Dec's Preschool Graduation

Last Sunday, we attended our very last day care/preschool summer party (a bittersweet milestone as we've enjoyed these) and watched the final V walk across Ms. A's yard in a cap and gown to receive his preschool diploma. Next week, off he goes to Kindergarten!!!

Two years ago, we moved the boy for the third time to his third Ms. A - something that we wrestled hard with as we just wanted him to feel some stability. It was the best thing we've ever done for him.  This school has been the perfect fit, with a great group of friends, a great learning environment, and a teacher who hugged him at pick up on his last day and made him promise to call her and tell her about his first day of Kinder. D has blossomed and there is no doubt he is ready for the big kid school.

The party started out with a visit from a local lady and her pets, which the kids could learn about and touch. Fiona and Dec thought it was great and decided the hedgehog and chinchilla were their favorites. Quinn made it way longer than we thought she would before she decided to play on the swings and in the mud kitchen. Truthfully, I was with Quinn and also kept my distance from things like a bearded dragon lizard.

After a picnic lunch, the kids put on a program where they sang three songs - and D was even an astronaut in one of them. Then they each received special superhero awards from Ms. A to recognize their superpower. Declan was the "Super Assistant" because he is always helping out his friends. We can totally see that and he was very proud of his award.

He was officially done at Ms. A's on Thursday. He seemed okay with it - but we're not sure he completely gets it as he continues to talk about going back when there's no school, or after school, or when it snows too hard. So that could be a surprise for him ...

We are sad that he's done there too because it's been so great. But we are not sad that we've made our last day care payment [happy dance because it's been eight and a half years, you guys]. Or that starting next week, we only have ONE PICK UP AND DROP OFF! Or that school after care doesn't close at 5pm and we may actually have a bit of breathing room on our commutes.

We are soaking up the last bits of summer this weekend, but are also excited about the changes the start of the school year will bring.

Milestone Weekend

The basement had officially reached Category 5 hurricane level by last Friday. Or more accurately, it looked like a hurricane had picked up a Barbie store and dumped it in the playroom. So Saturday after lunch, I told the kids that we were winning the basement mess battle. It took a lot of work, but we finally found the floor! [You probably think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. It was terrifying!]

As a reward for surviving the cleaning process - and because it was a simply beautiful day out, we decided to spend the afternoon at ValleyFair. It was really busy (we had hoped the State Fair would have cut the crowds), but the lines weren't too long. Poor Fiona got a bit of a wobbly tummy from a couple of the early rides, so I wouldn't let her go on a few of her favorites. But overall, everyone had a fun time. We hit up some of our usuals and checked out a few rides that the kids are getting close to being tall enough to ride.

We had promised the kids that they could stand in the path of The Wave on the way out so they could get wet. When we got there, Mike realized that the girls were finally tall enough to actually go ON the ride. So they did. And once Declan realized what was happening, it did NOT go over well. He was pretty ticked off as that boat climbed the hill, but hurried over to the sidewalk area to take advantage of the splash.

Because of the wind, it wasn't a great splash and he was bummed. So when the people started exiting the ride, the boy ran in the exit door to meet his dad on the bridge. Quinn ran fast enough to miss the wave of the next boat, but Mike and Fiona did not. They were sooooo wet! And then Mike stood in two more waves with Declan - because he's the best!

Fiona proclaimed that it was the best ride of her life and both girls are so excited to do it again. This big kid thing might have some advantages after all! Dec can't wait until he's tall enough too. Until then, I suspect he will continue sneaking on to the bridge!

We hurried four soaking wet Vs to the car, giggling all the way at how wet they were. I was mostly dry - except for a Declan-shaped spot where he managed to catch me with a hug! Hitting that magic height goal was a very exciting milestone for the girls.

My major milestone of the weekend ... being able to go downstairs without my eye twitching from the mess!

Quinn is Seven

Gma and Gpa J called last Thursday to wish Q a happy birthday. I handed the phone to her ... and realized that at 7 years of age, she honestly had no idea how to hold a phone. I had to line it up for her and then realized halfway through that she couldn't hear Gpa and he couldn't hear her because the mic was at her ear and the speaker was hanging out in the air. For as tech savvy as these kids are, basic phone functionality was beyond her. Soooo funny!

I just looked back at last year's post and smiled at my closing thoughts around how we hoped year six would bring confidence and joy as she started to discover who she is. Well ... that is exactly what year six did. Quinn is finding her voice, her passions, and her courage - and watching her grow into herself is a true privilege.

As she has always been, Quinn continues to be our child of opposites. Mike and I did a quiz about our children and had a good laugh at our answers. Most stubborn child? Quinn. Most laidback child? Also Quinn. Bravest child? Quinn. Most cautious child? Also Quinn. Most talkative child? Declan ... (c'mon, she can't win them all!)

Last fall, I finally convinced her to try gymnastics at an actual gym and she loves it! She moved up six levels during the last year and will be starting in the Intermediate level in a couple weeks. Quinn has also decided to play hockey this year. She is doing a cool "Learn to Play" program sponsored by the local NHL team and then will be playing 6U girls hockey starting in October.

Q's birthday celebration was pretty low-key and she seemed just fine with that. She, Fiona, and Nanny N went to a local malt shop for a special lunch (complete with a cherry malt for the bday girl) and we had cheeseburgers and crispy crowns for dinner. She got quite a bit of new "American Girl" (target brand) accessories and has delighted in playing with her new stuff for the last week.

Then on Saturday, we met our neighbors at the pool for a couple hours of swimming and then took them out for birthday Dairy Queen. She told me it was a great celebration. I think the highlight for her was that even though she is still an inch too short for the waterslide at the pool, her swimming teacher was the lifeguard, knew she could swim well enough, and let her go. Holy happy group of big kids! (holy sad Declan who really is too short!)

We had her well check this morning and she is wonderfully healthy. At newly seven, Quinn is 47" tall (34th percentile) and 45 lbs (23rd percentile). She is wickedly smart, devilishly funny, a great help in the kitchen, crazy coordinated, and so very stubborn. Quinn is a truly strategic thinker and has no problem "doing the time" if she thinks "doing the crime" is worth it. Raising her will keep us on our parenting toes in the best way!

Finally, here are her answers to the annual set of birthday questions:

   Favorite color: Orange

   Favorite friend: Evelyn and Jonah

   Favorite show: Odd Squad

   Favorite movie: Newsies

   Favorite book: Bad Kitty

   Favorite song: Can't Stop the Feeling (Justin Timberlake)

   Favorite food: Salsa chicken

   Favorite thing to do: Go swimming

   Be when you grow up: Chef

Under Pressure

Once upon a time, when I started with Emerson, my group had the company season tickets to the Minnesota Wild. And with that came season ticket holder access to concerts at the Xcel. It was a wildly amazing perk to occasionally win really good tickets to really good concerts. Then, sadness befell the land and the tickets (and their cost) moved to a new and bigger group and the perk that none of us took for granted went away.

Then, not so long ago, I took a job with a new group. A group that now possessed the tickets. And access to the occasional free concert returned to my life. Complete with sunshine, rainbows, and Adam Lambert. It takes a lot for Mike and I to get a babysitter and drive all the way to St. Paul. So other than deep painful despair that we missed Weezer because we were on spring break, there haven't been any concerts that we were terribly interested in. Until I saw that Queen (+ Adam Lambert) was coming to town!

Mike claimed it was just an expensive cover band (Freddie Mercury snob), so I asked my sister if she wanted to go if I won tickets. She did. And I did. So we made a girls night plan for me to drive up to her house, we'd do dinner, hit the concert, I'd spend the night, and then drive home in the morning. Such a nice, tidy, easy to execute plan ...

Except my departure timing could not have been worse and I got stuck in the middle of a monsoon-like rainstorm. People were hydroplaning on the freeway, there were inches of standing water, and I couldn't see more than a few feet ahead of me. So I pulled off to wait it out. Then caught up with the storm and repeated. Thank goodness I had my book with me - to keep me company in the line up of cars waiting it out in the Cub Foods parking lot. What is usually a 45 minute drive took me just over two hours!

So we scrapped going out for dinner, drank a couple vanilla whiskey drinks and shared a goat cheese frozen pizza at Emmy's place, and headed toward St. Paul. We were about 20 minutes late for the concert, but we don't think we missed any "critical" songs. Our tickets were in the Emerson suite and being late forced us to "sit" at the drink rail rail instead of in the main seating area. This really was for the best - as we promptly moved the stools out of our way and stood, sang, and danced to our hearts' content. Without making my co-workers hate us!

The concert was really great. They played all our favorites. Mike may have been right that Adam Lambert is not Freddie Mercury. But he didn't try to be. And Brian May is still freaking phenomenal on guitar! We did lose interest for a bit during the psychedelic rock period (and the loooooooong guitar solo) - and were quite unhappy that we missed last call ... at 9:30! Bohemian Rhapsody was their final song and the encore did not disappoint either - with We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions sing-a-longs.

Em's friend had suggested a good parking ramp and it was easy out of downtown. Because we were both amped up from the concert, we made a pit stop at the townie bar by Em's house for a night cap. As we walked in, I could hear the jukebox playing a Queen song. So funny!

It was such a fun night with my sister and something we hope to do again soon! Although next time, we are thinking movie night in where we don't have drive somewhere and we can wear comfy pants the whole time ...

I was up and on the road home shortly after 8:00am. The drive home only took 45 minutes - as it should. And they all lived happily ever after. 

A Visitor Crashed Dad/Daughter Day at the Ballpark

We got back from our Tall Timber Days weekend up north, Emmy and I went to work for a couple days, and then we promptly took Wednesday afternoon off for our annual Dad/Daughter baseball game. Our group was up to eight people this year (three dads, five daughters) and we've been looking forward to it for weeks!

I learned my lesson a couple years ago and took the bus up (parking downtown is beyond awful). The bus leaves at 10:30 - so I was at the field almost an hour before anyone else in our group. I'm in the middle of a really good book. There are chairs in the lobby of the Legend's Club. I managed to make it work. I was also kept company by an on-going text chat with my sister as she hopped the train to the park. With a super entertaining punchline when she realized that the Twins don't play at USBank Stadium. Luckily she noticed all the people with Twins shirts did not exit and stayed on the train!

As most of our gang congregated, we decided to swing by the bar to grab some drinks before taking our seats. And that's when I saw him ... Tony Oliva. The man. The legend. My dad's favorite player of all time. Now, Dad had finally met Tony O in person last time he was at the game (a brief meeting that resulted in an autograph on his jersey!). But I had not met him. So I marched right over and shook his hand. Then the rest of the gang came too and we all gushed about how much we love him.

Then, like a good sister, I texted a picture of it to my sister (who was still not there) to show her what she had missed. When the final members of our group arrived, they were not thrilled that they had missed the Tony photo ops. My sis was ready to lead the stalking charge to recreate the moment. We were all standing around a table laughing and drinking ... when who walked up to talk to us more. Yep, Tony O! He sought us out and believe me, that detail was not missed. My dad is pretty sure they are besties now. And joked that he's going to invite Tony to his birthday party!

The game itself was pretty terrible (we did not play well - except turning a triple play in the field - which is basically like a baseball unicorn. And I missed it because I was in the bathroom. Grrr). It was a very hot and sunny day, so we bounced back and forth between our seats and the air conditioned lobby every couple innings to not have heat stroke! But the company and the Tony visit made it the greatest day ever. The dilly bars and nachos didn't hurt either.

My sister left early, so when the Twins started a late inning comeback, Dad's friend Greg deadpanned "Em should have left earlier." At least I got to see a Twins homerun since I missed one last time we were at the park. Catching my bus back was easy peasy and I was home in time for dinner. I always love going to the game with my dad - and need to work on how to explain to Dec why he is not invited. Because he was not having it this year!

Saturday Lake Tour

After sweating our tails off at the lumberjack show, everyone needed to go to the lake! I mean, let's be honest ... we rarely need an excuse to go to the lake. But if we ever did, a hot, sticky day is a good one! Everyone needed a reset on the core body temp.

We ate a quick lunch at Gma and Gpa's, swimsuited up, and headed out to Auntie Tracey's house. Since we were there over the 4th, Uncle Kyle has been working on removing weeds and rocks at the shoreline and it was much easier for the smaller Vs to navigate in and out of the water. Dec still wasn't convinced ... and Uncle Kyle is a sucker for that boy ... so D still had plenty of assistance. Uncle K didn't seem to mind being the favorite.

We did a lot of floating around to cool off and Mike spent most of his time taking various Vs out on the new Bartholomew toy - a jet ski. There was not a single V (big or small) that didn't love it with their whole heart. The kids took multiple rides and you could hear Fiona's belly laugh echoing across the lake. Dec wants nothing more than to have Ben take him for a ride - so we'll see if we can make that happen next trip up.

We also got to meet Ben's girlfriend - and Mike and I made an impression by pushing her and Ben off the dock. If you are going to hang with this family, you need to know how we are from the get go. I think K got out a kick out of seeing Ben's "twin" - just a couple decades older!

After a couple hours at lake #1, we continued our afternoon lake tour with a quick (less than 10 minute) drive over to the cabin for lake #2. Auntie was there, relaxing solo on the Maui mat. So we made quick work of that! We spent another couple hours on the Maui mat, jumping off the dock, jumping off the pontoon, and basically exhausting Auntie's friend who had stopped by to say hello.

Around dinner time, we packed up and headed back to Gma and Gpa's house. Mike and Gma handled bedtime while my dad and I went down to the newest brewhall in town. My friend Eric (stage name: Actual Wolf) was playing. And as luck would have it, my friend Tim was also there as his band had a few days break from touring. So I got to talk to Tim during the set and Eric after. It was great to catch up with them both quickly and enjoy the lovely weather on the outside patio.

It was a great, albeit short, trip and we are all very happy that we have one more trip north planned before school starts and fall officially begins!

Tall Timber Days

Someone spies motorcycles

One of the reasons we headed north last weekend was to participate in the Tall Timber Days festivities in Rapids. Tall Timber Days is the town festival and has been a highlight of my life for as long as I can remember. Before we had kids, I would drag Mike up there every year (for the lumberjack show. and the mini donuts). Shamefully, our children have not participated in this fantastic event. The pressure to remedy this increased because the GRHS marching band marches in the parade each year ... which means their cousin Ben is in the parade. B is a junior this year - so we needed to shake a leg before this boy graduates.

Saturday morning, the whole crew headed downtown to check out the craft show, book sales, and lumberjack show. As usual, the lumberjack show was in the full sun and was SO HOT. The kids were dying and we were very grateful that Gpa had grabbed a few bottles of water. Other than being way too hot, they really enjoyed the show. The rest of us could probably recite it at this point, but it never disappoints. I was so happy that the kids enjoyed it as much as I hoped they would. Dec got super into it - and Auntie got the best picture of him (complete with sporting my rhinestone studded sunglasses that he stole off Auntie's face).

We needed to cool down after the show, so we headed into the mall to the book sale. Dec found several books about sharks and ninja turtles, Q found some Berentstain Bear books, and Bugs and her daddy found Holes - an excellent choice for a chapter book. A big bag full of new books for $5 - yes please! We were still hot so after a few focused stops to purchase things at the craft show, we headed out for lunch and a lake tour (more on that next blog post).

Then Sunday afternoon, we were back downtown for the other highlight of Tall Timber Days - the parade. You guys, I have legitimately never seen any children collect so much candy at a parade. Times three. Oh my goodness, the candy! We had quite the crew watching and a perfect spot in the shade. Thank goodness - because it was another hot and sunny day. The parade was long, but we thoroughly enjoyed it. The band, the tractors, the motorcycles ... the candy ... parades are just full of happiness.

While we sat in the shade, our car did not. So even though Mike let the air run while we did a quick load up at my parents, it still took close to an hour into the drive home for the car to cool off. Poor Q - the heat was getting to her and really making her feel more carsick. She didn't puke, but she was pretty miserable until her core temp returned to normal. Gpa and Gma almost got a furry houseguest for the month of August (we almost forgot Yogi) ... which Mike blames on heatstroke!

We got home later than our usual trick, but still with enough time to unload, stretch, and ninja shower. Traffic was not as terrible as expected and the distraction of Newsies didn't hurt either. Such a fun first festival weekend for the gang!

[Anyone reading this ... please come help us eat parade candy. I've honest to goodness unloaded multiple bags to friends and family, given a whole bowl to our neighbor, and it still does not look like we've made a dent. HELP! If you like tootsie/frootsie rolls, we are your people!]

When I took this, I thought they had so much candy ...
I was sooooo wrong!

Bonding in the Sauna

Well … for a hot second at the end of last week, I was caught up on blogging. Then we had a great weekend and eventful week and I’m back to my perpetual state of catch up. Such is the life of a blogger, it seems.

We headed north (yes, again) last Friday morning – this time bound for Grand Rapids. Our departure had a minor hiccup … as I hit the bathroom one last time before loading up and noticed that our master bathroom toilet was leaking onto the floor. So I proceeded to ruin Mike’s day by telling him that. And then hustled the children out of the house so they didn’t expand their vocabulary. Plumbing is never a simple fix, so he ended up just turning off the water to the toilet, putting a towel down, and planning to deal with it when we got home. Other than plumbing issues and Quinn being tired and wiggly, the ride north was pretty uneventful – just how we like it!

We got to Gma and Gpa’s, unloaded our stuff, stretched our legs, grabbed Auntie, loaded back up, and headed to the cabin. Because daylight was a-wastin’. The kids mentioned several times how disappointed they were that the cousins were out of town for the weekend and the cabin wouldn’t be any fun without them.

However, upon arrival, we discovered the new Maui Mat and the world became a better place because of it. Auntie had been told that the Maui mat was a relaxing flotation experience because the little cousins were not that interested in it. Enter Vannestes. Relaxation – HA! That thing was made for jumping, wrestling, and general craziness. Our shining moment of the day was when all six of us were able to stand at.the.same.time for a few consecutive seconds. It’s way harder than it sounds!!

We could hear thunder in the distance, so Mike checked his phone and decided we should walk up the hill to the cabin (a decision that no one makes lightly. that hill is a hike!) for snack. The kids discovered the train sets and had a good time playing and eating cookies while we waited for the storm to pass. Once the skies cleared, we decided to spend a little more time in the lake before heading back to town. We unrolled the Maui mat and played for about 10 minutes. Mike didn't like the look of the sky so checked his phone ... and immediately told everyone to get out of the lake and into the sauna.

We no sooner crammed six of us into what is usually a 2-3 person sauna when the storm hit. Big time. We actually lost power and ended up using our cell phone flashlights to ensure people weren't sitting in the pitch black. It poured for about 25 minutes, and the kids did awesome. We told them what fun memories we were making and how we would be talking for years about "the time we were stuck in the sauna." When the rain stopped, we grabbed our gear, picked up the little bit of stuff that was left, gaped at the washed out beach from the storm, and climbed the hill one more time to drive to town. Where it had not rained a drop. Sigh.

It was a low key evening and early-ish to bed for the kids. Auntie actually went back up to the cabin to spend the night - and verify that the power was back on. You'd think being chased out of the lake twice because of storms would have ruined the day. But it certainly did not. All agreed it was a great day on the lake.