For those who may not have heard, Erik is spending some time with us while Pammy recovers from a surgery she underwent on the 22nd. She’s recovering nicely and Erik’s doing okay being here with Oskar and Xavier. The Alyn Family spent Christmas in Minnesota this year. We were also fortunate to have a white Christmas again.
Gretchen made the annual gingerbread houses, this year adding stained glass windows. The current thinking for next year is to create one larger house and let everyone collaborate on it. The kids had a great time decorating these houses, and eating candy too. Oskar’s friend Aounghus came up and decorated one as well. Xavier decided after a while that he was done working on his, so Egg took over and did some decorating where he felt the house was untouched. You can see a collection of the photos here that include the finished houses.
Christmas morning, the bigger boys were up at 4am to start in on their stockings. After eating most of a chocolate treat they were sent back to bed. Of course they had a hard time sleeping after that. Xavier finally kicked everything off at around 6:30am and our day began. Everyone had a great time opening presents and Xavier finished around dinner time while the other two were done much earlier. More pictures from Christmas day are online here. This year, Xavier received his own Pikachu plush toy like Oskar’s which Xavier immediately turned around and gave to Oskar. Gretchen and I were awestruck at his unselfish action towards his brother. The remainder of the day was filled with Bakugan, Legos, Radio controlled things and art supplies.
The day after Christmas seemed like a good time to get out of the house and so we headed to the Science Museum of Minnesota. The traveling exhibit of CSI is scheduled to leave on January 4 and so Gretchen smartly got us there. We watched the Mysteries of the Great Lakes IMAX and had lunch too. Egg was pretty excited to see the Seismophone and the CSI exhibit as evidenced by the photos he took. Photos from our day are here. We all solved case #3 successfully and enjoyed exploring the dinosaur, weather, light and myriad of other great exhibits the museum has.
Oskar started back at Folwell this week and is enjoying being with other 2nd graders. He’s in Mrs. Jagusch’s class without most of his 1st grade buddies but he sees them at lunch and recess. Xavier has had a very long week as Gretchen has been a sub twice at rainbow school giving Xavier two extra school sessions. He’s really been enjoying the extra classroom time and has been sleeping well as a result.
What started as a time killer before getting a hair cut this evening ended in one of those rights of passages that sets Oskar forward in a new realm of independence. He’ll tell you himself he’s not too good at starting yet and he’s going to figure out sharp turns tomorrow. He expects it won’t take too long since he figured it all out in about an hour this afternoon.
Busy month and clearly I’ve been slacking in my informational duties. Gretchen started the month with a trip to the beach to visit Vince and Jan while I stayed behind and finally made sense of my office. Spring sort of sprung and we did a bunch of cleanup in the yard only to have a whole mess of branches blow down the next day! The city cleared out the alley quickly and cable and telephone service were restored in short order. There are still wires draped in the alley and the Rizza’s fence and natural tree barrier will take some time to repair though.
We took the boys to see the Harlem Globetrotters after a successful elementary school game that featured the staff vs. 5th graders. Both games were a lot of fun although Oskar was frustrated the Globetrotters spent so much time talking instead of playing the game. Xavier seemed to enjoy it… or at least he enjoyed the candy .
Gretchen had a birthday which Oskar and Xavier made a cake and pinata for. The effort spanned a few days but was enjoyed by all. The cake had a slightly deformed shape after sticking to the baking pan, but we shoved it back together and hid the seams with frosting and it tasted just fine!
Oskar also joined Cub Scouts and attended his first Den meeting this past Tuesday. He’ll be joining the Wolf Pack officially in mid May but will participate with the Tigers now. I’m not sure how much fun he’s having yet, but I’m having a blast. So much so that I started a little campfire with the boys in the back yard this evening. Next time we’ll have marshmallows.
Gretchen has also instituted Friday night Pizza night featuring some most excellent home made Pizza that she’s been making. Gretchen and Oskar have also been working hard at Montessori work. Oskar is working hard as a first time pupil for Gretchen as she masters the materials.
Both of the boys are recovering from cases of pink eye and everyone is being hit hard by the seasonal allergies.
Last but not least, I opened my homebrew that I made WAY WAY WAY back in January for the first time. Despite being heavily over carbonated it tastes pretty good. It takes a couple of minutes for the head to go back to liquid though Next time - I’ll move it to the lagering shelves much sooner.
Yesterday the boys and I went for an after dinner walk / photostroll around the neighborhood. I snapped off a few pics on my cell phone here. I love the old prairie style architecture that’s so prevalent here - oh and the kids are cute too! (more…)
Well, officially it was yesterday, but I wasn’t up to the task of writing a post about it. With over 150 pictures on Flickr, it was too much to cull through. Friday we headed out to the Kalahari in the Wisconsin Dells. Xavier had a blast in the water and in just about everything else he did. (more…)
Yesterday we sure did a lot! Patty, Kathy and us went to the Rochester Farmers Market and picked up some more meat and then headed to Avocados for a nice lunch before Patty hit the road. Xavier and I then went for a sleepy time drive and drove through the parking lot at the local VW dealer and spotted a nice new R32 while Oskar worked on Times Attack, a multiplication memorization game he’s enjoying these days. After X finally crashed, Oskar and I worked on bottling the homebrew. It’s smelled amazing and after getting primed with a little light malt tasted pretty good too. Just 4 more weeks of bottle conditioning and I can try some! After that it was time to wake up Xavier and the boys played nicely for about an hour. Gretchen still had more Montessori work to do so we headed to the RAC for Pizza and some play time. We ended up spending nearly 3 hours there climbing, running and having a good time. It was time for bed when we got home and despite not wanting to sleep, even Xavier was asleep by 8:45pm.
Today was a nice warm day, 35 degrees! Oskar, Xavier and I spent some time outside playing in the snow. Oskar really wanted to make 4 ball snowman last time but, the snow wouldn’t stick so well. Today we were able to make something quite a bit larger! Xavier hung out inside with Nancy and Mom while Oskar and I did the heavy lifting. We spent much of our time after this just having fun outside in the snow. I did some more shoveling to scrape down more of the driveway and sidewalk and the kids just threw snow at each other, tress, and other snow. It was a nice afternoon.
We concluded today with a trip to the RAC (Rochester Athletic Club) where they have a really cool kids area. Today happened to be the block party and Xavier had a grand time going up the inflatable slide with Oskar. Xavier did really well with following instructions, waiting in line until he was permitted to go up the slide and coming down quickly afterwards. He siad it was a little bit fun and a little bit scary to slide down - but you would have never guessed as he streamed into the line over and over and over and over and over and… Oskar worked on his mini golf game and enjoyed sliding himself. He also had a great time playing on the giant play structure with X. Xavier was so exhausted after today he didn’t even finish his bottle before falling asleep. Pictures from both events (although the RAC photos are terrible) below. (more…)
In an effort to cache in on the latest and greatest Social Networking craze, sites are using weirder and weirder methods to get folks to use their tools. I stumbled onto this one from a Photojojo article today. The site MagMyPic has a number of photo magazines they’ve cropped out that you can insert your photos into. I figured I’d check it out and found they had a link to post it directly to Facebook - only to find out they wanted me to add the application (probably followed by some invites and so on) so I decided to grab the photo and let everyone just see the result here instead. The idea is cute even if their viral marketing is draconian. It reminds me of the Photo Cutout Tool developed by Cate Sia at NWF many moons ago (2004). Apparently NWF was ahead of their time - they should bring it back. Oskar was in the training video - although he probably didn’t realized it at the time.
Boys are all trimmed up. Gretchen did a nice job cropping back the mops on the boys heads. Oskar was very concerned he would be getting hair in his eyes. Xavier was more concerned he wouldn’t have enough candy. Some photos of the event are below. (more…)
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Next time - I’ll move it to the lagering shelves much sooner.
In an effort to cache in on the latest and greatest Social Networking craze, sites are using weirder and weirder methods to get folks to use their tools. I stumbled onto this one from a 
