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! :-)

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!