time. It's a great activity for his fitness level as the coach had them warm up well before practice and run some 40-yard sprints back and forth. Between that and running drills with him during the week, it's a pretty nice fitness program. I think his first game will be a week from today. We had lunch at McDonald's today and after bumping into Aaron's 2nd grade teacher and finishing up our meal, in walks Mr. Lehrer, so we had a nice chat with him before heading home.

After getting home this afternoon. I watched part of the Washington Huskies v. Fresno State Bulldogs game and believe it or not caught some of the bullriding coverage from the Ellensburg Rodeo of all things. Pretty neat to be sitting on the couch here in Minnesota watching shows out of Washington. I heard the Cougars did well this weekend too at Qwest field beating Baylor 17-15. A nice weekend of Washington sports. Now we're watching a homemade DVD from Dad (thanks!) before bedtime.

Before signing off, I had to pass on the funniest thing I saw since the last blog update. You've all probably heard of the funny ironies entitled something like "Only in America..." In particular, the one about how we will order a Big Mac, super-size fries, and a DIET Coke. Well, I finally saw a prime example of that irony last week on a trip to Wal-Mart. There I am in the checkout line with the boys and as I stand there while my items are being scanned, I just casually glanced at the stuff on the conveyor belt behind me. The first item I saw was two dozen assorted glazed and jelly donuts. I look further down to see two gallon pails of ice cream and some other majorly fattening item I can't recall at the moment, and next to that....Yep...you guessed it...two South Beach Diet entrees. Pretty funny.

I think that's a lengthy enough blog update for now. Hopefully nobody's fallen asleep yet... :o)

Buttons and Other Back-To-School Musings...

I never thought I'd be able to say this or for that matter this soon, but Daniel appears to have made a major breakthrough. After years of being vehemently opposed to buttons of any kind on anything he wears, we were at the store getting some back to school clothes Saturday evening and he spotted what he apparently felt was a pretty cool shirt. It was a button down shirt, though. Despite the length of time he has refused to have anything to do with buttons, the design of the shirt was apparently "cool" enough to override his aversion to buttons and he insisted I buy him the shirt. No, I wasn't dumb... I had him put it on in the store to prove he could tolerate the buttons and he wore the shirt again today, so perhaps he finally has more options in the clothing department. Maybe he can finally wear his Mariners jersey??

As for Aaron, he is all geared up to head back to school. I got him a mouthguard last night for flag football and as I was sitting here with the computer, I heard sounds like a quarterback and looked up to find Aaron practicing football stances in the living room, calling out plays (Blue 42! Blue 42! Hut, Hut, Hut!) and running through the dining room, mouthguard in place. He really cracked me up, but then what's new? :o)

We continue to be plagued with the late summer onslaught of yellow jackets. I have two bowls of Mountain Dew out on a table in the front lawn along with five traps of three different kinds. Just roughly estimating, it appears I've trapped upwards of 3 to 5,000 of the critters and they keep coming back for more.

I had a nice chat with the neighbors just the next house north of me last night, Jason and Lacey, not really having talked to them for most of the summer and found they have apparently bought the rental house there and plan to stay another 5 to 7 years to build equity before building a home outside of town here. Lacey is expecting and she was telling me how they have appreciated my yellow jacket traps, as they have noticed they have been largely leaving them alone over there ever since I put the traps out. We also tried to figure out unofficially what our property lines were, as they're hoping to build a privacy fence like mine so when their baby comes along they'll be able to safely play in the back yard. I guess I'll no longer be the odd man out on my block with the only fence.

It's half past midnight now and I gotta get all the school supplies sorted out here and put in the individual backpacks so everything's ready to go in the morning. The boys were so excited to get back to school it was hard to get them to go to bed.

Another Milestone....

Just measured Aaron today and he in fact has grown this summer... He's officially surpassed the 5-foot mark at 5 feet 1/4-inch. That would make around a half inch he's grown since school let out this year.

Speaking of school, we just had the open house at Challenger yesterday, a good way to spend my birthday. We met with Mr. Schafer and Mr. Thorson and picked up all the paperwork for the new year. I found out Mr. Schafer has an environmental science area of sorts out in the marshes surrounding Challenger where Aaron will be spending a lot of time this school year learning about the native flora and fauna. I also discovered a familiar name on Aaron's class roster. TUrns out besides Emily, the hockey coach's daughter, there's also a girl named Hannah who is the daughter of one of the guys I attended elementary school at St. Hilaire. Aaron took the opportunity to go say hi to his old 3rd grade teacher, Ms. McGeary, and we met his new resource room teacher, Mrs. Duchser (pronounced "Duke-Shur"). Couldn't talk Aaron into signing up for orchestra, but looks like he may try flag football league this fall.

The days are getting short before it's time for the early mornings and school bus rides. We've got the school supplies and now we're down to clothes and shoes. Aaron's been begging me to go to Purdy Shoes in town to get him a pair of "those shoes with the 'M' on them" so he can be like all his buddies in school. Daniel's already got his light-up Lightning McQueen shoes that I've managed to keep him from wearing as of yet (not an easy task, mind you).

We Made It, But....

It was a great trip to Minneapolis regardless of the downsides. By downsides, I'm particularly referring to the Weasel's difficulties on the way down. We made it all the way down on I-494 until a mile or two before the hotel when traffic slowed to a standstill thanks to George "Dubya's" visit to Minneapolis. I had only burned three-quarters of a tank of gas getting down there and thought I was doing great, but with the gridlock, I burned off the rest of the gas and had to find a way off the freeway and get to a gas station. We filled up and figured we were almost there, but in the process of getting back on the freeway, the transmission started acting up and upon parking at an area hardware store found the transmission dipstick was bone dry. After filling with transmission fluid we were able to make it the rest of the way to the parking lot and the following day (Wednesday) had it towed to the transmission shop, which happened to be less than a mile from the hotel.

We met mom, Jennifer, Nick, and Jake at the Outback Steakhouse in the hotel for dinner the night we arrived and had a relaxing evening thereafter. Aaron was cute when we were on the freeway and I asked if he and Daniel were going to give their cousins a big hug and let them know how happy they were to see them. He responded in characteristic intellectual fashion by stating, "We haven't seen them in a while. I think we'll just act normal until we get to our suite."

We had a great time visiting the Mall of America and seeing the underground aquarium there with the sharks and stingrays and such and managed to get out of there without buying anything at the mall or riding any rides in what used to be called Camp Snoopy. The boys enjoyed seeing Lego-Land much the way it was the last time we were there in 2002, but with the addition of some life-sized Harry Potters made out of Legos. We then traveled to John and Beth Smeby's for dinner at their house. It was another relaxing evening as we dined in John's garage (actually a nice place to eat). He grilled a delicious dinner of marinated chicken and bratwurst and Beth served brownies with ice cream and chocolate syrup for dessert. The kids had a good time playing catch with a baseball in John's back yard and we left for the hotel around 8:00 or so.

We met up with Cousin Jeff and his wife, Katrina (you still crack me up, Katrina!), and took in the sights of the Minnesota State Fair. It was an overcast rainy day at the fair and we took shelter more than once in the various buildings at the State Fair. We saw the beautiful draft horses in the livestock buildings including Perchons, Morgans, and probably a few Belgians. Mom treated us to a horse show indoors where they had a demonstration of medieval warfare with jousting and swordfighting. They had squires that helped the knights with their swords and lances and we also returned later to see an equestrian jumping competition. We passed through the "Miracle of Birth" barn where they had nothing but sheep, pigs, goats, etc. giving birth and they displayed the births on these large flat panel screens hanging from the ceiling. The barn was attended by veterinarians from the University of Minnesota and we saw a number of animals that were just born that day or late the prior night including some ducklings, piglets, and a lamb.

Of course we had to go on a few fair rides when we were there (thanks Mom and Jen!) and the boys had a great time doing that. Jennifer and I alternated donating tickets to Jeff so he could go up on several of the rides with the boys instead of us, though I did ride a few of them with the boys including the Tilt-a-Whirl and Crazy Mouse. The latter ride was hilarious in terms of Aaron's expression while riding it, but Daniel unfortunately hit his head on the seat back at one point and as a result didn't care too much for that ride when all was over. At least we captured the look on Aaron's face in that ride...

We were caught in a classic Minnesota thunderstorm while at the fair toward the end of the day and we ended up parting ways with Aaron and I going with Jeff and the others going with Jennifer to meet up for dinner at the Outback Steakhouse for dinner close to Anoka. I think that was the best night of the three nights we were there, as we were able to see both of Jeff's brothers, Jeremy and Joe. We had a great dinner there (it was Joe's birthday) and the funniest thing happened as we were about to leave. One of the waitresses stopped at our table and pointed out the WSU lanyard I was wearing around my neck, stating she herself had grown up in Spokane and recognized WSU as "WAZZU" right away. She was also studying nursing, an interesting parallel. It was pretty funny that there I sat 1,200 miles away from Pullman and yet someone recognized my alma mater just from the initials on my lanyard.

We headed back to the hotel and Friday morning after breakfast Mom's friend, Janna, arrived at the hotel and brought a birthday cake for Mom. We visited a little in the morning and then Jennifer left with the boys for the airport while Mom went to stay with Janna for a few days before returning home to Seattle.

I was finally able to make a reliable wireless connection with my laptop in the hotel lobby Friday morning and planned our trip back to TRF and we pulled out around 12:30 or so. We drove up to visit GG and Grandma Judy (thanks, Jeff, for the heads up on the freeway exit!). Unfortunately, I ended up taking I-94 East instead of West or something like that and ended up on University Avenue where I found myself unexpectedly in the middle of the University of Minnesota Campus. We drove through Greek row and took in the scenery while I found my way back on the freeway in the opposite direction (thanks, Jen, for that MPLS map!) and eventually made it to Crystal Lake and GG and Grandma Judy's resting place. Aaron remembered a lot about GG and told Daniel all about him as as being a "great" grandpa as we visited the gravesite.

We then headed out of Minneapolis on I-94 West through St. Cloud, stopping briefly for lunch at Denny's just south of St. Cloud and I also took about a 20-minute breather to close my eyes and rest before driving the rest of the way. We reached the exit to head north through Detroit Lakes, but I hadn't noticed it previously and Aaron told me about it just as we were passing the sign, so we ended up going another 11 miles west before we could turn around and go back, adding another 22 miles to the trip total. I just put it on cruise, though, at 58 mph and took my time the rest of the way back. We stopped just outside Pelican Rapids for dinner at the Taste-T-Freez and made it home at about 10:30 Friday night, all in one piece. The next morning we went and picked up Duchess from the kennel outside St. Hilaire and she smelled April fresh after her bath and grooming while we were gone. We then picked up the rabbits and guineas from Sandy Drevlow's yesterday afternoon and now we're back to our usual routine looking forward to the start of school in about 9 days.

Now that we're back in TRF, I've managed to mow the lawns yesterday and just now I've been noticing the leaves are starting to turn their autum color and fall off. There's only about a couple dozen yellow leaves in my front yard, but as September approaches, we will likely be in a pile of leaves in no time. This summer seemed a lot longer than last summer. It's hard to believe the leaves are already turning color and we'll be looking at snow before long, though we could do without snow until at least December.

We have an open house for school on my birthday, August 30th, and the following week the boys will be in school again. Aaron has indicated an interest in playing basketball this year, so we will probably check into signing him up for that. Daniel can probably do that too if he's interested. I'm looking forward to building on last year's skating practice and the return of Prowler hockey season.

If you're reading this, Jeff and Katrina, or anyone else we visited with down there in Minneapolis, thanks for a great time! It was really fun seeing you guys again!

Question Is.... Can We Make it to MPLS and Back?

It's been a week of preparation here for our upcoming brief journey to the Twin Cities. I of course waited until the last possible week to realize I had to do something with our menagerie of animal companions before we leave next week for the trip to Minneapolis. I managed to find a kennel about 7 miles out of St. Hilaire to drop Duchess off at (Thanks Dawn!) and they'll give Duchess a nice bath and nail trim while we're gone, so I'm looking forward to coming back to a fresh dog. Kind of reminds me of putting our old dog, Pepper, in the kennel over in Edmonds and coming back to a "skinnier" dog after her "shave and a haircut - two bits." We found a home as well temporarily for the bunnies and guinea pigs (with Sandy Drevlow). That leaves the love birds that Andrew left behind, but thankfully we've gotten rid of those noisy irritating creatures by finding a lady in town here that has a large number of birds already and was happy to take two more.

As summer continues its march to an inevitable conclusion, we've been the recipient of a couple good torrential downpours. We had a fantastic thunderstorm about three days ago with a great light show from the heavens. I took a ruler out to a Rubbermaid bin in the back yard and measured 3 inches of fresh rainfall from that night's storm. While great for the farmers, we now have a lawn that has largely been resurrected to its lush green carpet appearance, so it looks like I'll be mowing upon our return from the trip, the first time I'll have mowed since sometime in June. I haven't been looking forward to that, as we have a bit of a neighborhood yellow jacket problem. They've been swarming along our fence line the past few weeks in the back yard and seem to be everywhere. The traps I set out last week have about 3/4 to an inch of yellow jackets apiece (probably a good 300 to 400 in each), so that's at least a small dent in this year's population. Hopefully by late August most will have died off and I can mow the lawn in peace.

In other trip preparation news, we went to Wally World this past week and got an oil change and a fresh pair of sneakers (tires) on the Weasel. The right front tire had had a slow leak for some time, but seeing as we have to make it 300+ miles and back next week, I figured we should go ahead and replace the tire altogether along with the other front end tire for balance. All told (with the oil change) it came to $129.99, so not a bad deal at all. I think the ride in the Weasel is a little quieter now too on the new tires. So my next blog update will likely be about what we did on our mini-vacation to Minneapolis.

Summer Can't Be Almost Over... It Can't!!!

It's too hard to believe we're in the final weeks of summer. We've had such a blast this summer with sports and playing outside in the hot Minnesota sun that it's hard to imagine a new fall season around the corner and the start of a new year at school. We've been so busy I just realized I didn't look at my last blog entry just now so you'll have to forgive me if I duplicate any previous news in this post.

We finished up vacation Bible school at Trinity last week and it was a very successful week. All the kids had a great time and were well worn out by the time we got home each night. Pastor Mark took some pictures so hopefully I can get a few to post here in the not too distant future.

As soon as vacation Bible school was over, we realized they were having Sports Camp at the Evangelical Free Church at the old Washington Elementary, so the boys caught the last 3 of the 4 days of that activity there and were part of a group of somewhere between 130 and 150 kids there every night and several parents and grandparents were there including my old teacher from Franklin, Walter Reddinger, and his wife. At tonight's finale, they had borrowed the City of TRF's dunk tank and the pastor was dunked along with several of the youth leaders. Afterwards, in memory of all those times Dad used to drive us home to the farm while we sat in the back seat with our fingers crossed saying to ourselves, "TURN LEFT NOW," I took the boys and their buddies, Drew, Zach, and Kade to DQ for a Blizzard treat. While they were at their activity tonight I snuck out to the grocery store and picked up some school supplies to get started on the Back-To-School shopping. Before I know it, I'll be back to my regular Friday lunch appointments with Aaron at Challenger (Yeah, Danny gets embarrassed when Dad comes to eat with him, but I'll probably surprise him a few times too this year).

I think that's all for the organized summer activities for now, so I'll have to be creative in filling the remainder of our summer break, though we're looking forward to our upcoming trip to the Cities not too long from now, which reminds me, I gotta get the Weasel in for an oil change and once over before we hit the road...

One That Didn't Get Away...

  

End of Baseball Party

We had the party tonight at Greenwood Park to mark the near end of the 2006 Parks & Rec Baseball season. It was combined with the tennis program and there was probably about 75 to 100 kids there with the coaches and parents and there were several games there like a carnival with a dunk tank (Aaron dunked his coaches three times, every time hitting the target on his third and final throw), a ring toss where Aaron won a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper, and a sack race. Aaron won a few prizes as did Daniel and they served hotdogs, chips, lemonade, and ice cream bars for the kids. It was pretty hot out even in the evening, so after the prizes were handed out, some of the kids and I gathered around the huge plastic tub they had used for a bobbing game and started splashing around with the water, eventually soaking Daniel in the process and what started with just water toys being thrown at each other along with an occasional water balloon turned into boys scooping out water in gallon ice cream buckets and drenching everyone around the tub. We finished off the day with a trip to the grocery store to pick up a couple copies of the local newspaper where Aaron's picture is in the county fair insert for his guinea pig win. Now I'm getting their uniforms washed before I hit the sack so they're ready for the last regular season games tomorrow.

Just When It Couldn't Get Any Worse...

Last Monday, the day after returning to find Funny Bunny had to be put to sleep, we were playing with the new guinea pig for Daniel and our recently crowned grand champion guinea, Snowball, and noticed Snowball seemed to be moving very little and was not as animated as she had been previously. She wasn't eating much either, which made me think to myself that we were in for another loss thanks to the heat at the fair. About noon on Monday, Daniel commented that Snowball's eyes were changing color and the boys asked if I was going to take it to the vet and when I looked down on the living room floor, she was gasping for air and moments from death, so I explained to the boys she wasn't going to make it and a few minutes after noon, she was gone. I called Dawn at the Humane Society and brought her out there to be cremated and Dawn assured the boys her ashes would be spread on the garden out there at the Humane Society and that was all she wrote. It was thankfully not as tragic for the boys as Funny Bunny's loss and that evening, we stopped at Ben Franklin after Aaron's baseball game and picked up a new guinea pig that Aaron named "Spike" with mostly brown and black coloring. So having gone to the fair with two pets, we essentially came home with four pets. The bright side of all the recent loss is the boys have taken a much greater interest in the pets and have assumed much of the responsibility for caring for the new pets. Aaron takes the guineas out just about daily to play with together and ensures they are fed and watered.

This past week has been a busier week than most with bsaeball. On Thursday, Daniel had his T-ball game and in the afternoon when I arrived for Aaron's game, I found out it was a doubleheader with the first game against the Reds and the second against the Brewers. Aaron's team made great improvements over the prior game and came close, but unfortunately it wasn't enough, dropping both games by only one point. I believe he has two more games before the end of the season and tournament week. Next Wednesday is an end of season party the Parks & Rec Department is throwing for the baseball and soccer kids at Oakland Park so we'll probably go to that to celebrate the end of a lot of practices and games this summer and start looking forward to returning to school.

On Friday, I ended up volunteering again to drive the church bus back up to Baudette to pick up the kids from Lake of the Woods Bible Camp and the boys and I enjoyed a nice sunny drive. I taught them the phenomena of getting a train to blow its horn by honking the bus horn. Daniel was tickled pink at the result. We got two trains to do it on the way up to Baudette.

As for other TRF news, Pamida is to close its doors this week and I'm wondering how long it will be for K-Mart. We went to K-Mart and I picked up a "Zip-N-Hit," a rather simple contraption that helps kids learn how to swing a bat faster and with more accuracy. It "pitches" a baseball down a straight line of rope at up to 65 mph and the line acts as a guide for the bat in swinging. Aaron loved it today and was contantly asking me to come out and "pitch" to him, though he gets as much enjoyment out of pitching than he does hitting. Speaking of pitching, he's actually very accurate at pitching the old-fashioned way (without the Zip-N-Hit). I'm already thinking ahead to the winter and realizing this new contraption will make a good winter recreational tool as well, as it doesn't matter if there's snow on the ground when you use it and it can keep Aaron and Daniel warmed up for next year's baseball season. Aaron just asked tonight, "Can I be in baseball EVERY year??" Crazy Days has become Crazy DAY this year with only one day of activity. I may bring the boys out to get facepainted and/or check out the prices.

I saw my old friend from elementary school, Leland Mott, and his mom, Carol, at Wal-Mart last night. They were getting ready for a pretty sizable feast with a beef brisket about two feet long. The only thing I thought was missing was flowers for Carol's table, which they laughed about, but when they went off to the register, I enlisted the boy's help. We grabbed two bouquets of carnations and ran over to a checkstand a couple down from theirs and raced to get through it before they could so they'd get the flowers before leaving. They ended up finishing first, though, so we had to race out of the store and managed to catch them in the parking lot. The impromptu contribution to their feast was well received and the boys had some fun in the process (running in the store authorized by dad).

It's now 3 a.m. and I think about time to hit the sack. The thunderstorm that was to be this evening/tonight failed to materialize, so I guess we'll have to go a few more days wtihout rainfall. I've only mowed my front lawn twice the entire summer, so I guess it's not a bad thing, though the farmers probably disagree. For their sake, I hope the remainder of the summer is a little more wet.

Talk About Horrible Irony... :o(

We got back a little bit ago from our day-long venture driving the Trinity bus to Lake of the Woods to drop off four girls at bible camp. We were supposed to pick up Funny Bunny, Snowball, and Daniel's new guinea pig, Rodney (named after the character in Dr. Dolittle). When we arrived at the bunny barn (cavy), however, Sandy Drevlow pulled me aside and informed me that likely due to the heat these past few days, Funny Bunny scratched herself low on her tummy and it was a matter of hours before the wound became infested and despite attempts to flush it out, she felt it best to have her put to sleep. It all happened in less than 24 hours, so it was quite a blow to Aaron. I mentioned "irony" above, as my last blog headline was "Hurray for Funny Bunny." Sandy, though, managed to set aside a couple of other bunnies and we ended up getting both of them, one for Aaron and one for Daniel. I believe Aaron's is a two-toned brown and white Dutch breed, which he named Sidney, and the other is a grey lop (mini?) named by Daniel "Funny Bunny, Jr." Both bunnies are around 8 weeks old, so still very young and should bond well to the boys.

We did have a good ride up to Lake of the Woods, our first trip that close to the Minnesota/Canadian border, and I volunteered to do the pickup trip this coming Friday. It's nice to get out on the open road for a few hours and see the sites. I FINALLY know more Minnesota geography!! For the longest time I've wanted to know exactly where the tiny outlying towns were around here and we drove through Greenbush, Middle River, Strathcona, Badger, Roseau, and Warroad. I had no idea they were all on one straight shot north of here. We never turned until the last road to get to the camp, so it was pretty easy figuring out where we were going. The church bus was pretty nice to drive too, as it's a newer model E-350 Super Duty van with seats for 14 people and a luggage area in the back. Very comfy ride.

Now that we have our new bunnies home and in their new quarters with the guineas underneath, we can all it a day and get ready for another busy week of baseball in the hot summer sun.

Hurray for Funny Bunny!!!

We headed back to the bunny barn in the afternoon and received a pleasant surprise. Funny Bunny was awarded First Place in her open class! Aaron will be receiving another ribbon on Sunday to go with his Grand Champion ribbon for Snowball. Sandy Drevlow suggested she might be able to find a trophy for Aaron... With his successes at the fair this year, he seems enthusiastic about possibly joining 4-H this next year. Only problme is there's no 4-H club right here in town anymore, so we will either need to create one from scratch with Sandy and whoever else we can dig up or he'll have to join a surrounding rural club, i.e. Smiley, etc. We'll have to check it out again when they have the 4-H carnival this fall. It was a long day again today complete with a trip to see Pirates of the Caribbean II at the Galaxy Twin. The boys are sleeping rather sound at this moment. I think I'll take the opportunity now to clean out the bunny/guinea pig cage so they have fresh digs to come home to on Sunday.

Grand Champion!!

It's another hot one today... We spent about four hours at the Pennington County Fair this morning/afternoon. Aaron was awarded Grand Champion in the open class guinnea pig division for "Snowball" and got his picture taken for the newspaper. Funny Bunny still has to be judged for the open class rabbit division, so we'll see what happens in a few hours there. We just came home for a break from the heat before heading back for the results of the rabbit judging. We took a few rides together on the Tilt-a-Whirl, which really got going pretty fast. That's my favorite ride (because it was free!). I think the boys are having a good time this week. We have to pick up the bunny and guinea pig on Sunday night, but they're getting round-the-clock feeding and watering in the meantime from Sandy Drevlow and the others at the bunny barn.

Hunter and Daniel in the Rain....

  

Do We Have To Go Home Yet?

  

A Perfect Place on a Hot Day...

  

He Likes His Picture Taken...

  

Wade in the Water....

  

River Football Anyone??

  

A Day at the TRF Beach

  

July Fourth at the WIderskis

  

A Scorcher of a Summer...

Wow... It's been a hot and dry summer so far. It was in the low 90s today and it's only rained good about once in the last month. We're expecting severe storms tomorrow night, but I'm not all that optimistic given our track record this month. The bright side of the heat wave is I don't have to mow the lawn hardly at all. I only mowed the back once in the last three weeks and it's been upwards of a month now since I mowed the front yard. Of course the grass is not the beautiful green it was this spring. I still enjoy it, though, as it doesn't feel all that muggy outside and the dryness with the short grass has combined for a relatively "mosquito-free" neighborhood. As for recreation in this sunny weather, we took the opportunity on the invitation of one of Aaron's buddy's from his church youth group to head down to the beach near the confluence of the Thief and Red Rivers. It's the exact same beach I remembered playing on and in the water as a kid a quarter century ago and I swear the buoys that outline the swimming area in the river are the exact same ones from the 1970s. I waded in the water while the boys went all the way in. The river was about the temperature of a bathtub last Friday and we probably spent an hour in there throwing a Nerf football around and stuff. They both enjoyed the novelty of swimming in a river for the first time and it was a much needed break from the status quo.

The boys' baseball season continues and Aaron's team has struggled a bit as they have faced a few teams that are developing at a faster pace than his team has. Couple that with 10 days off and they were a little rusty in Monday's game. Aaron managed to score a homerun, though, after a teammate brought him home with a base hit. He was grinning from ear to ear. He did get nailed in the hand from one of the coaches pitches, hitting his thumb, I think. Unfortunately they don't get to take a base when hit, so he took a break to shake off the sting in the dugout, then returned minutes later to get a base hit. I think he's learning to push through adversity and pain thanks to America's favorite pastime, which should serve him well in the future. Daniel is also doing well with his T-ball and had another game on Tuesday. Tomorrow they're both going on a bus from the Ralph Engelstad Arena to Fargo to watch the Fargo Red Hawks take on the Calgary Vipers in a semi-pro baseball game. They'll be gone until around 5:30, so Dad gets to sit in the dentist chair for a few hours while they're gone. They've been looking forward to the trip for some time.

We rode bike around town tonight and decided to take a detour over to the fairgrounds and see what's up at the Pennington County Fair. I bumped into the Drevlows including Sandy and it looks like tomorrow we'll be entering our bunny and guinea pig into the animal displays. Just gotta trim Funny Bunny's nails first... I also bumped into one of my former teachers from Franklin Middle School, Walter Redinger, whom i haven't seen in a quarter century or more. He looked just the way I remembered him and is every bit as nice as I recalled. He has four grandchildren now, one of which is Daniel's age. It was nice seeing him again. We ended up riding back at 10:00 tonight and we'll be heading back tomorrow night for the bunny thing and some more rides. They both really got a kick out of the rides they went on tonight, even more than last year.

When it was time to head to bed, Daniel asked me (as usual) to try to catch him as he ran up the stairs to bed and I caught him just before he reached the first stair landing and as he goes down for the tickle, he looks up at Aaron just ahead of him on the landing and screams up to him, "Save yourself!!!" What a zag nut...

Well, time to get some shuteye over here. Hope those reading this are having a little cooler week than we are this week. :o)

What a Fantastic Fourth!!!!

This has to be one of the best Fourth of July holidays I've had in quite a long time. We started the festivities off by watching the space shuttle launch and it was kind of a funny coincidence that I witnessed the first ever launch of a space shuttle (Challenger) in 8th grade from of all places, Thief River Falls and here I was again witnessing the first ever "Fourth of July launch" right here in TRF again. Come to think of it, the boys also watched their first ever live shuttle launch also in TRF.

We got together with the Widerskis bringing out all the fixins for a nice cookout including hamburgers and pork loins with hickory chips and finished it off with fresh watermelon (from Texas), chocolate chip bars and fruit Jello. Before the cookout, I stopped by the Murphy's gazebo and Fern Williams was out there with Wanda Murphy, Mrs. Folger, and one other lady I didn't recognize and I said, "So here's where the lady's auxiliary is meeting..." :o) I wanted to check on Ken as he had his knee replacement done on the left side last week and has been out of the hospital just recently and apparently has already been walking the sidewalk on the new knee. I guess last night was pretty tough with the pain and all, but he's managing pretty well.

We set off a slew of fireworks out front of the Widerski house and in the middle of the show, Wanda Murphy walked over and presented half of a birthday cake to share with the kids. Speaking of kids, there were quite a few taking in the fireworks. There was Daniel and Aaron, Drew, Tyler, Johnnie, Austin, Kaylynn, and Kaylynn/Austin's sister, and two other neighbor kids I didn't get the names of. There were at least two elderly couples that rode by on old-fashioned one-speed bikes with those big whitewall tires and waved as they went by watching the display. It was small town Americana at its finest. And not a single siren could be heard all evening. Of course they don't have any bottle rockets, so probably no house fires.

It's now 10:30 and I just returned home, so we were gone a good four hours with all the festivities and I'm truly beat. What a day... Thank goodness we don't have baseball at 9 a.m. tomorrow. Then again, I do have to get up and go to the arena to sign the boys up for their semi-pro baseball field trip in Fargo or they'll miss out on that. Sounds like we weren't the only ones who had a nice holiday today given the e-mails I've gotten today. I'm glad everyone else had a great time too. Now back to the daily grind until Labor Day... :o)

Floyd the Barber?

Well, I finally tracked down a "traditional" barber in town here to get a nice "once over" as it were and return to my favorite stubble style. I had to renew the tabs on The Weasel at the courthouse (only two days before the deadline) and decided to stop at the barber just across the street from the Ben Franklin store. It's a hole in the wall, basically, with just two barber chairs and no wait. The barber was a friendly older gent, perhaps in his late 70s to mid 80s. I recognized him fron an old newspaper article in the Grand Forks Herald I read last spring that mentioned he had been in business for some 41 or so years at the same location and is one of a dying breed (traditional barber) who refuses to retire as long as he enjoys what he's doing. Anywho, as I sit down, he asks me where I'm from. I give him the lowdown of growing up here, then living out in Seattle and moving back to TRF. I mentioned, "My dad used to teach in town here" and after he asked who that was and telling him, he revealed that he used to sing in the choir under dad's direction back in the late 70s/early 80s and indeed knew exactly who dad was if not me specifically. Turns out we were on the same album cover when Trinity recorded way back in the day. He was a tenor at the time and reminisced how most of those fun guys back then had passed away, i.e. Walt Forney, Dennis Wegge, etc. The barber's name was Dean Hamms. He apparently still attends Trinity, though until now I never noticed.

After the haircut, we headed off to the grocery store to pick up some snacks and managed to bump into Cathy Hagen again in the produce department (bumped into her last time in the Wal-Mart produce department about a couple weeks ago) and I talked to her about Mr. Hamms. She mentioned he could be a feisty character. We both agreed we need to work on getting him back into choir. If Opal can still sing, there's no reason why he shouldn't be able to... :) It was a bit of an adventure shopping today as Daniel decided to help out in the produce selection (unbeknownst to me) by bagging about six different varieties of Washington State apples for me and putting them in the cart. When all was said and done, my initial plan of "just" a bag of Red Delicious apples had turned into a dozen different species from Braeburns to Galas to Pink Ladies to Fujis. Gotta love him... Aaron made his rounds of the free sample stands with cantaloupe, watermelon, and pineapple chunks. I think about 60 percent of the fridge is now loaded with apples, lettuce, baby spinach, shredded cheese, and other salad fixings, so we're eating like rabbits this week. Daniel was actually fighting over who got the first salad to eat the other night, so he doesn't mind the extra veggies much at all, though I'm afraid if I feed him too many veggies and not enough meat and potatoes he's going to float away with our next strong wind.

As for baseball, Aaron had another blowout loss on Monday against the Royals with a score of 10-2, but managed to hit a couple. I've tried to explain that he doesn't need to swing at every pitch (about 1 of 4 pitches were actually strikes). We'll see how he does tomorrow night in his next game against the Reds at 3:30. Daniel has another T-ball game at 9 a.m. tomorrow too. Aaron spent a half hour tonight practicing pitching with his buddy, Drew, so hopefully his fielding/throwing are progressing well. I didn't watch him, as I didn't want him getting nervous that "Dad's watching." I'm hoping we'll have time this weekend to head to the park and get some real batting practice in for a while.

Well, it's time to wash some dust-covered baseball pants, socks, and shirts now before tucking the boys in for the night, so I think I'll sign off for now...

A Sad Day Today....

Tyler, one of the pastor's kids from the corner house just came over after his family had been gone this weekend and said before now they weren't allowed to say anything, but now it's official. He and his family will be moving in August back to Alexandria where his dad has been voted by the church they originally came from to return as pastor. They've been in Thief River about 5 years now and unfortunately his dad wasn't able to make ends meet with the congregation here in TRF, so they have to move. It's a sad day, as they were Aaron and Daniel's first friends they made upon arriving in TRF last year and hundreds of hours have been spent playing with them since. They have represented about 95 percent of the boys' playmates, so it will be a tremendous void to fill once they've gone. Thankfully we still have another couple of months of baseball before they leave so it will give the boys time to assimilate the change more gradually and school will start up again soon after that, so they will hopefully make new friends quickly. With any luck, another family will move in quickly. One thing is for sure, this house and yard will be pretty quiet for at least a while without the daily comings and goings of their buddies. I'm thankful for the time we have had them here, however brief it's turned out to be.

In other news, Daniel tied his T-ball game last week 14-14 and Aaron's Orioles lost to the Brewers 16-8. Aaron was 3 for 4, but they managed to throw him out at first on each hit. The Brewers were a pretty good fielding team and they apparently had one fifth grader on their team. Aaron returns to action tonight against the Royals in a rematch with his buddy, Tyler. He has another game on Thursday against the Reds and Daniel has another T-ball game on that day as well.

I think it's about time to go get some errands done now, so I'll sign off for now. Looks like it may be a day of rain today (finally).

A Busy Week...

The boys got their pictures taken yesterday at the Huck for baseball. They now have their official uniforms, Aaron in orange T-shirt with "TRF Orioles" on the front and the number 7 on the back in black lettering with a major league baseball cap with the Orioles mascot on it and Daniel in royal blue with yellow "TRF" across the front with a matching blue hat with embroidered "T" on the front. Of course all 30 some T-ball kids showed up for pictures, so Daniel was the very last boy of the whole bunch to get his individual picture taken yesterday after a long hour of standing around. He took the wait in stride, though, and even managed a couple good smiles. Aaron's pictures went much faster as there were a lot fewer players. The only two girls on the team, though, came wearing light blue t-shirts and different colored street pants/jeans, so when they saw the rest of the Orioles dapperly dressed in their matching orange T-shirts and caps, their dad got an earful. I felt kind of sorry for him as he wasn't aware he was supposed to order them up front from the screen printing place. The girls didn't seem to mind after a while, though.

Tomorrow is game three for Aaron, this time against the "Brewers" and Danny has his second T-ball game bright and early at 9 a.m. We'll see if the Orioles remain unbeaten and move to 3-0. Perhaps the Twins winning the past eight games in a row is a good omen?

The Start of a Winning Streak?

Just thought I'd do a quick update here before I forget and all these games blend into one blur. Aaron played the Cubs today in his second game and his Orioles won their second game, this time a little closer at 9-8. He was two for three with two singles. We went back to the field at 6:30 to 8 p.m. tonight to watch his buddy Drew play his game as well, so it's been a long day. Daniel has T-ball at 9 a.m. tomorrow and Aaron will be back at practice at 10:30. Sometime after that we'll be running back and forth to the Ralph Arena to get their team pictures done. I just hope it's a little cooler outside tomorrow.

Aaron on First Base

  

Daniel at First Base

  

America's Favorite Pastime...