Monthly Archives: August 2010

The great Minnesota Get-together

Well this morning we all woke up at 8am to head out to the Great Minnesota Get-Together! When we got there we bee-lined it for the ESPN stand to see if Brian and Jill my co-workers would get their babies name approved during the baby walk. Joe Soucheray will “approve” or fog-horn your baby’s name if its a strange name. Well my co-worker named his son Sawyer, so we thought it would for sure get approved, but instead it got fog-horned… duluth foghorned. I think he was heartbroken….

Then we went off to walk, so we headed towards the Heritage Square… while there Jason realized he could drink beer at the State Fair, and I called my sister to find out what day they were going to the fair… we were in luck… they were ALSO at the fair… so we headed over to the animal buildings and met up with them for a little bit. Kirra thought the miracle of birth barn was super awesome!!! She loved petting the newborn animals. I couldn’t believe cows come out at 90-130 pounds! This one pig was having her 14th piglet while we were there, and chickens were hatching!
We got Milk for a dollar, which was one of the best milks i’ve had. Jason said its because it was whole milk and we’ve been drinking skim milk… i think its because it was fresh!!!
Then we were off to look in more buildings. We stopped for corn dogs and Kirra ate the whole thing! Then Kirra fell asleep in the stroller.
When she woke up we got her an ice cream cone, which she wore on her entire body… we gave her a napkin bath, and were on our way….
She got to go thru this “be a little farmer” exhibit, where they put on a farmers apron, get corn seed, drive little John Deer tractors, feed fake chickens, gather fake eggs…plant fake seeds,and collect veggies. She even got to milk a fake cow… She thought this whole thing was rather fun.
We ended up going from 10am-4pm which I thought was rather good for her first time.
Once we got home we threw her in the tubby, and then I brought her to Kids’ Hair Salons to get her hair cut for the very first time. They have these cute little TVs at each station, so she got to watch Dora. Kirra now has bangs, and got her split ends taken off. She is very cute, and it was a perfect little hair salon for her.
Got chineese for dinner, and maybe in a little bit we will practice riding the new bike we got for Kirra!!!!! (photos to follow)

Knock, Knock…. who’s there? A salesman, no wait, two!!!

What a freaking day I had yesterday! Normally I don’t start my blogs out with swearing or pretend swearing (since I’ve gotten older, and Kirra’s gotten older I’ve implemented pretend swearing… plus its more fun to say, made up words!)

Anyways, back to my story… I get home from work and let Tyler out (the Rottie and hang out on my deck for a bit… well I go to call Tyler in the house when some random white van pulls into my driveway… with two younger guys in the van… Tyler goes totally bonkers, and to be quite honest I go on the defense (on the inside)… I yell out my front door, “No thanks… not interested….” and the driver actually has the balls to say… “What… you don’t wasn’t free meat? I’m not trying to sell you anything, I’m giving away meat..” so I was like, hm… who are these quacks? While still half in my house the driver jumps out of his van and goes around to the side… meanwhile the passenger has this huge smile on his face. I’m sure he was super friendly, but they kind of made me feel uncomfortable…

So I go over to their van wishing i had my cell phone on me just in case,or Tyler outside for Pete’s sake…, and this guy is like, I’m giving away free meat… so he goes to open all of these boxes (like 8 boxes) of frozen beef…i explain to him that we normally do a quarter cow and get an amazing deal on it… so he says… do you see anything here you absolutely wouldn’t eat? And I said,no, it looks great… so he then pulls out a price sheet, and says, now… do you think you can help me out with one of these boxes (which are like $60 a box) instantly I knew they WERE trying to sell me something. Well now I’m PO’d… you come over and are like I’m not trying to sell you anything except get you to pay $60 for probably a few hundred bucks in meat… I’m sure it was probably a good deal, but I’m so mad at their dishonesty that I’m for sure not going to buy now… so I literally had to KEEP reminding him I wasn’t interested…Finally they were like… well… we were just trying to hook you up with some free meat… maybe next time…

Maybe not. I see your van come down my road again, I’m locking the doors and pretending like I’m not home!

Well I was hosting bible study at my house last night so I wanted to do a load of dishes… so like 30 minutes later when i hear this knock knock knock at my door… i for sure thought it was my awesome neighbor Janis to inquire about our wine night on the patio! ( I totally live in a Desperate Housewives kind of block… I love my neighbors, and we definitely need to have drinks on the patio really really soon!!!) I digress…

Anyways, no its some junior or senior at a high school selling magazines… She greets me with a “Are you queen of this house?” I’m like, dear lord, I need mace… who are all of these people???? My other neighbor Colleen sent her over to my house because maybe i would “buy” a magazine for her school fundraiser. I’m thinking its going to be $12 or something… to heck with it.. if its for a school fundraiser. She goes on to say in her high school voice, “So like, I’ma doing this public speaking contest for my school and we are selling these here magazines for different points… well… the person with the most points is going to Italy, have you ever been out of the country before?” So i said yes i have, and this girl does some crazy dance on my deck and was like, whhhhaaattttt, for real, no way… girl.. where you been?” so I go on to tell her, and I thought the poor girl was going to have a heart attack. I was about to invite her in for a nebulizer treatment…. anyways.. she goes on and on about this great price of the magazines… i don’t want any magazines… plus I’m like, how much are they… and she’s like, it breaks down to $2 a magazine… or maybe it was something else, regardless I wasn’t paying too close of attention…. after asking her several times how much is it bottom line…she says $48, now do you think you can help me out by ordering a subscription? And I said no thanks, not today… so she was like, for real? I wanted to be like, girlfriend, when you get a real job, and a real house, a $48 magazine subscription is a lot of money for a school fundraiser… where are the football boys? Hu? At least they just sell me $10 chocolate… now that I’d buy… So miss high school goes on to bid adieu…. “well hey girl, i just really want to tell you how absolutely amazing it was talking with you today… now, i can get some bonus points.. if you tell me what your job is… so I told her I work for the Twin Cities Marathon, and she looks around, and says, “oh my GOSH, Shut up!, that is amazing girl!” I now want to just have mace to squirt it in my own face so I have a real reason to leave my front deck…” finally she leaves….
I mean getting two solicitors in a row? I want to put a note on my door… no soliciting, but then i wouldn’t have hilarious stories to share with all of you!

All Done…

My cousin is pregnant and they’re in need of a crib. Well…. since Kirra’s crib/toddler bed converts also into a full size bed and not a twin, we want to give it to them…. we gave back all of the infant clothes and my sister sold them in a garage sale… I can’t imagine Kirra at 3 years of age sleeping in a full size bed. That’s like a queen bed. We’re actually getting my grandma’s bed for her. I’m very excited. She’s getting so big I can hardly remember her as an infant now!

So needless to say…. in a sense only having one child is sinking in more! As all of my friends keep getting pregnant [again] i get all mushy and slight hmmmm especially when I see their perfectly adorable newborns…. but then when I go and sit at the drawing board and I remember why we only want one….. Its deeply personal… some people want 2/3/more and some just want one. Why the stigma with one? When people ask me if i’m haing more,and I say no, i feel like their eyeballs are going to pop out of their head as they swing it around and gasp why????

Once in a while I do wonder if she’ll beg us for a sibling, but we’ve decided to worry about that when the time comes. Right now I just can’t imagine having another one, I just love Kirra so much. I know that people do obviously love their second children just as much… but for me, i can only imagine us with Kirra. A lot of people have told me …. NOOOO you have to have more than 1 child… she’ll be spoiled, what will you do when you argue you won’t have another child to fall back on… she won’t have any siblings to grow up with… Kirra is fortunate to have an amazing group of friends, who’s moms are my friends… so I feel like we’re amazingly lucky….and there are lots of amazing single children out there that have done very well…

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Christina Applegate, Lance Armstrong, Burt Bacharach, John the Baptist, Candice Bergen,Chelsea Clinton,David Copperfield, Walter Cronkite, Leonardo da Vinci, Sammy Davis Jr., Robert De Niro, Anne of Green Gables, Rudolph Giuliani, John Lennon, Al Pacino, Natalie Portman, Elvis Presley, Daniel Radcliffe, Nancy Reagan , Condoleezza Rice, LeAnn Rimes, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frank Sinatra, Danielle Steel, Barbra Striesand, Charlize Theron, Betty White, and Robin Williams just to name a few….

I mean, you’ve got some presidential people, amazing athletes, song writters, one of the greatest artists to ever walk this earth, John the Baptist, I mean… common… technically Jesus was an only child…. even though that’s up for contention, and you have Harry Potter in here…. I think we have a good chance here!

Gymnastics

So today after work Kirra and I went up to the gymnastics center near our house and signed her up for gymnastics to start right after labor day. They had such cute equipment including little balance beams, and little uneven bars that are Kirra size. She wanted to start tonight, and didn’t understand that class wasn’t going on…so she threw a fit….

I told Kirra we’d go pick out a leotard for her class…. and she was very happy about that…. until we tried one on, and then it was time to take it off…no way…wasn’t going to happen… she tore off the tags like, haha mommy now i can’t take it off…so I had to bribe her with cookies at Target just to take it off of her…. She finally succumbed to my peer pressure.
Met up with a high school friend at Noodles (nummy) and caught up. We need to hang out more often, especially since she was one of my best friends in high school! Plus the random part is that we only live like a mile away from each other.
Well off to put crabby girl to bed!

Over the rainbow…..

So… for the past two years I’ve had this re-occouring dream about tornadoes… I always am minding my own business, and then all the sudden there is this pop up storm and a funnel cloud drops from the sky… its usually a quarter mile away from me, and I always seem to be in the clear but can visualize it perfectly… and then all the sudden the twister turns and its heading right for me…

So I always try to out-run it, or get to saftey, because I’m never near a place of total safety… and there is no-where to hide… but i always wake up before the tornado catches up to me… Its been all different scenes too… One time I was in a high rise apartment, another time I was biking down Hwy 96 in White Bear Lake, and tried to hide in a LeAnn Chins that was totally made of glass… etc etc… I have this dream fairly often as well… maybe once every few months…
So I was telling my co-workers this and my one co-worker said… that it sounds like… maybe in my actual life… somewhere… there is chaos that always seems to be far away that I’m in control… but I get to lackadaisical and then threatens to take over my life, the chaos gets very close… but never quite does… and it got me thinking! How many times have I felt like Chaos was going to take over my life? Many times actually, and I’m not just saying that like some people would… I mean… i’ve really had some close calls with chaos taking over…but somehow by the grace of God it never does and the rainbow always shows up, … and I thank Him for it every day…

Lindsey Ingalls Wilder…..

Happy Saturday everyone! Today was kind of a Laura Ingalls Wilder kind of day. As you may or may not recall, Pam & Phil (Kirra’s godparents and my in-laws long time frined) were raising chickens for us. So today was the Minnesota Chicken Masacre… well, no it really wasn’t that bad…

Kirra and I slept in until 10am! Ooftah, and then we had some quick breakfast and were off to Pam and Phils. On the way, we stopped by Festival to pick up some Texas Caviar, and I went to the self check-out because i was kind of in a hurry, so I grabbed my stuff and got out of there… well I was half way down the road when it dawned on me, I never paid for my food!!! So I had to whip a u-ie, and go back. They thought that was nice I came back, and knew that I either forgot to pay, and would come back, or i’d never go back there again!
Got back on the road again (paid in full this time) and got over to Pam and Phil’s. Sue was already there, and they had already done up 5 chickens. So immediately I set my stuff down,and it was CHICKEN TIME.
Pam and Phil went into the chicken coup and got a few chickens…
got them up on the log, and chopped off their heads
(Kirra kept saying in an english accent “Off with their heads”)
Dunked them in the water…. this helps loosen their feathers
to make it a lot easier to pull them off.
Plucked some feathers
My turn to hold on to some chickens!
After you lop off their heads, they really flap their wings a lot, and we just hold onto their feet, and don’t let them go… if their wings are in front of your legs that can kind of hurt and then you also get blood all over your shins like I did. I should have taken a picture of that, but o’well. Some people let them go, and they jump around without heads on, but then they get injured and bruised, and its not good for the meat. This part ended up being my favorite part… holding on to them after their heads got chopped off, because they put up a fight, and its just fun holding on! I definitely earned my red-neck points today!
Our reward.. lots of chickens!!!
We took home 5… so approximately 25 pounds of chicken!
All in all, I really actually enjoyed it. I was really nervous, especially
about the part where they still move after they’re dead, but as I already said
that was my favorite part… and the plucking wasn’t so bad either.
Kirra was AMAZING today. Not only did she get in on the action (watched)
but she wore undies all day and only had one accident! She took a pretty
long nap for us on the couch too, so that was nice!
I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

This weeks re-cap

I can’t even believe that this week is nearly over with! I feel like it’s just Monday or Tuesday!!!

Monday:
R-E-L-A-X. It was hotter than Haiti today, so I called Alisa after work, and Kirra and I went to the beach with them. The beach is actually super close to our house. I can’t believe we never went before… Kirra had absolutely no fear when we got there. She ran right into the water, and swam around like Dara Torres! She even went “into the deep” which is only 2 feet deep… but for her its ‘deep’. I got in too, and we had a wonderful mother-daughter moment! AKA, Kirra pushing me under water and laughing… Kirra didn’t want to go but the cops kicked everyone out at 8pm… so I told her we’d go another day.
Tuesday:
And BINGO was his name-o…. we listened to the Bingo song about 19 times today! On the way to Tally’s, on our way home to let Tyler out after work… on our way to Julies house, and on the way home! Julie (my co-worker) watched Kirra tonight while I was at a FT job meeting. She took Kirra to the park and Kirra even went down a big slide without riding with someone. She also did really really good on the potty at Julie’s house. Came home and crashed right away!
Wednesday:
Cleaning! That was the name of the game today. I whipped my house into shape! There is still more to tackle but I cleaned up quite a bit, and re-arranged the living room. Jason loves when I re-arrange everything! It was super awesome. Our house has been cluttered long enough. I just started pitching things left and right. My only thing left to really tackle is the piano… because its been sort of a catch all….Kirra did super good potty-training this evening. She is really really getting the hang of it. I’m so proud of her!
Thursday:
Today Kirra and I went over to our friend Jodi & Lauren’s for a playdate with the rest of the “MUMS” group from New Parent Connection. It was so fun to catch up with friends, and see the little ones playing. I can’t even believe that they are all nearly 3 years old! Where did the time go? On the way home guess what we listened to? BINGO! Kirra went to the whole playdate in regular underwear and didn’t even have one accident all night. GO KIRRA!!!!!
The Weekend Ahead:
Saturday: Off to Pam & Phil’s. They’ve been raising chickens for us as you may have seen in a previous post, and Saturday is butcher day… I’m in charge of plucking feathers… my co-workers are calling me Laura Ingles Wilder….I will definitely have photos posted!

Weekend Re-Cap

Friday:

Worked until noon and then went off to Relay for Life. It was a nice day in the mid 70s and overcast, which actually was nice so it wasn’t so hot! Our team this year was Pam, Lynn, Theo,Amillie, and myself. Jason even stopped by for a few laps and to say hello.
Theo cut off 10 inches of hair for Locks of Love. She’s cut it off every year for the past 4 years. I’m so proud of her, and her generosity with her hair. During the silent auction I got (and bid) on a charcoal grill! Amillie and Lynn had to leave early – so for the overnight, it was me, Theo & Pam. We walked 10 miles! I was so proud of the three of us!!! We all crashed about 4am for a few hours of shut-eye.


Saturday:
Woke up at 6am on the White Bear Lake, High School football field and was wondering if I just slept until noon if anyone would notice…. we begrudgingly got out of our lawn chairs, and began the tear down… it didn’t take too long. I went over to my parents house (because they had kept Kirra over night since Jason was working late) and instead of waking up Kirra at 6:45, I just decided to nap there for a few hours…
I got my car washed and then went home for a few more hours of shut-eye. After I woke up at my house Kirra and I went and toured the new Blaine campus for Eagle Brook Church. I am soooooo exited for this campus to open. Its absolutely AMAZING!!! The kids area is super super neat too. I seriously can’t wait for it to open. After we toured the new campus Kirra and I came home (Jason was off doing Tattoos) and we had some dinner and then went to Lino Lakes for church. The message was great, but I remembered why I like the smaller campus. Really busy…. although singing in worship was super cool with over 1,000 people singing at once.
Came home and literally went right to bed.
Sunday:
Woke up super early… like 4:45am for a race my full time job is putting on. The Twins Territory 4K. It was super fun. I was nervous about it because I was so tired this weekend, but I was home by 9am. When I got home Jason and Kirra were just waking up having breakfast, and I decided instantly i was soooo tired, so I took a 2 hour nap, which felt like HOURS…
When Kirra woke up from her nap we put her in underwear since the cost of pull-ups is outrageous. I think except for nap time, and bed time, we’re going to have her in underwear. I do expect to do lots of laundry, although she’s getting really good at potty training.
After Kirra got up from her nap we took a trip to the park, which was fun, and then went to LeAnn Chins for supper and got frozen yogurt too! It was definitely a fun weekend!