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!