I’ve been remiss at my blog entries lately and I need to get caught back up. My new job has me spending my "free" time (9-10:30 pm) replying to mounds of email, and I end up with little energy left to type more into a blog. With baseball season over, I should have more time now, so it’s just a matter of making a point to do it.
Our past couple of weekends have been fun – we’ve taken the approach of not planning much but still doing quite a bit. It’s probably just a mental trick, but we seem to enjoy the weekends more if we’re not staring at a full agenda. Two Fridays ago I made by every 5 year trip to a local bar with a couple friends. It was my kind of bar – unpopulated, quiet (no loud music), flush with seating and serving free popcorn. I got to wax political for the first time in a long time and by the end of the hour and a half we had pretty much all of the country’s ills solved. All we need is time to write up the ideas and the power to do something.
That Saturday we decided to venture to my brother Marc’s to celebrate his birthday. We left about 11am Saturday and as we got towards the Cities I convinced Becky we should take a jaunt downtown to see the new Twins stadium and the recently completed I35W bridge since the girls were asleep. The plan was going great until the girls started waking up as soon as we hit a stoplight. Compounding the issue much more was the fact that we happened to run into a traffic jam. The Minnesota Gophers game had just finished as we arrived downtown so we were moving at the pace of 2 cars forward per green light as we tried to escape. Just then, Amelia said she had to go potty, so it was scramble time. We ended up turning towards the Mississippi River and finding the Mill Street Museum. I had visions of paying $14.95 per person to enter the museum to use the potty, but luckily we were able to get in and out without hassle. From there, we decided to head under the I35W bridge along the river and ended up getting out of town faster than we otherwise would’ve by taking a very long route back to the other side of the Interstate.
My brother Dave and his wife came over that evening too, so we all enjoyed some hang-out time at Marc’s place. It was nice to have some time to relax with my family. The next morning Becky and Kari took Katie, Amelia and Parker to Madagascar 2. It was Amelia’s first movie, and she hung in there pretty well, with only 3 bathrooms trips. Marc and I were able to engage in an hour of non-stop ping pong – we hadn’t done that in like 20 years. We got to spend some time with baby Sawyer, which was good. He’s such a good baby – sleeps through the night already and is very calm during the day.
Last Friday we took in the play at the High School – Back to the Eighties – a musical. It was a pretty ambitious undertaking by a small school. Every scene featured some song from the 80’s, so Becky and I enjoyed the trip down memory lane. The girls (plus Katie’s friend Jalynn) loved the fact there was so much singing and at one point they danced in the aisles. The play ended up going from 7:30 to after 10pm, so it was a long night but the girls did a good job of hanging in there.
Saturday gave us time to fix up our bikes and relax. I took my first crack at making Apple Crisp that afternoon – apparently you need to fill the pan 3/4 full with apples – in my crazy mind I thought that meant only populate 3/4 of the bottom of the pan with apples, so my Apple Crisp was light on apples. We went over to our friends the Bakers that night and had a good time hanging out. We made S’mores over there which turned into a bit of a mess.
Sunday we headed up to Fargo to do some shopping (which turned out to be just me since the girls were asleep and Becky didn’t bring her purse) and head to our friends the Uggeruds. I shopped for the girls Christmas presents, which was incredibly easy because they want everything. Nary a commercial goes by without me hearing "I want that" from one of the little princesses.
Anyway, that’s what we’ve been up to lately.
Eric's space 