Lucky

Call my kids lucky....call my parents lucky....call me lucky! Why so much luck in this neck of the woods? Two words: Grandkids Camp! It is the wonderful time when my parents take the older grandkids (I hear Fiona is going next year..hooray) to the cabin with T-shirts and planned camp activities.

Bye grandpa, Luis and Ryan

My kids love it. They been looking forward to it all year. The kids are lucky that the grandparents want put this together each year. They are lucky to have grandparents who genuinely love spending time with their grandkids. My parents are lucky to have these kids in one place and have great relationships with each child. Time with grandkids without parents around is precious (for everyone).

Bye Andrew and Leo.

I really don't think I need to explain why I am lucky. I think the quiet house, sleeping in, time with friends and family sans kids and the laundry I got done all speak for me.

Have fun Emily and Nico.

Good luck Mom!

Grandpa and Ry

While we were on our Duluth trip, my parents watched the kids for us. The kids had a blast with their grandparents. Ryan got to spend some good one-on-one time with Grandpa Bill. A few months ago, they decided it would be fun to build a solar car together. This weekend it happened.

Dad found a great solar car kit, ordered it and helped Ry build it in his workshop.

Here they are testing their finished product out on the driveway. It worked like a charm.

Ry is so proud of this solar powered car. It was one of the first things I saw when I got home from our trip.

Ryan also got to go to an airshow with his grandpa. My parents' next door neighbor is a retired pilot. Now, he flies in airshows. Dad brought Ry to one of the his airshows.

Ryan is standing in front of a WW2 torpedo bomber.This is the same type of bomber that his great-grandpa Hamer worked on during the war. Coincidentally, his Greatgreatgrandpa Sohl also worked in a factory during WW2 manufacturing this same type of torpedo bomber.
Here is Ryan in front of another military jet. No family heritage significance, just a cool jet. I am sure Ryan planned his outfit to match the jet...we just always think of those details.

After the show, they walked over to the planes and found my dad's neighbor Tim Barzen. Mr. Barzen let Ryan sit in the cockpit of his plane. That was pretty neat. Dad is standing on the wing and Tim Barzen is by the airplane's tail.

Ryan had a wonderful time with Grandpa Bill. I think the car and the show were both pretty cool...but I think it is cooler that he got to spend the time with his grandpa making memories. Thank you dad for the time and the attention you gave Ryan! He loved it!

Duluth trip

Duluth

Just a mere 2.5 hours to the north. It is a cool port city on Lake Superior. It is our 13th anniversary today. These facts come together. Here's how...Erik planned a weekend get-away to Duluth in order to celebrate our anniversary. He checked my work schedule-clear. He asked my parents to watch the kids-agreed. He found a great place to stay-reserved. It was a wonderful trip. It was great to be away from kids and life for a few days.

This is a picture from our window.

Because it seems funny to end my anniversary post about a murder mystery, I am going to talk about Glensheen Mansion first.

We got to go see the Glensheen Mansion. I loved hearing about the Congdon family. Chester Congdon was the richest man in Minnesota in the early 1900s. The home is amazing. It cost the family the equivalent of $30 million dollars to construct the home (not including land and furnishings..which are both amazing too). There are so many interesting things about this home and this family. The pictures around the home and the house itself seemed to portray a loving family. Our tour guide was great. But, there is also intrigue around this mansion.
As some of you may know, this is the home where Elizabeth Congdon (the Congdon's youngest daughter) was murdered in 1977 by her adopted daughter's husband (most probably planned by the daughter for her inheritance although this was never proven). This was barely mentioned out of "respect for the family," but our tour guide did point out where it happened. Fascinating.

Now on a happier note:

Our hotel was linked into the skyway system, so it was easy for us to get to the shore. We had a great time exploring the shores. We found tons of cute shops, watched a movie and ate yummy food.

We walked across the lift bridge and found a cool sandy beach.

According to Wikipedia...it is the world's largest freshwater sandbar.
We took matching pictures on the shores of Lake Superior. Surprisingly, there were very few people hanging out on the sandy beach. So, there was no one to take our picture together. This is what we would look like on a deserted island.
As we were getting ready to walk back across the bridge, this boat came home. It is called the Blue Heron. It was on a 5 day research trip. It was fun to watch them raise the bridge for it come home.
Happy 13th Anniversary Erik!

Fort Snelling

Here in this great state we have many historic sites to visit. Tiffany and I rediscovered them a few years ago. They (The Historical Society) had a "History Matters" challenge. It was to visit six different sites in a summer and earn a prize. We took that challenge.
Here is a picture of Ryan and Trevor from 2006. They are at Fort Snelling learning about different cannon ammunition. Sadly, that program challenge has been discontinued. But we found some favorite places and made a good habit of visiting and learning from these places.

We went back to Fort Snelling on Tuesday. Again, it was so much fun. This time we went with Grandma, Grandpa, Nico and Leo.
Here is Grandpa Bill with five of his grandchildren. They are standing on the round corner tower. Actually it is one of the oldest buildings in Minnesota. It has had many different uses..interestingly one was a beauty shop.
Emily was so happy to get to hold the bugle in the picture with welcoming guard. Today we learned that the soldiers would listen to the bugle to know their battle orders..because the battle field would be so loud.

Grandma and four of the kids joined up for the day. They made great soldiers.

Probably one of the kids' favorite parts of the day was learning about the "8 Piece" money system at the old settler's shop. Back then, they would chop the coin in order to give change. That guide (in the above picture) was really fun to listen to.

Grandpa Bill and my three really enjoyed the blacksmith. They watched him make a nail and a hook. Good times...
Here is a picture of Ry working with the same blacksmith in 2006
We recognized a lot of the same people that work at the fort. They really know their stuff!
Here, Nico and Leo are modeling how the soldiers had to sleep "head to toe." We also learned that 12 soldiers had to share one tiny room. One "soldier" said that in the winter that wasn't so bad though.

We also got to watch musket loading/shooting demonstrations and the cannon was fired. Both were very loud and really interesting.
I renewed my Historical Society membership...so watch out Mill City and Pine City here we come!

The listening program

Twice a week Andrew goes to Children's Therapy. He gets to work for an hour working with an occupational therapist and then a half hour with a speech specialist. He is making huge improvements in his speech (we are just starting the OT piece, those big improvements are still to come..).

Our speech specialist is wonderful. I feel like she really likes Andrew. She gets excited about his successes. Now that it is easier to understand the kid, we are all realizing that Andrew is a clever and funny guy.

She recommended that we look into a new kind of treatment program. It is called The Listening Program. She explained that she has seen results in each of her clients that use the program. We researched some and decided to give it a try. Basically it is a music-based auditory stimulation method that provides engaging brain stimulation to improve performance in school, work and life. Here's some of what they say:

The Listening Program’s psychoacoustically modified music and patent-pending production techniques are designed to stimulate or “exercise” the different functions of the auditory processing system. This enables the brain to better receive, process, store and utilize the valuable information provided through the varied soundscapes in our lives such as music, language and the environment in which we live.

Systematic training is provided through listening to psychoacoustically modified classical music which trains the brain to process sound more efficiently. This leads to improvements in:

Learning Attention Communication Reading

Listening Sensory Processing Social Engagement Behavior

Self Regulation Musical Ability Brain Fitness Daily Living

Basically he listens to these CDs for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening. We decided that Ryan would participate in this program too.

We are on week two. He is not allowed to eat, watch TV, sleep or play video games while doing his listening. We have found some fun activities.

Sticker books are fun.

So is Shaving Cream.

If you guys have any other fun activities let me know. Also I will let you all know how the program works for us : ) It seems pretty cool.

All over the place!

I love summer time. Every year I have an illusion of a schedule-free summer and every year it gets filled with stuff. I would not trade our summers though. These past few weeks have been jam packed with places to be and things to do. So this post is going to jump all over the place-sorry about that.

Andrew and Emily started gymnastics or I should say Emily started gymnastics and Andrew started tumbling (for some reason Andrew is against the word gymnastics).
I love watching Andrew go on the vault. He runs super fast then jumps like 5 times on the trampoline (instead of 1) before he actually gets on the vault.
Ryan and Emily have tennis three times a week. Last Saturday was picture day and tennis matches. Because of some confusion, a mom took her daughter and left early. That left only three players in Emily and Ryan's court. Guess who got to grab a racket and join in? That's right me. Somehow that picture did not get taken (just picture me playing tennis with a bunch of 4-9th graders and ALL the other parents sitting watching while talking on cell phones). It actually was pretty fun. I wish I was better at tennis.

Our week also involved speech/OT 2 times a week for Andrew and band lessons 2 times a week for Ryan. I got to work all weekend too. We also had fun game nights with friends and family.

Erik got a chance to take the kids swimming at the water park. He was successful at NOT letting the kids get a sunburn. Good job Erik.
We did get to go to the cabin. Each year the lake is a little different. This year the weeds are growing in more, but that did not stop us from having a blast. The kids just plowed through them.

Here is a bucket of the fruits of their labors. It was so funny to watch the 5 kids try to keep 7 VERY bouncy frogs in one bucket.

This is a picture of Nico (my sister's son) modeling one of the frogs they caught that afternoon.
So that was one week-I wonder what this week will bring. I am sure eventually I will have to face the housework that I am avoiding.

Fifth Grade band!

As the school year was wrapping up, Ryan got the chance to decide if he wanted to participate in fifth grade band next year. Without question, his answer was "yes!"
We were very careful about the instrument selection. We wanted to find an instrument that Ryan would want to play. One that he would be successful with and MOST IMPORTANTLY one that we wanted to listen to as he practiced. Erik and Ryan went on You Tube. They listened to MANY different options. Ryan decided the sax was the one for him. I am excited for him.

We went on good old Craig's list and found a good sax for him. His lessons started this week. So far (day 3), life is good for Ryan and is Sax. He has learned how to use the sax and three notes. We are ready for the song "Hot Cross Buns."