Gingerbread House

Years ago, I bought a book for Sydney called "It's A Gingerbread House." It is the story of a few kids who receive a gingerbread house from their Grandpa during the holidays. They nibble at the house, eventually eating the roof and discovering a letter inside with instructions for making their own house. The book goes on with recipes and detailed instructions for creating your own gingerbread house.

For many years, I have been reading this story to Sydney and Keira and anticipating the time when we would be able to make one together. We have done the graham cracker houses before but, if you know me, then you know that I like to do some things from scratch. Just to make it more difficult I suppose.

I decided to split this job into several nights. On the first night, Sydney and Keira helped me mix the ingredients for the dough. I shaped the dough into two thin bricks, wrapped them in wax paper, and let them rest. Sydney then helped me trace the patterns from the book onto sheets of paperboard and cut out the patterns.

After the dough had rested, it was ready to roll out, cut using our patterns, and bake. After baking, it was time to call it a night. The second night was dedicated to making the icing used to glue the house together and assembling the house.

The third night was the most fun for the girls as it was the night that we got to decorate the house. We had several different kinds of candy and nuts for building materials. We have had fun over the last week picking these snacks off the house.

Overall, I was really happy with the way the gingerbread house turned out. I baked the pieces a little too long, rendering the walls and roof of the house inedible. I would estimate the total time to create this one-room shack was about six hours. Next year I think we'll try a new pattern, maybe making a gingerbread castle instead!

Santa at Cub Foods

Lucky for us Santa Claus showed up at our brand new Cub Foods store in Eagan when Shannon happened to be shopping with the girls. Keira was shy at first until Sydney eagerly sat on his lap. When pressed for what she wants, Sydney told him a doll umbrella stroller. Good thing for Santa - those only run $5.99 at Mills Fleet farm.

Waterpark of America

I realize this post is out of order seeing how it happened the Friday after Thanksgiving but here goes... We (mostly me) started this little tradition of going to the Waterpark of America the day after hosting Thanksgiving at our house. Last year was ok with the girls being only 4 and 1 1/2. This year was a lot more fun now that Sydney can swim and is more comfortable in the water. Keira still wanted to stick with the "liddle slides". We also did the family raft ride a few times after walking all the way up to the Eagles nest 10 stories up. At least we got a workout! The hotel is nice and we have fun on our little get-away in the city (my office bldg is literally next door.) Here are a couple shots on our balcony overlooking the park.

Baby Danielle arrives!

Now this is exciting!!
My sister Kim and her husband Derrick had their baby girl on December 3rd, 10 days before her expected due date. I was shocked and delighted to get the phone call from Kim at work on Wednesday morning at 9:30am. Everything went well and as you can see she is perfect and totally cute. We visited them last night at Methodist hospital in Rochester. She is 7lbs 14oz and 19 1/2" long and of course she loved it when I held her! More later...

It's been awhile...

Since we posted anything you may say. Well, everything has been going pretty smoothly around here. The potty training has been going amazingly with only a couple accidents. Sydney is reading like a banshee (which is a good thing). She's reading words I didn't realize she even knew. We have to be careful now and can't even spell things in front of her because she might figure them out!!

Tonight I've been busy preparing for Thanksgiving at our house tomorrow. It's become our holiday since 2003 when we moved in (to our house) and started hosting it. It's gotten a little bit easier each year as the kids grow up and can play on their own a little bit more. This year I didn't even crack open the recipe books until Tuesday. We usually end up with about 15-18 people including our family. It's not too bad as I'm only responsible for the turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry relish, pickles, olives & drinks. Shannon also is making an apple pie this year. Everyone else brings a couple of things so we end up with a ton of food!

Unfortunately tomorrow's group might be smaller as Shannon's Dad has been sick and his sister had back surgery and just got out of the hospital last weekend.

Hope all of our family and friends who read this have a great Holiday and weekend.

Underwear or "Uhwear"

Here is our big little girl at 28 months in underwear!
Last Monday morning the 11th of November Keira used the potty, went into Sydney's room, grabbed underpants from her dresser and announced that she was going to wear "uhwear" to school. I told her no twice and then gave in because she sounded so determined. Of course I brought a change of clothes and told her that if she had an accident she would have to put a pullup on. She's been wearing pullups since our summer vacation back in early May but pretty much treated them as diapers and never told us she had to "go." Well something changed on the 11th (maybe it was that election season was finally over) and there was no turning back. She has had only two accidents in the past 8-9 days and is doing great! It's really exciting but just proves that there is no point pushing a kid before they are ready.

Ice Skating

Sydney is taking skating lessons with the park and rec for six weeks. She has been having fun and I think she has been making good progress. She has been focusing on staying on her feet which is good but she hasn't really started skating yet; she mostly "ice walks." Carrie talked to her today about taking chances and falling down occasionally in order to really start skating. Here are a couple pictures of her class.

MS Society National Convention

As Carrie mentioned in her post, I was in Chicago last week for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's 2008 National Conference. As team captain for the Capella Cruisers MS 150 bike team (http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/CapellaCruisers), I was invited to attend the Team Captains' Rally. The theme for the conference was "Be bold, be imaginative, be collaborative" and the event was truly motivational.

There were break-out sessions specifically designed for the team captains regarding recruitment, fund raising, and the total team experience. These sessions provided useful tools and thought-provoking ideas that will help our team in 2009. The inspirational part of the conference, though, came from the general sessions. The general sessions presented musicians, authors, scientists, and others who have stories to tell related to MS or along the theme of the conferences.

Jourdan Urbach - a protege who has been playing violin since he was less than three years old, an author, a research scientist, founder of Children Helping Children, and a gifted speaker, who advocates getting kids involved in volunteerism and philanthropy. Did I mention that he is only 17?

Malcolm Gladwell - author of "The Tipping Point" and "Blink." He related stories of being bold, using imagination, and collaborating with others to achieve success.

Dr. Stephen Hauser, MD - updated the attendees on the work being done to find genomes related to MS, all too detailed and technical for me to remember let alone write about here. Suffice it to say that they are getting close to finding the needles in the haystack and they hope to have individualized treatments by 2013.

Dr. Dora L Hughes - health science advisor for senator and now president-elect Obama. She developed MS while in medical school but went on to get her MD and Masters in Public Health. She promises that people with MS will have a friend in the White House.

http://www.nationalmssociety.org/news/news-detail/index.aspx?nid=485
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/news/news-detail/index.aspx?nid=486

Just me and the Girls

This week Shannon left early on Wednesday morning for Chicago for the Multiple Sclerosis National Convention and Team Captain's Rally. (I will ask him to blog about this in more detail when he gets a chance). What this meant for me is three days and nights of being the only parent home. I know... - doesn't come close to the stay-at-home Mom whose husband travels regularly or god-forbid the single parent. But it was different for us as Shannon does not travel much except for his annual MS 150 bike ride.

I must say we had a good time - what little time we spent at home that is. Wednesday night we picked up Wendy's with burgers and frosty's for the girls. Thursday night was swimming, eat at home and then go to workout at Lifetime. Friday night was eat out at Cane's Chicken Fingers in Apple Valley and shop at Burlington Coat Factory for a jacket, slippers and socks. We capped the night with a couple episodes of Dora the Explorer. Not a bad time I must say.

The Leaf Blower Incident

Last weekend had to be one of the most gorgeous November days in the past century! Last Saturday after Kim's shower wrapped up I finally made it outside to start on the task of picking up some of the leaves that we have been remiss about this year (most of the early leaf fall blew across the street to our neighbors yard of which we were jokingly reminded of when we ran into them in church a couple of weeks ago). I raked up a couple small piles and no sooner had I hooked up the leaf vacuum and began to suck up the first pile when I heard a horrible clunk followed by the sound of the small electric motor rising two octaves and vibrating the extension cord loose. I took the attachments off and upon seeing that nothing was stuck, I tried again with the same result. I did notice however that the impeller blades looked odd. Shannon later upon more thorough investigation noticed that one of the (hard) plastic blades had been sheared off! That was the end of that day.

I suggested that we must go to the Home Depot and buy a new one on Sunday so I could finish or rather start this job!! Those of you who don't know me well might think that it's strange for the wife to get excited about a leaf blower/vac. Well - as you can see we got the new and improved Ultra model by Toro for $69.99 a mere $10 more than our 5yr non-Ultra model. Improvements include snazzy red color, better cord control mechanism, more horsepower, and most importantly a METAL impeller. What a concept - something that sucks up large leaves, small sticks, acorns, and other debris might need something stronger than hard plastic... So there is a variety of reasons to get excited!

Sunday was beautiful, the new leaf blower is fantastic, and the garden got it's much needed layer of leaf mulch fertilizer for the year - Yeah!

Kim's baby shower

I threw a baby shower last Saturday for my sister Kim. My cousin Clare planned the games and prizes so I just had to worry about snacks, decorations and cleaning the house (by far the biggest task). It was a fairly small family deal with about 12 people total including Syd and Keira. Kim is having a baby girl and I'm getting excited about falling in love with a new precious baby that I can hold. I guess girls run in our family but that's ok because as my Mom says "Girls can do anything".
Her due date is the 13th of December so watch for future posts!

Happy Halloween!

Sydney and Keira dressed up in matching SuperGirl costumes for Halloween this year. Carrie usually takes the girls out trick-or-treating while I stay home and hand out gobs of candy. This year, though, we traded off. With the temperature around 50 degrees, there was no need for hats and mittens this year. We went through about half of the Wildflower development and each super hero came home with about three pounds of candy. (Until a week ago, we still had candy left over from last year!)

St. Mary's carnival

Last Saturday we went down to Owatonna for the St. Mary's school carnival. My Mom bought 100 tickets so we had unlimited game playing ability. Problem is, I didn't want to "win" too many prizes. I think we played most of the games at least once. The game that made me the most nervous was tossing a ping-pong ball into a mason jar. If you happened to get one in you would win a live gold fish in a bag of water! Luckily neither one came close. We ended up staying for about 1 1/2 hrs and then went to the Kernal for dinner.

Keira gets a balloon elephant.



Facepainting



Me and my Dad - while I hold Sydney's flower



Fish Pond

Comcast Mail Server Outage

<customer_service_rant>
So, I am on the third day of troubleshooting problems with our Outlook clients having problems sending mail. Carrie and I have been getting an error message when we try sending email using Outlook with our Comcast accounts.

Assuming that the problem *must be on my end, possibly an issue with my router, firewall, or anti-virus software, I have been trying various things and searching the comcast.net site for set up information and troubleshooting tips.

*I figure it must "just be me" because if all Comcast customers were unable to send email using Outlook or other home clients, they surely would have sent an outage email notification by now or posted something on their web site.

Tonight I got in line to chat with a Comcast technician about the problem. I was #350 in the queue. Uh oh. Sounds like problems. Actually the wait wasn't too bad -about 30 minutes - so they either have dozens of people working the live chat or tonight's issues are small ones.

The technician was polite and informative. Chelsea was her name. She kindly explained to me that the mail server is down right now because of the web client upgrade and we apologize for any inconvenience. I asked if there had been an email or other notification that had been sent out. No, no notification was sent - sorry about that.

Well, would it have been so inconvenient for them to send an email to their customers to let us know that there is an outage? I guess I should be happy that I can still receive email at home and send/receive with the web client.

And speaking of the web client, they made some nice improvements to it. They are now running the SmartZone Communication Center. This will be much easier to use when I am checking my home email away from home.
</customer_service_rant>

Ice skates

Friday night we went to "Play it Again Sports" with the intention of getting some used ice skates for Sydney. She will be starting skating lessons through the Eagan Park & Rec on November 1st. As I've told some - I'm not looking for the next Michelle Kwan but just a general proficiency in some areas and we'll see where her interests lead her. We all went to open skate once last year and after a sketchy first ten minutes or so we were all able to get around the rink including Keira in her snow boots. We tried to fit Keira with rental skates but couldn't get anything on her 1yr old feet! This year, however, Keira was coming home with skates along with her big sister. After a few minutes both girls were walking around the carpeted store on their single blades. Shannon got some used/like new hockey skates and I got some plastic/soft boot insert skates as well. All four pair cost us just over $50.

Princess Keira

Keira put on a Tinkerbell dress this weekend along with a Dora fishing hat!
She comes up with her own combinations now as she has become even more stong willed.

Garden tear down

Shannon started the laborious process of digging up some of our plants last weekend. The brown dirt you see is where 36 corn plants once resided. I wish I had a picture but I cut them down after they dried out and tied them together to make a display for the front of our house with pumpkins, scarecrow etc... It's my one Martha Stewart moment per year but actually quite easy! We still need to get the pepper and tomato plants pulled up and leaves spread to put the garden to bed for the year. It was another great growing year in our backyard.

High School Musical

Yesterday afternoon Sydney, her friend Marissa, her Mom Christine, and I went to Eagan High School's production of High School Musical. I had high expectations having attended an Encore presentation there years ago with my parents to see their friend's daughter. I was not disappointed. They do a extraordinary job!! The lead characters playing Troy & Gabriella had awesome voices and all of the other actors were way above average as well. I guess that comes with having a 2,400+ population of students to choose from. One notable alumni from the school is Laura Osnes, stage actress who in 2007 won the Broadway role of Sandy on the televised competition "Grease: You're The One That I Want".

The girls had a great time but it seemed that they would rather be playing and catching up than paying attention to the play! I guess they are only 5 yrs old so what can you expect?

Conferences

This past week was MEA week in district 196. Along with that brought conferences for Sydney at Northview and Keira at ILC where she attends preschool. Being new to the school system after a 20yr break I am surprised at how early in the school year they get a full week off! Sydney also got the Friday before off since she attends half-day kindergarten.

Sydney's conference went well with no concerns. Her teacher Mrs. Dahl said that Sydney has been a pleasure to have in class and she adapted with ease to the routine and rules they must have in a school setting. They are doing a lot of coloring and making little books based on the letter of the week. So far they've done units on Welcome to Kindergarten, Who am I?, Our names, Getting along, Apples, and Fall. They've had a firetruck visit and checked a couple books out of the library.

Keira had a great evaluation and scored "Consistently" on all areas. I'll just post a couple of the comments so bear with me if I sound like I'm bragging. This section is for the Grandma's!

"Keira is doing wonderful cognitively. She has a great memory and amazes us with her wealth of knowledge"
"Keira has a great vocabulary as well as pronunciation and over all language comprehension"

Her teacher Andrea even mentioned that she might move up to the next room early as she'll likely be bored soon. That's great news as our cost goes down $15/week!!

Reunions Galore!

The weekend of October 11-12 brought two big reunions for Owatonna High School graduates. The classes of 1958 and 1988. My mom's sister Colleen, upper right hand corner, flew in from Colorado for the first time in 12 years. She celebrated her 50th at the Owatonna Country Club and I celebrated my 20th at Hidden Creek Golf Club. It was also Homecoming weekend for OHS and the Huskies pummeled the Faribault Falcons 35-6 to continue an undefeated season. Pictured are all of my Mom's siblings except for her brother Allen from North Dakota and her late sister Eileen. From left to right - Fred, Colleen, Susan (my Mom), Theresa, Roger (Iowa), Rosemary (South Dakota) and Mark. Everyone got together at my parents house for lunch and socializing on Saturday afternoon.


Colleen's daughter Maria accompanied her on the trip.


A cute picture of my new slimmer parents! They have been eating right and exercising regularly for over a year now and it has really paid off!

I thought I had a picture of me and Shannon but I guess not... I estimate around 100 of my classmates from 1988 came out plus about 75 spouses/significant others. It was a great time and I still think we had a really exceptional class of students that year.

Derrick's 30!

We went down to Rochester yesterday for Derrick's (my brother in-law) 30th birthday party.
My sister (who is 7 months pregnant) did the cooking this time. It was good food and a good time. We had Spaghetti Bolognese, salad, garlic bread and Dairy Queen cake for dessert. Later Derrick opened his presents which included a portable DVD player and Green Bay Packer salt and pepper shakers won at the Steele County Free Fair by my parents. Then we got down to game playing. The first game we played was Cranium. For those of you who haven't played, this game consists of spelling words backwards without writing them down, drawing and acting charades, molding items out of clay and singing. Needless to say none of these categories fall into my comfort zone. Therefore when I announced that I didn't like the game and Derrick's parents agreed we switched midstream to MadGabs. This was also a horrible game. Next time I will bring Rummikub or something... Kim and Derrick's team won easily but that's ok. They are the game players in the family!

Apple Junction

We went to the apple orchard (Apple Junction in Hastings) with Grandma and Grandpa Wacek last Sunday the 28th of September. I think we'd been there many years ago but I didn't remember it being so nice. We ended up taking 25 or so pictures because it had so many cute photo opportunities. We picked our own pumpkins and a bag of Haralson apples -- Yum! The apples look absolutely perfect this year, no hail damage or other maladies. They have goats, a kids play area and corn maze, and an adult corn maze. Admission is free but each thing you do has a charge. They also had a beautiful assortment of Mums. They were still semi-planted in pots in the ground so for $8 you could choose and dig your own. I planted it in our back yard so hopefully it makes it through the winter!