Monday, December 21, 2009

Wow - it's been almost a month

Annnnnd....a month went by with no posting. So I decided to figure out why that's happening, and I realized that normally I post to this blog during down time at work. However, I've been part of a new project at work that has been pretty time-demanding, so my limited downtime means there's no convenient time to write a post. I'm sure I'll get some more time as the project gets over the initial craziness.

Let me catch you up a little. The weekend before last my family and I attended the funeral of my cousin's husband, who lost a year-long battle with brain cancer. He will be missed. It was a good funeral, which sounds a little strange, but what I mean is that although there was a lot of sadness and grieving, everyone was surrounded by the comfort of family and friends sharing happy memories. It was the perfect example of why we as humans have funerals. Also, there were a very many little children running around (my own included) reminding everyone that life is a cycle and we're all just at different points. It was very heartwarming to see the joy and comfort that a little kid can bring someone who is grieving.

The Sunday following the funeral I got to take Griffin to his first Vikings game at the Metrodome. I got some really cheap nosebleed seats, but we both had a good time. By the end of the game Griffin got a little bored, but he did a great job doing the same thing for such a long time. Then that night we met Dina and the twins and some other family and went to the "Day in the Life of an Elf" display at Macy's downtown. That was pretty fun - Caden and Rohan had a bunch of "gasp!" moments. The kids got to sit on Santa's lap, and Rohan balled his head off for the picture. It was perfect!

This last weekend, on Saturday, Dina and I each had chiropractor and haircut appointments. There was something really out of place in my right shoulder, and my chiropractor really had to work the muscles hard to get things back into place. It's still pretty sore today...I might have to make a follow-up appointment. The haircut was much more pleasant. I spend more than I probably should on a haircut, but I go to the same salon my wife goes to, and the relaxation is worth the extra cost. I almost feel like I'm cheating on my wife when I go, as the "haircut" also includes a scalp massage, shoulder rub, and hand and wrist massage. I am always a happy customer when I leave.

Sunday was the extended family Christmas on my wife's side of the family. We drove out to Afton, MN, where Dina's aunt lives, and had a big meal and hung out with a full house of family for a few hours. Our kids are starting to get old enough that they can play independantly now, which means Dina and I get to actually talk to other people more, which is really nice.

That evening we decided to take the kids to the Holidazzle parade, since it was the last night it ran and the weather was so nice. It was a lot of work to get them all bundled up and out there, but it was worth it. All three kids absolutely loved the entire thing. Griffin even said he wants to volunteer to be in the parade sometime!

Well, that's all for now. Here's hoping I can keep up with this a little better in the future!

Monday, November 23, 2009

Playtime and alpacas and sculptures, oh my!

We had a fun weekend this weekend. On Friday night Dina had a scrapbooking event, so I got to hang out with the boys, and I also had a chance to play around with recording a bass part in GarageBand for a little while. I also watched an episode of Fringe, which I am totally hooked on after watching the first four episodes.

On Saturday morning Caden and Rohan woke me up early, so I got up with them and did the morning routine. When Dina got up a little while later, we all hung out for a while, then Dina left to run a bunch of errands while I took the boys out to a park to play. Gotta enjoy these days of fairly nice weather while we have them!

That night Dina's mom and our niece babysat the boys while Dina and I had a date night. We went to our friend Kamini's place for wine, food, and fun. There's a group of friends that has a "wine night" once a month at a different person's house each time, and although we don't make it every month, we like to attend when we can, because it's always a good time! Dina and I even did karaoke for a song, which is unheard of for us. (The song was "California Dreamin'", if you were wondering.) It was past midnight when we got home, so we thanked our babysitters and got some sleep.

The next day we got together with Dina's mom, her brother and his wife, daughter, and in-laws, and went to the open house of Spirit Song Alpacas, an alpaca farm near Lindstrom, MN.

Alapacas are pretty cool creatures. They're very docile, and very social, much like sheep, but are much more intelligent than sheep. The kids absolutely loved getting close to and touching the alpacas, who say hello by touching noses. I think someone got a couple pictures of kids touching noses with alpacas, which I'm sure are cute enough to be nearly illegal. This farm actually spins the fiber shorn from the alpacas into their own yarn, so they showed that process as well. Pretty cool.

After checking out that place, we went down the road to Sunrise River Alpacas. Another alpaca farm, as you probably guessed. This place had more alpacas, but wasn't as welcoming, so we didn't stay too long.

From there we drove to the Franconia Sculpture Park in Franconia, MN. That place is very cool. It's a free outdoor sculpture garden on a large chunk of land, so some of the pieces of art are really quite massive. Some of the pieces were your typical modern art head-scratchers...


...but there were also some that were very cool:


By the time we were done there it was dark (which is happening pretty early these days) so we headed home for dinner and the bedtime routine.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Big Thing #1 That I Haven't Blogged About

The three of you that actually read this blog probably already know this, but I really should blog it for future reference in case I forget the details. :-) I traveled to London recently! I've slowly been writing the blog entry, and now I'm finally done, so up it goes!

From October 25 - 28 I took a business trip to London. I presented at a transfer of information conference for our EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Asia) services and sales people. My purpose was to present the tech details of the new release of the software I've been working on.

DAY ONE:
I flew out on Saturday night (left at 10:30 pm), and was sitting next to a guy who was on the first flight of his life, traveling from Louisiana to the UK to marry a woman he met playing Second Life. Yeah, really. He was a nice guy, but didn't let me sleep as much as I'd have liked. (Side note: he was an inspector for water treatment facilities, and he said that he'd NEVER drink the water that is processed by those places.)

I arrived at Heathrow airport in London at about noon. Three of my coworkers were on the same flight, so we met up to head to our hotel, the Hilton London Metropole. We took a train to Paddington Station and walked about six blocks from there to our hotel.

After getting settled in the other guys were going out to a rugby match with some other Oracle folks that night, but I went to visit my friend Tony and his family up in Milton Keynes, so I took the tube to Euston Square station, then a train from Euston to Milton Keynes, about a 45 minute train ride. Did I mention that public transportation in the UK is awesome? I had dinner with Tony, his wonderful wife Kate, and their fun little 6-month-old Jack. We chatted for a while, then it was back to the train station and back to London. I was pretty tired by then, and at one point I thought I'd gotten on the train headed AWAY from London rather than toward it. Luckily I was wrong, and I arrived back at Euston with no problems. I made my way back to my hotel room and crashed.

DAY TWO:
I woke early on Monday morning to meet the other Oracle guys for breakfast in the hotel. The breakfast was fantastic - a buffet of English breakfast food, plus a bunch of fruit and breads of various sorts. After eating we took a commuter train out to Reading, about a half-hour train ride, which was where the Oracle office was actually located. A 20 minute bus ride from the train stop brought us to the front door of the office. I didn't actually present that day, so I spent the day talking to other people I knew and putting some polish on my presentation.

After the conference was done, we took the train back to Paddington and got changed to go out to eat. One of the senior sales guys who lives in London took about a dozen of us out to Maroush Gardens, a Lebanese restaurant. I'd never eaten Lebanese, but it was awesome. It's very similar to Greek food. The sales guy knows the owner of this place, so they kept bringing piles and piles of delicious food and bottles of tasty wine. It was nearly midnight by the time we got back to the hotel, and I was absolutely stuffed. Some of the guys wanted to go hit a pub, but I was too bushed, so I headed to my room and crashed after catching up on some email and voice mail.

DAY THREE:
Tuesday turned out to be the big day of the trip. The morning started out much like Monday, breakfast at the hotel, train and bus to the office. I didn't do much that morning, but I presented for a few hours that afternoon, and the presentation went great! There were lots of great questions, and people seemed really excited with some of the features in our new version.

After the conference was done I headed back to the hotel with Steven, one of the guys that works on the same product I do. We decided to head over to Piccadilly Circus, because he wanted to go to this store called Fortnum & Mason. I'd never been to a store like this. It's basically an upper-crust department store, with departments varying from grocery to stationery to crystal, all of it very high-end product. Apparently the Royal Family does a lot of shopping at this store. I bought a box of imported Iranian saffron for my wife.

After that, we stopped at a bookstore; I wanted to pick up a copy of The Gathering Storm, but alas, it was sold out. I should have expected that. So Steven and I wandered up to Soho, and ended up at a great little pub called The Golden Lion. We had a couple of pints of beer and split a beef pub pie, which was pretty good. Then we got a text from another group of Oracle guys. They had reservations at a place called Gaucho, an Argentinian steakhouse. This was just a few blocks away, back near Piccadilly, so we walked over there.

Wow, what a meal. We started out with ceviche appetizers, moved to samplers of four big cuts of steak with a bunch of sides, and then had the ice cream dessert. The wine and cocktails were flowing, and we had a cute and friendly waitress, so it was a fun time. We were there until the place closed at 11pm, and then we decided to hit the streets since it was our last night there. We tried to go to the nearby Absolut Ice Bar, but it was closed. While we wandered we were approached by people trying to lure us into "private parties" at certain clubs, which was pretty funny. We ended up going to a club called Tiger Tiger, a place with very loud but not horrible music. There were six of us, and we each bought a round of either drinks or shots, so...yeah...a lot of alcohol. It was about 2:30 am when we finally stumbled out of the place and found taxis home. I vaguely remember haggling with the taxi driver about how much we'd have to pay to get back to our hotel...I think I got a good deal. :-)

It was 3:00 by the time I was back in my room, and I knew the next morning was going to be rough, because I had a 9:30 am flight back to the US. So I packed as much of my stuff as I could, laid out the clothes I'd wear the next morning, set my alarm for 5:30, and hit the pillow hard.

DAY FOUR:
I woke slowly with a slight hangover with the light coming in the window seeming too bright. Far too bright, in fact. Looking at the alarm clock, it showed 7:30 am! I had overslept by TWO HOURS and was in very real danger of missing my flight. I jumped out of bed, threw on my clothes, tossed the rest of my stuff into my suitcase, and headed out. Luckily I could do the express hotel checkout, so that didn't slow me down. I ran down to Paddington station to get my train to Heathrow. I bought my ticket and jumped on the train, and finally had a chance to sit down and take a breath. When I got to Heathrow I checked in and made my way through security. On my way to my gate I saw a bookstore - and they had a copy of The Gathering Storm! I picked that up and headed to my gate just in time; they were just finishing boarding. If ANYTHING had gone wrong on my way to the plane, I would have missed it.

After we were in the air they brought us a breakfast meal, which was actually pretty good. With food in my stomach, I succumbed to the residual alcohol in my system and lack of sleep, and totally crashed. A few hours later I woke up and chatted with the guy next to me, an older man who turned out to be a wealth advisor for ultra-rich clients in Europe and the Middle East. (He was in coach only because he had to get a last-minute ticket to the States to attend a Bollywood movie premiere in New York for a client of his.) Pretty interesting guy. I tried to watch Transformers 2 on the plane, but it was so bad I turned it off...instead I watched an episode of Fringe to see what that show was like. Turns out it's damn good, and I'll have to watch the rest of the episodes.

I arrived in Detroit and went through customs, then went to my gate for my connecting flight to Minneapolis. After a short wait it was announced that the flight was delayed by TWO HOURS. Sigh. I talked to my wife on the phone for a while and read some of The Gathering Storm while I waited. Finally it was time to board, and I was off to home.

I was pretty exhausted by the time I got home, but it was worth it. London is a really fun place to visit, and I definitely plan on returning. At the same time, being gone reminded me how much I love my family and the place I live, so I was glad to be home.

Coming Soon: Big Thing #2 That I Haven't Blogged About...

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Time for a really quick catch-up post

October 10-11
Dina had her monthly scrapbooking workshop at our house, so I got to take care of the boys Friday night and Saturday. I took them to the zoo on Saturday, which was lots of fun (but a bit cold). On Sunday we all went to the mall and I bought a bunch of clothes, since I haven't bought clothes in a very long time, and I needed to restock for my work trip to London (I'll be there Oct. 25 - 28). Can't wait!

October 16-17-18
Dina had a scrapbooking retreat she was helping organize, so my mom came up and helped me watch the boys all weekend. There was also some drama with my wife's side of the family, so sadly she wasn't able to relax as much as she would have liked.

Oh, and I recorded a song over the weekend, which a friend from the Jabberboard turned into this, for the Jabberboard Coversong Challenge (Round 20). I played mandolin and sang, while he added all the other effects and remixed.

That brings us to now.
I'm wrapping things up this week at work and home to get ready for my trip to London, where I'm presenting at an info session about the product I work on. I'm really excited to go, though it'll be tough for Dina at home alone that many days with all the boys.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Wow...what a draining weekend that was

I meant to write this entry earlier this week, but it's basically taken me this long to recover from the weekend. On Friday Caden and Rohan were sick; they had colds that had moved into their lungs and had deep coughs. Dina asked me to stay home from work to help bring them into the doctor, so I did.

We brought them to our clinic and the doctor had us nebulize them twice since they had short, wheezy breath. Rohan responded well, but Caden didn't, so the doctor checked Caden's blood oxygen level. The reading was so low he thought his machine was broken. We were informed that Caden would be taking an ambulance to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. Dina rode with him while I took Griffin and Rohan back home. I dropped off Griffin with Uncle Guy, gathered some things to bring to the hospital, and drove over there with Rohan. Caden was in the emergency room getting oxygen, getting nebulized, and getting steroid treatments. They gave him an IV shortly after I got there, but they had to try five times before they got a good one...the poor kid was frantically unhappy.

Eventually he got moved out of the E.R. to the regular area for kids with respiratory problems. They determined that his lungs were having an asthmatic reaction to the RSV virus. They were able to keep his oxygen level up if they gave him oxygen with a nose tube, so they wanted to keep him until they healed his lungs up enough to keep his oxygen up himself.



For the next couple days Dina stayed with Caden while I drove back and forth from home to the hospital, bringing things Dina needed and shuffling Griffin between other family members. Caden steadily got better, but progress was slow. On Sunday we were making preparations for dealing with having him in the hospital for part of the work week, when the doctor surprised us with the news that he was comfortable with Caden going home that night! We were a little unsure and surprised, since the staff during the day told us to prepare for him to be there another day or two, but were were also happy and relieved to be going home.

We still had to give both boys steroids twice a day for a few days (which they hated because of the terrible taste), and we have to use the nebulizer on both of them every four hours through today, then continuing as needed.

Those events were pretty draining, so we've been keeping it pretty low-key this week at home. Hopefully this weekend will hold much less excitement.

I'm very thankful to everyone that helped us out over the weekend, and to everyone who showed their concern and offered to help us out. We really appreciate it!

Also, lots of thanks to Children's Hospital, which is an amazing place, filled with amazing doctors and staff. All of whom we hope never to have to see again. :-)

Monday, September 21, 2009

Oops - missed a weekend

Quick version of two weekends ago: Dina put on a Creative Memories workshop at our place on Friday night and Saturday, so I had the boys. Lots of playing at the park, lots of playing at home. Lots of fun. On Sunday we tried to go to the Renaissance Festival. Actually, we did go, but it got up to about 90 degrees, and the twins were fighting off colds, so we were beaten down and went home defeated at about 3:00 (we usually stay from near-open to close). We didn't get to see our friends the Fandazzi Fire Circus, which disappointed us, as we heard their show is awesome this year.

This last weekend was a lot of fun. Dina and I signed up for a winery bus trip through WineStyles in Champlin (great place - I gave Dina a year's membership in their wine club for Christmas last year). I was a little apprehensive about going, because I didn't know anyone besides my wife and I'm not generally very social. It turned out to be a ton of fun, though. Dina knows a couple people in the wine club and we got to sit next to them on the big coach bus. The plan was to drive to the Baker Apple Orchard (owned by one of the wine club members) near Centuria, Wisconsin, then drive on to the Chateau St. Croix Winery & Vineyard in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. Oh, and on the bus, the wine flowed like...well, like wine, I guess. WE DRANK LOTS OF WINE. The most I've had in one day, I'm sure of it. Luckily it was spread through the whole day, so I wasn't trashed, just a bit dehydrated at the end of the day. The mix of people on the bus was interesting. There were more women than men by far, and there were some younger people there, including a bachelorette party, but most people were definitely older than my wife and I. Bus full o' drunken cougars, I tell ya. But it was still pretty fun. I'd do it again. :-)

Here are some pictures from the winery:






After we got home from our crazy wino tour, we arrived to our house already full of Dina's brother and sister and their families. We were celebrating Dina's sister's birthday, and her son's birthday too. So that was fun.

On Sunday Dina spent a lot of time getting stuff organized that we're going to sell at the Mothers of Multiples' fall sale, while I played in the backyard with the boys. I also watched the Vikings game that afternoon and Dina got her hair cut and colored. That night I bottled my Deep Dark Wheat beer. I'm excited to try it, and a little nervous, because I really don't know what it's going to taste like, or even if I'm going to like it. We'll see. I might soon be looking for a whole bunch of people who like Dunkelweizen! :-)

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Four-day weekends rule

I had Friday off to go to the State Fair with my family and my mom. That was awesome! Mom came up Thursday night, so we got a good early start to the fair, which is incredibly important with three kids and a double-stroller. The Fair was the usual mix of awful/yummy food, games and rides for the kids, all kinds of animals, and a complete overload of things to see. I only have one good photo from my phone...I'll post more if I get them from my wife's computer. This is Dina and the kids watching a video (or not) at the Eco Experience:



Here's a rundown of the fair food I tried (I didn't eat all of all of these, but at least tasted them all):
- Spam breakfast sandwich
- Spam curds
- mini donuts
- pancake batter covered sausages, fried on a stick
- cheese curds
- fresh lemonade
- cheese on a stick
- apple-flavored honey taffy
- wine ice cream
- chocolate-covered bacon
- Summit Horizon Red Ale
- peach-glazed pork cheeks
- braised pork sandwich
- corn bread
- Sweet Martha's cookies

Mmmmmmm. We were at the Fair from about 8:30 in the morning until about 8:15 that night. That's a lot of Fair, and we were completely wiped out at the end of the day, so we went home, cleaned up and went to bed.

On Saturday morning we said bye to my Mom as she was heading to her lake cabin for the weekend. Dina and I had a wedding to go to that afternoon, so we spent the day getting the house cleaned up and getting ready to go. Dina's awesome brother and his awesome wife babysat the kids, so we had a free night out - woo hoo!

The wedding was a lot of fun; it was at a beautiful downtown church, and was not your typical wedding, in that the readings were from The Velveteen Rabbit and an Ogden Nash poem, and the wedding couple had everyone who attended the wedding bunch together in front for a big group photo, which I thought was very cool.

The wedding was at 4 p.m., and lasted about 20 minutes - perfect! The reception wasn't until 7 p.m. at a wine bar out in the suburbs, though, so we went to Don and Bhavna's house (which was on the way) and drank some yummy beer and wine to pass the time. We got to meet their cute little dog Skippy, who pretends to be an ankle-biter, but really is not. The reception was at a little wine bar/bistro called The School II. Odd name, but a cool place. The party was great, with lots of talking with friends, good wine and beer, good food, and some really, really bad dancing. We had a good time and got home a little after midnight.

Sunday was basically a recovery day from the night before. We did various stuff around the house that needed doing. Slowly. We also noticed that the younger two of our boys were getting head colds. That night was a rough night for sleeping since those two were coughing so much.

On Monday we pretty much just ran errands and cleaned up the house. We bought a new kids' mattress, so now all 3 boys have regular mattresses (until then Caden had been sleeping on a crib mattress). We also rearranged their room so their mattresses are all along the same wall. It's pretty cute to see all three of them sleeping in a row like that. Someday they'll need more space, but for now it's cool. :-) Another errand I ran that day was picking up the windows and doors I had re-screened at the local hardware shop. Re-screening windows is one of the many house chores that falls into the category of "I could do this myself but the anger isn't worth it, so I'll pay someone else to do it." I'll get them all put back in tonight.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend, and I'm looking forward to the week!

Monday, August 24, 2009

Weekend with the family

This was a fairly uneventful weekend, but I got to spend a lot of time with our boys, and we had some fun moments at home.

On Saturday Dina had a self-defense course with her sister, and they went to the salon and out to dinner that night. So I got to hang out with the boys all day. We pretty much just did a bunch of stuff around the house. Caden and Rohan had fun watching Griffin play with his tee-ball set:


Griffin also had lots of fun catching grasshoppers. Our yard is crawling with them this time of year, so there are plenty for him to chase. He did manage to catch a couple of big ones like this (I love the fact that he's catching grasshoppers while wearing a Spider-Man t-shirt):


On Sunday Dina had a brunch with some friends and then had to run some errands, so I had the boys again. It's nice to watch them for Dina so she can get a break on the weekends. They can be pretty overwhelming, and she does a good job taking care of them during the week. Anyway, Sunday was much like Saturday, except I did a fair bit more cleaning and such around the house. I made some Salsa Verde with tomatillos and other veggies from our most recent CSA share box. Mmmmm....

After Dina got back that afternoon her mom came over for a visit. I went out and mowed the lawn and did some other yardwork. My grass was pretty long; my back's been sore for a while, so I've been avoiding jarring it while mowing. My back is still sore, but I had to mow or it would have become a much more difficult job. I'm paying for it a little bit today.

After Dina and I had dinner and got all the boys to bed, we actually had some time to hang out together, which was awesome. We shared a bottle of Ommegang Chocolate Stout and munched on chips and my Salsa Verde while watching Law & Order. It was a good end to a good weekend!

Beer review: Ommegang Chocolate Indulgence Stout

Last night Dina and I cracked open a bottle of Ommegang Chocolate Indulgence Stout:



Dina bought this as a gift about a month ago, but until last night we hadn't had a good time to try it out.

This beer is a share-me. I can't imagine someone drinking the whole bottle on their own...it's just too rich. It's a very dark, nearly opaque, brown color with a fairly thick light tan head. The beer is a Belgian style, with some sweetness, lots of malt, fairly mild hops, noticeable alcohol, distinctive Belgian yeast flavor, and all kinds of complexity in the taste. It tasted slightly different with every sip...as the beer warmed, different flavors came to the front, all of them dark and rich. There wasn't as much overwhelming chocolate flavor as I expected given the name, but you could definitely taste the chocolate notes throughout.

I'd give this beer a 4 out of 5 stars, with the caveat that I could only handle about half a bottle every two months or so. Great beer...but meant for special occasions.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The Jab-Bar-Gathering

Ouch...I think I sprained something pun-related writing that. (For those who weren't there, this past weekend was the Jabbergathering 2.0, an in-person party for the members of an online message board. The party was dual-purpose this year, because one of the attendees recently took the bar exam after some grueling years of law school and even-more-grueling weeks of study.)

Anyway, I'll back up a bit. I've got three kids, and my keep-cool skills were put to the test on Saturday. Long story short, my wife was out running errands, and my four year old decided to throw a toy at our TV. Crack - broken LCD screen - basically totalling the TV. I sent him to his room so I wouldn't yell at him, then called my wife. I think my exact words were, "What can I DO to Griffin?" I eventually calmed down, but Griffin knew I was pretty mad. He's been banned from TV of any sort for a while.

I kept myself somewhat calm by reminding myself (many times) that 1) nobody got hurt, and TVs, though costly, can be replaced; and 2) I was going to the Jabbergathering that evening.

Anyway, after all that, I was READY to get out of the house and go to a party. I got to the Jabbergathering at about 7:30, and grabbed a cup to make my own personal dent in the keg. The gathering contained all the typical trappings of parties amongst my friends:

Drinking:


Poker:


Watching Star Trek (sorta):


Facial hair:


And, of course, acoustic stringed instrument jams with guitars, bass, banjo, ukelele, mandolin, and mountain dulcimer:






That jam was a ton of fun. Can't wait to play some more music!

One bit of wackiness happened when an enormous tree across the street decided to drop a huge branch right onto the neighbor's house and car. I was with a group of people walking back to the house from The Four Firkins (a great beer store) when this happened. We heard it from about a block away and had no idea what the noise was. This was the scene the next morning:



As you can see, the gods of mayhem rode wild that night. Luckily they didn't take interest in me, probably because I drank a LOT less than I did at the last Jabbergathering (after which I was roundly ridiculed by my loving wife :-) ). I was up at 7:30 the next morning and drove home to spend a fun day with the wife and kids at the park. It was a great weekend!

Monday, August 17, 2009

Anniversary!

Two weekends ago Dina and I celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary. Twelve years - wow! It's been a lot of fun so far and I hope to celebrate many more great years in the future!

For the occasion my mom came to town and babysat all three boys. Overnight! Dina and I had an entire night to ourselves, which is quite a luxury these days. We got a great deal on a hotel room in downtown Minneapolis through priceline.com. We had a fantastic dinner at Solera. Dinner consisted of about a dozen small gourmet appetizers, and they were all AWESOME. I've never had food quite like that. It ranged from roasted rabbit to braised asparagus to octopus ceviche. Yum!

On our walk back to the hotel we heard there had been some severe weather in our area, so we called home to see how things were going. Turns out my mom had to move all the boys down to the basement because there was a tornado warning, but nothing actually happened. Yikes!

We got back to the hotel and found out that, while we were gone, a fire alarm had sounded, so people had to evacuate the hotel. Turned out there was nothing wrong, someone had just pulled the fire alarm for no reason. (Interestingly there was an Obsessive-Compulsive-Disorder support group event at the hotel that night. Hmm...)

The next morning we packed up and headed out, and had one more meal together in private - we had brunch at Axel's Bonfire. Tasty stuff! But we were about the only people in the pretty big dining room, so that was weird. It felt like we rented the place out or something.

After our meal we returned home to relieve my mom and return to our regular lives as parents. It was a wonderful and welcome break, though!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Catching up

I haven't been blogging for a good long while now, so I figure it's time to write a catch up post. Really, if you're interested in what I'm doing, following me at http://www.twitter.com/coreynash is probably the way to go. Of course, I'm pretty sure the five or so of you that read this blog already follow me there. :-)

July 11-12
This weekend we didn't do anything. Really, Dina and I did nothing but sit around the house and play games with the kids and each other. It was glorious after having so many crazy weekends before that.

July 18-19 (and 20-21)
This was my vacation week. We spent two nights at a hotel in Duluth, MN, and then spent two nights at a hotel in Silver Bay, MN. We had fun in Duluth visiting the aquarium, walking around the Lift Bridge area, climbing Enger Tower to enjoy the view, and swimming in the hotel pool. Silver Bay was fun, too. There was a good hotel pool there, and we used the hotel as a base to visit the Split Rock lighthouse and Gooseberry Falls State Park. I love the North Shore. Absolutely beautiful. Great pictures. Didn't post 'em. :-) On the way back home we visited Betty's Pies, and stopped to visit an old college friend of Dina's. Good times! Oh, we also started geocaching while we were up there and found our first couple of caches.

July 25-26
This weekend we drove out to Glenwood, MN, for Waterama, the local small town festival. We also had a little surprise birthday party for my wife. Waterama activities included a pontoon parade on big Lake Minnewaska, followed by fireworks close enough for the burnt bits to rain down on us (it was really quite spectacular). The next day there was a two and a half hour long parade in which Griffin scooped up a whole bunch of candy. Caden and Rohan slept through the entire thing (including dozens of sirens, lots of drum corps, stunt motorcycles and go-karts, and mock gunfire).

August 1-2
Saturday we went to the Science Museum with some good friends, who had their godson with them. It was fun - the Science Museum is always fun! - but tiring. The next day we visited Dina's sister and her family to see their new kitty, Abner. (You can hear about Abner here. That actually is a link to a World of Warcraft podcast called Inside Azeroth that Gretchen's husband co-hosts, but he tells the story of adopting Abner).

August 8-9
OH WAIT THIS HASN'T HAPPENED YET. But it will be Dina and my 12th wedding anniversary. 12 years - wow! My mom is coming up and will watch the kids while we go on a date. I can't wait!

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Holy Crap I Didn't Blog About The 4th Yet

You'd think that with my new iPhone I'd have no problem at all keeping up with blogging. My requirements are pretty easy: at least one blog a week, describing what I did that weekend and possibly the week before, plus occasional random entries with pics of the kids and what-not. The problem is that as cool as the iPhone is, it sucks for composition. It just is not the tool for doing more than small bits of typing. It's made for tweeting, not for blogging.

Anyhow, our 4th of July weekend started on Friday. We packed up the van and ventured west to Willmar, MN, where my cousin Andrew has a house out in the country. He's done a lot of remodeling work on the place; it's really nice. Griffin always has fun there because Andrew's son Drew is close to Griffin's age (almost a year older). We hung out there that evening and let the kids go crazy playing in the yard. Then we drove over to Prinsburg, MN, and watched fireworks display #1. After that we went back to Andrew's and watched fireworks display #2 in his backyard. We slept in a guest room downstairs.

On Saturday morning we got up, had some yummy breakfast, and started packing up our stuff. We put up our jumping house for the kids to play with while we were packing. Griffin and Drew dug into some watermelon:

4th of July pics 001

We had our stuff all sitting outside ready to go in the van when it got very dark outside, then started to POUR. We got most of our stuff packed without it getting too wet, but it was raining really hard. We decided to let Griffin run around in the rain and mud - he had a blast!

After cleaning up and drying off we drove to Benson, MN, to Dina's uncle's place. He hosts a family gathering for the 4th every year, and it's always a lot of fun. This year was no exception. We had lots of great fire-cooked food and a very relaxed time hanging out in lawn chairs and letting the kids play with squirt guns and water balloons. And tent boxes:

4th of July pics 005

At night Dina's uncle lit his bonfire to burn all the brush he'd cleared in the past year. The fire was enormous - the tops of the flames were at times above the tops of the surrounding trees. I had the twins in the stroller, and they were throwing old aerosol cans into the fire as well, so I kept my distance. Here's a pretty low-quality video of the top of the fire from about 100 yards away:



We also got fireworks display #3 later that night. Rohan slept through most of it, but Caden loved it - he clapped after every burst. :-) We camped there that night, which we haven't done in a while, and it was nice to do so again. The twins didn't sleep very well, though, so Dina got very little sleep.

Sunday was all about packing up and heading home. We stopped by to say hi to my dad quickly, and stopped by my mom's place, but she was out of town at the lake cabin. We drove up to Dina's dad's place in Glenwood to drop off a present and install a printer. Dina grabbed a quick catnap, and then it was off to the freeway and back home!

Monday, July 6, 2009

June 26-28: At the lake cabin

Two weekends ago Dina's recently-remarried dad and his wife had a reception to celebrate their wedding at her family's lake cabin north of Fergus Falls, MN. Dina, her brother and sister, and all of our families decided to head out there to attend and meet the new family. We weren't sure where we were going to stay, since the lake cabin is a pretty small space without enough room for all of us, but Dina searched online and found a great place to stay called the County Line Cabin. It's a house owned by an elderly couple who rent it out, often as a base camp for hunters. The house was great, though, and worked perfectly for our three families. The best part was that it was only about three miles from the reception. What a find!



On the way there Dina and I got to play with the GPS + Google Maps feature of our iPhones, which was fun. We continue to love our iPhones. :-)

We had a lot of fun staying up waaay to late at the house, playing outside at the house and cabin, and watching the kids swim in the lake. One of the relatives had a brand new pontoon (it was delivered the day before we got there), and he took us out for a ride. We went around the lake looking at cabins, and aside from almost sinking it by having too much weight in front when we stopped, it was a lot of fun! Actually, the almost-sinking was pretty fun, too, truth be told.

Here are some pics from the weekend:

Griffin snacking at the house
Griffin snacking at the house

Rohan playing ladderball at the lake cabin
Rohan playing ladderball

Griffin, Caden, and Rohan playing Baggo
Griffin, Caden, and Rohan playing Baggo

Dina and Rohan on the pontoon ride
Dina and Rohan on the pontoon ride

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Father's Day: Camping at St. Croix State Park

This weekend we decided to go camping at St. Croix State Park, near Hinckley, MN. Dina and I love to camp, and last year we didn't go at all since Caden and Rohan were so young. This was a trial run to see how they (and we) handled it, and to make sure we have everything we need for a longer trip to the North Shore later this summer. The weekend went well! We had packed a bunch of stuff on Friday night, then on Saturday morning we got up early and packed the rest and loaded up the van. It was pretty tight, with all five of us, our camping gear, and the dog. We headed out (after a couple of "oops, I forgot..." false starts) and started the drive north. Dina's sister was going to meet us at the park with her two boys, but on the way we talked to her on the phone and realized she was thinking of a different state park, much closer. After getting that sorted out, all was good.

We arrived at St. Croix State Park at about noon, right at check-in time. We'd reserved our campsite ahead of time, which is always a crapshoot when you don't know how wooded and private the campground is, but our site was pretty awesome. We got our tent set up and most of our bedding set up, and started doing camping-type stuff. A few hours later Dina's sister and her boys arrived, and they set up, then we all had good times together. Honestly most of the specifics escape me after I've been camping...it's just nice to get out, make a fire, and enjoy being outdoors with good people. It was hot during the day - 90s - but luckily there was a swimming area at the park. (Caden and Rohan decided to nap in the air conditioned van for that, so I was with them.) Campfire, hot dogs, snacks, fireflies, playing in the dirt, hiking, swimming, lots of laughing - it was a good time. Dina's dad Dean and his wife Karen even stopped by for a while; it was good to see them.

The night was a little rough. It got colder than it does in our house, and Caden and Rohan had a tough time with that, so Dina was up much of the night soothing them in the tent. The boys and I let her sleep in that morning, though, so that worked out.

Let me just say here that campfire breakfasts rule. Pancakes, eggs, sausage, and hashbrowns cooked over a fire are one of life's Good Things. After breakfast Dina and I worked on packing up the site while playing with the kids. Gretchen had to leave right after breakfast; her boys were going to the Saints game with their dad for Father's Day. Dean and Karen stopped by again later that morning; they'd spent the night at a nearby B&B. Sunday was another hot day, but it was cloudy instead of sunny. The last thing we packed up was the tent, and just as we started taking it down the first drops of rain started to sprinkle down. The timing was perfect. We had a good trip home, and put away as much of our gear as we could manage before exhaustion set in. We definitely will return to St. Croix state park to see more of it; it's a huge park with many hiking and biking trails and two good-sized rivers, and I can see our family having a lot of fun there in the future.

It was a fantastic Father's Day weekend for me. I love my family and can't think of anything I'd rather do than spend time with them. Happy belated Father's Day to all the other dads out there!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Fun pics

My wife put some pics up on Facebook...I just had to post some of them here.

Griffin and Dina, with her awesome new haircut.


Griffin met Spider-Man at the carnival on Sunday:


Feeding the llama at the carnival's petting zoo:


Griffin and friend Zaysha got to feed a giraffe at the MN Zoo!


Caden smears frosting in his hair:


Rohan smears frosting on EVERYTHING!

Monday, June 15, 2009

A Just-Barely-Pre-Summer Summer Weekend!

Weekends just don't get any more summery than this. On Saturday we went to the carnival for our city festival, the City of Champlin Father Hennepin Festival, so-named because Champlin is apparently the place where Father Hennepin first crossed the Mississippi in 1680. Dina and I had our three kids in tow, plus our niece Lizzy and nephew Devin. It was a good time - we checked out the little flea market area where local businesses have tents/games/advertising (and our local businesses appear to consist largely of chiropractors...I saw at least two model spinal columns). Then we hit the Tilt-a-Whirl and the older kids hit the Scrambler. Griffin went on a couple kiddie rides (the airplanes and the giant slide) and then we grabbed some carnival grub...hamburgers, a bucket of fries, and mini donuts, washed down with fresh lemonade. Then we walked over to the animals area, and Griffin went on a pony ride, we checked out the "exotic animals" petting zoo, and then Griffin, Devin, and Lizzy took a camel ride, which they all seemed to enjoy (even the camel). On the way back to our minivan, we saw a carnie go into heatstroke, or perhaps have a drug overdose...it was pretty freaky. Then Dina and I took a ride on the Scrambler, and Dina was on the outside...and got CRUSHED by me. She was squished and bent and pretty uncomfortable. Good thing there are so many chiropractors in town. That evening I thought about going to see an area bassist's show, but since we had family over decided against it. Devin and Lizzy went home with their parents later that night.

On Sunday we did some stuff around the house, then packed up and took the kids to the swim beach at Elm Creek Park near our house.



It's a man-made pond with a big sandy beach around it. The water is slightly chlorinated, but not as heavily as at some swimming pools. It's a great place for the kids, and all three had fun splashing around and playing in the sand. Griffin's been taking swimming lessons at Foss, and it really showed...he is so much more confident in the water now, which is awesome. We spent quite a few hours at the beach, so we were pretty wiped after we got home. We ordered pizza and had some more fun with the kids, then the kids went to sleep and Dina and I watched some Law & Order re-runs (and/or dozed on the couch). All-in-all a pretty awesome and laid-back summer weekend.

And it's not even summer yet!

Friday, June 12, 2009

Four years ago yesterday

Four years ago yesterday, my life changed dramatically when my wife and I ceased being expectant parents and became the parents of a perfect little baby boy. When he was born I experienced this amazing mix of joy, fear, wonder, relief, sadness, disbelief, and (most of all) primal encompassing love for this tiny person I'd never even met.

Happy birthday, Griffin!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Be warned...

I know there are a variety of people who read this, so be warned: this just might be a bit of a TMI post. You may want to stop reading now if you're made squeamish by the words "pain," "needles," "doctor," or "vasectomy."

Heh...well, with that introduction I guess you already know what my weekend was about. Ha Ha! Yes, on Friday morning I got a vasectomy. Dina and I decided that our family is just how we want it, so we made the decision. I won't give you all the gory details (though I am somewhat evilly tempted to do so...heh, heh, heh); suffice it to say everything went well and the only painful part of the procedure was the anesthesia injection. The whole thing took about an hour, and they'd given me a Valium prescription beforehand, so I was pretty calm. Lemme tell ya...it's really freaking odd having small-talk conversation with the person who's sterilizing you.

Getting that done meant I basically wasn't supposed to do anything all weekend but sit around and play video games. That was pretty cool, except that there was some soreness and such. Luckily they gave me some Percocet for pain relief, which I did use the first day. After that, cold packs were all I needed. I was very happy that we got our bigscreen TV replaced before this weekend. I was feeling good enough to go to B33n3r's meat & beer party on Saturday (at which my kids kinda took over - sorry about that). It was fun to see everyone there, and now you all know why I was sitting on my butt on the comfy loveseat almost the whole time. :-) I'm hoping things go well at work tomorrow...they should; I'm feeling pretty good now.

And that was the weekend. I promise not to write any more blog posts about my genitals.

Well, not many anyway.

Oops - missed a week

I seem to have missed a week. I blame that on the fact that the weekend I missed was so busy, and that I had my mind on this weekend.

So last weekend (May 30/31) was a pretty full weekend. On Saturday my oldest son had a "swim meet." He's taking swimming lessons (and doing very well), and his school had a swim meet in which the older students actually race, and the younger students pretend to race. He got a ribbon for taking part, which he thought was pretty cool. Later that day there was a family swim, and that little 3-year-old swam a solid two hours without stopping. Unbelievable energy...

Sunday morning Griffin had another activity; he's in a gymnastics class, and each Spring they have a show. He was with all the other kids around his age, and the kids basically showed what they learned on all the equipment. At the end, he got a trophy, and he had no idea that was coming. He was so excited he jumped up and down. He later told me, "this is the coolest trophy I've ever seen." I was very proud of him. :-)

After his show, we got in the minivan and headed for Wisconsin - Wisconsin Dells. We had a one-night stay at the Great Wolf Lodge resort. The place was cool - a bunch of indoor waterparks and one outdoor waterpark, plus lots of activities for the kids and great food in the restaurants. Our room had a queen bed for the adults, and bunkbeds for the kids; the kids' beds were in a little room of their own that looked like a little log cabin inside the suite. Pretty cool! It would have been nice to stay more than one night. The timing was great - school wasn't out yet in most places, so there were hardly any other people at the waterpark. We didn't have to wait for anything...that rocked. I think we'll go back in a couple years when Caden and Rohan are old enough to really enjoy it.

On Monday we spent some time hanging out at the resort, then took our time driving home. We didn't get home until pretty late. The next day we took Griffin, Caden, and Rohan to Pixar's "Up." Great movie! I'll be buying it.

Another item of note - during this week we replaced our widescreen TV. Woo hoo! This time we got a Sony Bravia 46" LCD (the KDL-46V5100):



It's an inch smaller than the LG we returned, but the LCD panel is a nicer panel, and overall we like this TV much better.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Memorial Day Weekend

First off, here's a belated thanks to all current and former members of our military, who dedicate themselves to the defense of our country and ideals, and especially so to those who have given their lives for that noble endeavor.

Concise version of the weekend's activities: move crap out of garage, return TV, move crap back into garage, organize crap.

We didn't do anything specific to Memorial Day over the weekend; instead we took the extra day off and cleaned and organized our garage. We threw out and donated a whole bunch of stuff, and our garage is much less cluttered now, which is awesome.

On Saturday we realized that what we thought was a grease smudge on the screen of our TV was actually a permanent scuff. Our 30-day unconditional guarantee on the TV had just expired earlier that week, so I wasn't sure if we'd just have to live with the scuff. I called Best Buy and talked to a manager, and ended up returning the TV for store credit. According to the manager (and the head tech of that store) the scuff was probably caused by Best Buy packaging up the TV, which was an open box display model, with bubble wrap before it had properly cooled. So right now we're back to our old TV until Best Buy has a TV deal we consider worthy. I feel like I have to squint at the TV now! Hopefully we find a good deal soon.

An interesting note about donations...I tried to take a bunch of our stuff we don't use anymore to Goodwill on Tuesday night. They declined a bunch of it, which surprised me. Apparently they can't take Christmas stuff out of season, they can't take small appliances like our humidifier, and they can't take metal bed frames. Strange. They did take a bunch of my computer science textbooks from college, and a bunch of my old fantasy paperbacks. It killed me to get rid of my first paperback Lord of the Rings trilogy, but they weren't in great shape, and I've got a really nice hardcover version, so it was past time for them to go.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Trying to stay awake...

This weekend was exhausting, not only in the amount of running around we did, but in the terribly poor amount of sleep I got.

The big event this weekend was that Dina's dad got remarried. The ceremony was Saturday afternoon in Glenwood, MN. That means on Friday we had to pack. Unfortunately, Dina also had a going-away party for a friend of hers Friday night, so she was out until about 11:00. We were up late getting as much packed as we could, so we didn't get much sleep Friday night. Anyway, we got out of the house on Saturday, went and visited Dina's mom in St. Cloud for a while, then drove out to Glenwood for the wedding. After the wedding we had a reception dinner at the Lakeside Ballroom. (The filet mignon special was awesome.) Then we headed over to the Scotwood Motel and played in the pool with the kids for a couple hours. That was fun - all of our boys love the water and had a great time. We thought they'd sleep soundly.

Two thirds of them did. However, Caden was not happy with being away from home, and got stuffed up from the dust in the room's air. He cried almost all night. Between Dina and I, one of us was up all night long. Ugh.

The next day is kinda hazy, but we visited Dina's dad and his new wife, drove to Benson to visit my dad and hisnew girlfriend (but the kids fell asleep on the drive, so we didn't stay long), visited my mom and grandpa (also in Benson), went back to my dad's after the kids were awake, and then headed out of town.

Visiting my dad was...tough. When I was a kid he was a heavy drinker and into various drugs, so my childhood was very much not normal. I wasn't physically abused, but I saw a lot of stuff that kids shouldn't see, and experienced things that have caused a lot of pain. My dad still drinks (don't know about the other stuff), and I've kept a considerable distance between us, especially since my own kids have been born. We normally give my dad lots of notice when we're coming, so there's no crazy stuff when we get there with the kids. Well, when we stopped by with little notice on our way out of town, because Griffin wanted to see his grandpa, my dad had obviously been drinking, and his new girlfriend was altered out of her mind on something...if it was booze, it was a lot. Not a good situation for the kids, so we got out of there. I'm not looking forward to the time when Griffin is old enough to see what's going on, because I'm going to have to deal with this crap again.

Ok, enough with the heavy stuff. On a lighter note, on the way home I was starting to feel tired, so I drank a Bawls energy drink (mostly because of the recent spoof). It actually tasted fairly good. I'd never had one of those before, and wow did it affect me. After getting home at 11:15 pm, I unloaded the kids, and all of our stuff, and put almost all of it away immediately. Usually when we get home that late we carry our stuff into the entryway and leave it until morning. Of course, after doing that I collapsed into a nearly-dead state in bed until morning. I think I'm still recovering today.

Monday, May 11, 2009

The Weekend

Friday night my wife and I did something we haven't done in quite some time. We went to a movie! Together! Without any kids! (Thanks, Uncle Guy!)



Our friends Lundo and Amy rented out the VIP box at a local theater and invited us and a bunch of other friends to watch Star Trek. The night was awesome before the movie even started. The VIP box had a receiving room where we got to hang out and eat some food, and then we moved into the box itself, which had ultra-comfy fully-reclining very-plush and otherwise-hyphenated leather chairs. The box had its own little sound system as well, which was better than I expected. I will definitely be watching movies from a VIP box again in the future.

So aside from how good the viewing experience was, the movie itself was 100% awesome. It was a reboot of the franchise, and it was superbly done. This movie was exactly what it neeeded to be - it was a ton of fun, it was adventurous, it had geek-out moments, it hearkened back to the original series when it needed to (and departed where prudent), and it set things up perfectly for further adventures in the newly conceived world. JJ Abrams did it just right. The movie's only flaw is that it's a little light; it doesn't have the social commentary that was such a big part of the original series. However, even with that flaw, here's a bold opinion: this is the best Star Trek movie ever made. I'll have to rewatch the others to confirm this opinion (ok, maybe not Nemesis), but I'm pretty sure I'll stick to that opinion.

The next day Dina hosted a Creative Memories workshop at our house, which meant that I had the boys all day. I was unsure how the day would go, because I was very tired. We're night-weaning Caden and Rohan, so that means less sleep for me for a little while (when they wake up at night it works better for me to soothe them, because if Dina does then they just want to nurse). The day went pretty quickly though. The morning was mostly taken up running errands, including the first time I'd ever gone to Costco. What a huge place. I probably would have enjoyed wandering around the place feeling like an ant, but I had all three boys on the cart (Caden and Rohan in the seats, Griffin hanging on to the end), and the place was PACKED since it was a weekend. It took me a long time to find what I needed to get. As it turned out, the afternoon went by pretty quickly, too. Griffin played with his cousin Keefe since Aunt Gretchen was over for the workshop. Rohan took an enormous nap, so I ended up basically watching only Caden. It was easy enough that I was able to put together a set of Ikea storage bin shelves for the play room. I'm the man.

That night Dina and I decided that we should go buy a couple cigars. (WHAT? Yeah, we enjoy a cigar about once every two years.) So, we found a place in Coon Rapids that is in this cheap little strip mall, but has a pretty nice walk-in humidor. Dina bought herself something small and light, and bought me something huge and robust (qualities which I would later rue). We went home but didn't really have time to enjoy them after the kids went to bed. Besides, it turned out we didn't have a cigar cutter to snip the tip, and it was too late to go buy one. So we decided we'd try them the next night if we had time.

Sunday, of course, was Mother's Day. Part of my Mother's Day present to my wife was that I spent the night on the couch with Caden so she wouldn't have to. :-) Caden just would not sleep unless someone held him...it was a long night. Dina got to sleep in a little, and then worked on some digital scrapbooking on her laptop while I cleaned the kitchen. We ran some errands as a family, and ate lunch on the go: Costco Chicken Bake Sandwiches rule! We also stopped by a smoke shop in Maple Grove to buy a cigar cutter. The place is called Tobacco Grove, and it's one of the seven businesses that got an exemption to allow indoor smoking when the smoking ban went into effect statewide. They have a big lounge area with padded chairs and lots of dark leather and dark wood. Seems like it'd be a pretty cool place if you're into that kind of thing. That night we made pancakes, bacon, and eggs for Dina's Mother's Day meal. (Well, Dina started cooking the bacon...I finished.) We also had some fun playing Youtube videos on our big TV; I recently bought the digital audio and video cables I needed to hook up my laptop to the big TV, and that's a lot of fun. The kids really love it.

After the kids went to bed and we'd cleaned up, Dina and I decided to smoke our cigars on the deck. It was chilly, but not horrible. We had a glass of dessert wine, lit up our cigars, and reminisced about good times gone by. The cigar Dina bought me had a great spicy taste to it, but it had my head spinning by the time I came inside. It ended up making me feel a little sick...too much cigar for me! I'll have to stick to the lightweight stuff in 2011.

HOLY CRAP THIS WAS LONG! WHY ARE YOU STILL READING? Don't you know that this is really just for my own convenience, so I can have a searchable record of my life? ;-)

Monday, May 4, 2009

Weekend update: Party edition

What a fun weekend! We had our Guitar Hero: Metallica party and cookout on Saturday afternoon. Of course, that meant Saturday morning was all about cleaning and running errands. There was a lot to do because Dina got slammed with allergies the night before, and the twins didn't sleep very well because they had colds. So we were moving a little slow on Saturday morning...in fact we were still finishing up as the first people arrived. It was fine, though - the party went great! It was fun to meet some people I'd never met before, and also to get together with old friends. And really, how can you go wrong with video games, beer, grilled meat, and an inflatable jumping house?

After the party wound down and our house was ours again, we cleaned up as much of the party mess as we had energy for, and then got our kids bathed and off to bed. That evening Dina's friend Christine came over to play with Dina's new Cricut machine, which cuts custom shapes out of paper. While they were playing I installed some magnetic child safety locks on the cabinets in the kitchen, as we no longer have the twins blocked off to the living room; they have free roam of the upstairs now. They love it, but we're finding what's not babyproofed well enough.

Sunday morning was a lazy morning since we were up late Saturday night. After doing a whole lot of nothing in the morning, we ate lunch out on the deck (the sunny weather was FANTASTIC) then packed up into the minivan to go to the Living Green Expo at the MN State Fair grounds. The biggest reason we went was to pick up a rain barrel that Dina had ordered, but we also stopped to see Dina's friend Elaine who was running the La Leche League booth. We also like to show our support for local food by visiting the co-op and CSA booths. Oh, and of course we also like to laugh at the tiny, tiny cars.

We got home just before dinnertime, so I mowed the lawn for the first time this year while the kids were on the deck playing and Dina was cleaning out the minivan (and boy, was it dirty). I realized that I really like mowing in the Spring and Fall, and pretty much hate it in the Summer. I'm sure this is largely related to the amount I sweat in various seasons.

Today it's back to work. For a half day, anyway...Dina, Griffin, and I all have dentist appointments this afternoon. So, by this afternoon I shall have Shiny Clean Teeth (and hopefully no appointments to fill cavities).

Monday, April 27, 2009

Productive weekend

There are weekends filled with video games, pajamas, and comfort food. This was not one of those weekends.

On Saturday morning we packed the boys up in the minivan and took a shopping trip to buy new shoes and a few other assorted clothing items. We got back to the house just after lunchtime, and just in time for Dean (Dina's dad) and Karen to show up. Dean was there to help out with some house projects, so over the course of the afternoon we pressure-washed the deck (that was the big project), leveled off some gopher mounds, moved and staked the big wooden swingset, and figured out why our bathroom exhaust fan wasn't working. Washing the deck was fun, though being wet and in the wind was a bit chilly later in the day. The wood is a totally different color now; it's quite amazing. This week we plan to stain the deck; it should end up looking really nice. Staking the swingset down was fun, too. We had stakes that were 2x4's cut into a point on one side, and I pounded them into the ground with a sledgehammer, then screwed the swingset to the stakes. My swinging hand was weak at the end of the day, and there's still a little residual soreness today. Maybe I should take up shovelglove to get in shape...

Sunday started out slow with coffee and breakfast. (Aside: we recently bought a Keurig coffee machine, and I like it. It's coffee on demand.) It was rainy, so we couldn't do much outside. Instead, we started getting ready for our Big House Reorganization Project. We're going to move Caden and Rohan, who are currently sleeping in our room, into their own beds in what is right now Griffin's room. Since all three boys will be sleeping in that room, there won't be room to play in there, so we're reorganizing our downstairs family room to make better use of its space as a play room.

Anyway, we moved most of the big play furniture and toys out of Griffin's room into the garage, and moved all of the toys/furniture/junk we'd accumulated in the family room into the garage as well. (Note that in this operation, my wife is the brains and I'm the brawn. She's a very good organizer; me, not so much. She mauls me in competitive Tetris.) Then we (meaning Dina) figured out how the room should be arranged, and we started moving stuff back down. We've got the play room most of the way there now...part of it is a little den area with a futon, easy chair, and TV, and the rest is toys and games. We were up pretty late. More work to come this week!

This morning I was able to carry the productivity forward. I installed a safety gate at the top of our deck stairs so Dina will be able to let the little ones play out there. I really should have worn gloves, though...it was way too wet and cold to be dealing with a metal gate. My hands were not happy.

This week we'll be continuing the BHRP, and getting the house ready for people to come over on Saturday. Should be fun!

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Innovation

Apparently our bath toys just aren't cool enough. Rohan decided he needed something new during his bath tonight. Unfortunately, the nearest thing he could reach outside the tub was a full roll of toilet paper.

Granted, it was pretty cool to see the whole thing swelled up - I'll give him that. And I can't fault him for wanting to try something new. But cleanup was a pain. :-)

Monday, April 20, 2009

New update

Been kinda busy the last few weeks, so I haven't had much time for blogging, but I'll try to catch you up now.

The weekend before last was a lot of fun. On Thursday night, we had a birthday party at our house for Keefe, Gretchen's younger boy. That whole side of the family was over: Gretchen and Vidi, with Devin and Keefe; Guy and Dara, with Lizzie; and of course Dina and I with our boys. Griffin was in heaven playing with all his cousins. A very wild and excited heaven. Lizzie and Keefe spent the next two nights at our house, which was a lot of fun. On Friday I worked, but then on Saturday we all went to an Easter egg hunt at Fish Lake Park in Maple Grove. We had lunch with Grandma Cathy and Todd at a nearby Fuddrucker's (at which Todd ate the largest burger I've ever seen in person...the "one pounder" that essentially had a round loaf of bread sliced in two for a bun). The next day we went over to Dara's parents for Easter dinner. It's a little odd being invited to your wife's brother's wife's parents' place for a family meal, but we know them fairly well, and they're good people. We had lots of fun enjoying the fantastic weather and playing outside with all the kids.

On Monday we got our taxes finalized and got a nice big return. We decided to stimulate the economy a bit. More on that later.

This last weekend Dina was involved in a convention for her Mothers of Multiples group. She was attending the convention as a M.o.M., but was also putting on a scrapbooking breakout session. She had 32 people show up - pretty good! Her convention ran from Friday until Sunday, so I had the boys for the weekend again. Friday during the day I had the boys to myself, but that night my mom (Grandma Lynn) came up to help out. It's always fun to have her around; she gets along so well with all the boys. On Saturday we decided to go around shopping for a new TV with our tax return money. I didn't necessarily plan on buying that day, but wanted to start looking at screens. I ended up finding a great open box deal at Best Buy for this:



It's a 47" LCD tv from LG. It's got the features I was interested in (LCD, size, 1080p, 120Hz refresh rate, all the i/o ports I need) and it was a great price. And it looks great! We've already had a ton of fun playing games, watching movies, and watching HD TV channels.

After bringing the TV home we drove over to Elk River to my uncle Gary's house. We try to get over there each year around when he makes maple syrup. He had already collected the sap but wasn't boiling it yet since it was so dry out there; he didn't want to start a brush fire. So we just hung out, let the kids run around in the yard, and relaxed. It was a lot of fun. Plus I traded some of my homemade beer for some of his homemade maple syrup. Bartering for the win!

The next day Dina came back home, and the kids were very happy to see Mama. We had a relaxing evening around the house, which was great.

Today I overslept by an hour and a half, and missed my bus downtown. I drove to work, and found out that my company is trying to buy Sun Microsystems - whoa! More to come on that later. For now I need to get back to work. Farewell!

Monday, March 30, 2009

Great weekend with the boys

This weekend was a lot of work, but ended up with an early birthday present and a lot of fun.

On Friday I got out of work early to go to an physical therapy appointment for my wrist tendinitis. It was a pretty standard appointment, but they added Light Therapy for pain relief. They basically shine a very expensive flashlight on my wrists for a while. It seems a little voodoo-ish to me, but it did actually seem to help with the pain. Anyway, after that I met up with Dina at the church where her Mothers of Multiples group was setting up for their Spring kids' sale. Dina was working the setup, so I took the kids home and took care of the night routine.

Dina had to work at the sale on Saturday morning, and the kids got us up bright and early, so it was a full day. Since I was up early and had a little time, I grabbed this video of Griffin off our camera and put it online. He's singing his "tractor song" from his trip to the zoo the previous day. The kid is ready for metal:



Dina stopped at home after the sale and finished packing for her well-deserved night away with girlfriends in St. Cloud. She took off and the boys and I did a lot of playing the rest of the day. One of our favorite things is to get a bunch of musical instruments out and just make a lot of noise. I love it! I usually play my didge, and we all have a good time.

The night was a bit long, because when Caden or Rohan wake up at night they expect their mama to be there with them, but we got through it with a fair number of hours slept, so I was happy.

On Sunday I spent a lot of time catching up on cleaning and other domestic-y stuff since I basically just messed around all of Saturday. When Dina was on her way home she told me that she was bringing an early birthday present home. She picked up Guitar Hero: Metallica for the Wii, and also picked up the drum kit for Guitar Hero: World Tour. We didn't buy the full kit with drums when we bought the game around Christmastime, so it's cool to have the drums now. Awesome birthday present! Dina also picked up Endless Ocean and Mario Party to take advantage of a "buy two get one free" deal at Target.

I waited to play GH: Metallica until the kids were sleeping. Man, that game is fun! It was a lot like playing bass along to tapes (here, for you kiddies who don't know what tapes are) when I was a kid. More game-y, of course, but the feeling is similar. The available song list is pretty good; there's a good selection of non-Metallica songs in addition to tons of Metallica stuff. I did pretty well playing bass on Hard mode, and guitar on Medium mode. Then I decided I needed some more tendinitis, and cranked up the difficulty for guitar on All Nightmare Long. I was defeated. Here's why (this isn't me, but shows how crazy the song is):

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Brew Log

I decided to put my log of homebrewing online rather than just keeping it on the computer.

Brew Log

I used Google Docs because it seemed like the easiest way. We'll see how that goes. Here's to watching the list get longer!

Monday, March 23, 2009

Monday already? I'd better blog.

Another weekend, another blog post. I should change the title of this blog to "This Is What Corey Nash Did Last Weekend." Something is better than nothing, though, so here goes.

Friday I left work a little early and picked up a pair of prescription sunglasses at the local eye doctor's. I haven't had sunglasses that I could see clearly through since...ever. It's pretty sweet. I kept wearing them even when I didn't need them, because it's so nice to finally have them...in the house...at night...while sleeping (kidding, but I wore them a lot). After picking up my sunglasses-of-wicked-awesomeness, the family and I got in the minivan and drove out near St. Cloud to pick up a Creative Memories shipment for Dina. We then drove over to Duelm, MN, for a benefit dinner for my cousin's husband, who has been having some pretty serious medical problems. It was a GREAT turnout, and it was good to see a lot of family that we haven't seen in a while. It was fun to let Griffin run around, Rohan toddle around, and Caden get passed around. We stayed until late evening, then headed home.

On Saturday Dina had a display table at a local trade show during the day, so I was at home with the kids. In the morning we had a lot of fun playing, and after lunch we went to visit Dina for a little while. After we got home the kids took turns sleeping, and I did some cleaning and managed to watch the Battlestar Galactica series finale. Wow...from epic space battle scenes, to character story fulfillment, to head-scratching mysteries, the finale had something for everyone. It wasn't perfect, but it was very, very good (though I can see how it could be frustrating for those looking for the answers to every loose thread). That night we all went to bed very early and got lots of sleep, which was great, because we all needed it.

Sunday was a busy day. We got up and I made waffles for breakfast, then we starting cleaning the house and doing laundry. After lunch when one of the twins was taking a nap, I bottled my batch of Liberty Cream Ale. I ended up bottling outdoors since it was so nice, and man, that was really a treat. Bottling takes some time, so I basically got to sit out in the sun for a good long while. It was a bit windy, but it felt good to soak in the sun. Griffin was outside playing all over the yard, and he kept running up to the table I was using to try to help me. "I'll help you stir! Can I soak a bottle? Can I put the cap on? Can I give you the caps?" It was pretty cute.

Later Dina and I started getting the deck ready to be a play area for the kids. We have a water toy that's basically a waterslide for toys, and a plastic toddler's swingset that we put up on the deck. We're going to install netting around the railing and a solid gate to block off the stairs, then Dina will be able to hang out with the toddlers on the deck while Griffin plays in the yard.

After that I took care of Caden and Rohan in the house while Dina and Griffin planted a bunch of flower and vegetable seeds in little starter pots. That'll be a fun project for the two of them to share through the spring and summer. It's always good to give Griffin some one-on-one time with Mama since he has to share so much of his life with his brothers.

After the kids were in bed Dina and I stayed up late wrapping up a bunch of household stuff we wanted to get done before the weekend was done. I was tired this morning, but it felt good to get a lot done over the weekend.

Is someone still reading this? Amazing...it can get pretty boring. Normally my "weekend journal" posts are kind of a letdown by the end. Well, time for that to change! My posts will end with pizzazz from now on, this I swear to you! So, for this post, I end with...fireworks!



Yeah, still kinda boring. But you're still reading. ;-)

Monday, March 16, 2009

Weekend update: Kobolds edition

What an awesome weekend! Friday night Dina had the first part of a scrapbooking retreat she was hosting at our house, so I took the boys outside for a walk/trike ride as the weather was getting so nice, and then got to hang out with them downstairs. Caden and Rohan are more fun every day as they move from babyhood to toddlerhood and start to develop their personalities.

Saturday during the day was the second part of Dina's retreat, so I got to hang out with the boys all day. We went and played at Ridgedale (they've got a pretty fun kids' playground area), had lunch there and did some driving around after we were done. We tried to find a park for Griffin to play in since it was so nice, but it was far too wet everywhere.

Saturday night was the St. Patrick's Day party at Ryan's place, with A Flock of Kobolds providing musical entertainment. The Kobolds are a few friends (Ben, Ryan, Lundo, Travis, and myself) that play traditional Irish music, sea chanteys, and pirate songs. It's brilliant. I play Irish tin whistles (and occasionally the didgeridoo), but that night was the first time I'd actually played with the rest of the guys, having previously been practicing to their prior recordings. It was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to hear and see some of the recordings. The only bummer was that my wife had to leave early in the second set due to babysitter drama (so she missed all the dirty songs). Funny enough, though, when she left, the CD that in the car was the Kobolds rehearsal CD I'd made, so she said she felt like she was listening to the show on the radio.

I plan to post pics and/or videos if I can get my hands on 'em.

Sunday was a day to catch up on things around the house. It was low key and a perfect after-party day. And FREAKING GORGEOUS outside, which really lifted my soul.

Aaaaaaaand now it's back to work.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Brewing: Liberty Cream Ale

I realized I'd never posted pics of brewing before. So now I have!

This is me chilling down the wort (what will become beer) before adding the yeast.


Here I'm moving the wort to the fermenting bucket.


All sealed up and ready to ferment:


In a week I'll transfer it to a different container for secondary fermentation. Then a week after that I'll bottle it. And two weeks after THAT I'll be drinking delicious, delicious Liberty Cream Ale. Woo hoo!

Friday, March 6, 2009

New music toys

I got some new music equipment (a.k.a. toys) recently, and they're pretty cool. Last weekend when we went to Groth Music I picked up a couple of Irish tin whistles, one in the key of C and one in the key of D. Here's how the D whistle sounds; I'm playing the intro to Haul Away Joe.



The C whistle has a harsher, less woody sound to it, but I don't have a sample right now. The whistles are fun, but yesterday I bought something that's even more fun. A guy I know was selling a used didgeridoo. It's not an authentic Aboriginal one or anything, but hey, it sounds okay and it only cost me ten bucks, so I'm pretty happy. Here's what it sounds like:



I have lots of fun playing it. The kids love it, too. Oh, and my wife is very embarrassed by how goofy I am in that video. :-)

Turns out that playing the tuba in high school was fantastic preparation for playing didgeridoo. Can't wait to get better and play some more!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Serious lack of pics lately

I've been terrible about posting pics lately. (I've been only slightly better about posting words, but that's a different subject.) Anyway, here's a current pic of Caden and Rohan. Dina took them and Griffin to the Children's Museum yesterday, and Dina's friend snapped this pic.


If you can't tell, that's Caden on the left, and Rohan on the right. It amazes me that some people still can't tell them apart!