Yes, We're Still Here...

I'm afraid we've been kept so occupied that this blog has fallen by the wayside again lately. So much has gone on since my last update, I can't possibly remember it all, so I'll probably just touch on the highlights that stick out more than others in my cluttered mind.

Since Easter, we had a good two more weeks and then some of chilly weather with snow on the ground. It was close to May by the time all the snow had melted and a long overdue spring appeared. The birds showed up on time, but mother nature failed to follow suit so we were quite happy once everything else fell into place with the sun and all. The school year appears to have been on fast forward ever since basketball season ended with it quickly approaching the last day of school with less than a month left. We had a great weekend last week, though, with the Shrine Circus in Grand Forks at the UND hockey arena. Joe and Jodi drove both their vans over so we got a ride with Joe and spent the afternoon with their kids at the circus. Jodi's dad is a Shriner, so we got all free tickets, though we of course had to spend plenty on concessions and extras on the circus floor during intermission. We stopped and took a look at the 80 acres on the way back to Thief River.

This past week has been spent preparing for the summer months by signing the boys up for another season of Park & Rec baseball and Safety Camp for Daniel at Franklin Middle School. I also finally had an afternoon of free time this past week so I picked up some nice plants at Wally World and Aaron helped me plant geraniums and smaller mini viola plants in the old whiskey barrel planters out front of the house and in the planters out back. The barrels look nice for the first time since we got here and the Prowler cross country team and neighborhood folks now have something pleasing to look at when they run/walk by. The birds have also been busy doing their part to beautify the house. I now have matching robin's nests in the front and back of the house. There's one wedged between the rain gutter and eve on the front porch and another one the boys discovered this morning that's perched right on top of the back flood lights just outside the back door. It's nestled right between the two lights just above the motion sensor. I took it down just to see if there was an egg in it, but there was none so I put it back up there. I figure it's a good idea to leave the birds alone, as they'll do a good job controlling the insects, i.e. mosquitos.

We're just about through with choir for the year at church. We sang with the combined choirs tonight at Redeemer and then will sing at Zion tomorrow morning followed by Trinity and that's pretty much it for the summer until September or so. We also had the Sunday School appreciation dinner last Sunday and tomorrow is the last day of Sunday School with awards for perfect attendance. Preliminary indications are that both boys will receive a perfect attendance award this year (a major improvement over last year).

As we are entering the summer months, we are now experiencing some good rain this weekend and may even have some thunderstorms. It has helped a great deal with grass germination, as I'm trying to repair some of the grass adjacent to our front side walk. Minnesota dirt seems like Miracle-Gro all by itself with only a night or two of rain required before you have a lush green carpet of turf to run your bare toes through. I've already mowed the back lawn once and I suspect the mower will be getting a lot more use this year than last. Now if we can just keep the insect pests away (including the yellowjackets).

We had the school carnival at Challenger today with a silent auction, dunk tank, and games. Both boys managed to dunk the principal at least once and it was fun because it was overcast and the tank was filled with cold tap water to begin with so the principal really had a cold afternoon out there in the wind of the back parking lot. The boys played a lot of games and Aaron (I?) won a Twins baseball donated and autographed by Nick Punto and Joe Nathan that's in a nice little display cube. Aaron's quite proud of his new acquisition to say the least. We also went to see Spiderman 3 last night at the Galaxy Twin in town. You know a movie is better than most when the crowd actually extends into the parking lot around here. Of course folks around here often will go to the opening of an envelope, but it was so popular there at the theater last night it reminded me of the old days in the late 70s when mom and dad would take us out to the movies and there was hardly an open seat in the house. We picked up both Kasey and Dusty Grochow to go with us and several of the boys friends were there too. It was kind of funny in the middle of the movie, though. We were four rows back and in the row just in front of us with her dad was this little blonde girl, somewhere like kindergarten or first grade age, and she turned around in the middle of one of the low moments in the movie and asks Daniel to sit next to her and then when Daniel didn't know how to respond, she started asking me over and over again if Daniel could sit with her and I kept telling her, "Watch the movie..." and her Dad was obviously a little embarrassed, but what was funny was I thought the girl knew Daniel from school, but apparently he didn't know her at all when I asked him later. Pretty cute.

We just got back from Redeemer and I can smell the aroma of the meatballs in beef stroganoff sauce wafting over from the Crock-Pot in the kitchen, so I think I'm going to sign off here. I'll try to keep this site updated as much as possible as we enter the season of summer activities, but I may just post pictures without text from time to time.

Congratulations to Jen, Don, Nick, and Jake on the birth of Cody Jack this past week!