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Keegan Quote of the Day

We are preparing to eat dinner out on the deck. It is a little bit chilly out so I asked Keegan if he wanted to wear a coat.

His response:
"I need my windbreaker so that I can break wind. Mom, do you see me I am still breaking the wind."

Wow can our boy break wind!

England Trip: Day 8

We didn't do much today. We walked around Shoreditch. Apparently nothing there opens until 1pm so at 11am it was pretty dead. Came back and took a nap; woke up and walked around the Chapel Street Market then picked up dinner at a bakery.

Now we are back and doing things like packing. Hanging out, watching movies.

I was in a bit in a panic when I saw mother's day was tomorrow. I was like geez I thought it was in May!

Well I guess in the UK mother's day is March 14th. Glad my parents don't live in the UK or it would suck to be my dad since that is his birthday :-) Anyway, I tried to convince Lyle that we should celebrate mother's day for me here and back in the US...he wasn't having any of it. He did mention the excess of clothing I have bought here and how maybe that might count as a present ;-) He is right.

Anyway, back home tomorrow. We are ready to come home. We miss Keegan, the animals, and weirdly enough our bed. Having a Temperpedic mattress is cool until you have to sleep other places. I think Keegan is starting to wear my parents out too.

Speaking of which Keegan had his first set of ice skating lessons on Thursday night. I guess he was way younger than the other kids. But he was also a way better skater. According to Gma and Gpa he skated so well that they wouldn't let him use the stand to lean on that the other kids used. We have taken him out a couple times this year to skate and noticed that he has way better balance this year than last year.

Anyway, I guess the instructor talked about possibly moving him up to the next level depending on how he does the next couple weeks. There were also a lot of 10-12 year old girls helping with the lessons. Keegan was hamming it up and had quite the following of girls helping him out. We are a bit worried about him; he always knows how to get the ladies attention and we are worried about what that means for his teenage years ;-)

I am glad he did so well. We were a bit worried he would get upset and refuse to skate. Instead the opposite happened. My parents had a great time and got to be the proud grandparents of the toddler who skated awesome. Lyle and I were happy everything went so well. We were also relieved that he likes the skating lessons. Originally Lyle asked Keegan if he wanted to start lessons and Keegan said No! Then a week later Keegan was asking us when he was going to start lessons because he really wanted to learn....so we were hoping he would stick with it if we spent the money to sign him up.

The only bad thing about the whole situation is that as time goes on I think there is a greater and greater chance that I am destined to be a hockey mom...not a horrible thing but a potentially expensive (and time-consuming) sport to have a kid in :-)

England Trip Day 7 and random thoughts

So today was another low-key day. We went to the Tate Modern in the morning, ran around Oxford getting 407 forms from places we had spent lots of money (for a VAT refund) and then went out to Hampton Court Palace.

The Tate Modern was a good Modern art museum. The have Rodin's THe Kiss there, some Picasso, and some Francis Drake works. Lots of other stuff too. Some of the stuff we had actually already seen at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis. On the way to the Tate from the Underground we walked by Shakespeare's Globe and some other interesting sites.

We then went to Hampton Court Palace. Took us a bit to get out there, it was nice and quiet. We went through the maze and walked through the Palace; which was more like a fortress. It was nice to get out of the city and hear birds and see trees. Today was the first day that we had rain...

Here are some random odd things that happened/thoughts:
- Paris moved slower than London and the city was more spread out.
- Londoners are always in a hurry.
- Paris waiters are good.
- London waiters need to be asked to bring the check; we have yet to actually have a British waiter take the initiative on this. I am beginning to think it is normal for England.
- Coca-cola is very expensive in Paris, yet cheap in London.
- Someone tried to pick-pocket Cate. They stuck their hand in her coat pocket on the Underground. Funny thing is they came away with a handful of dirty Kleenex...we all know better than to keep important stuff in our coat pockets!
- We must look American, in Paris waiters kept offering us menus in English as we walked down the street.
- According to our experience it is mostly sunny in England with the occasional spotty shower.
- You can get trapped in the London Underground. Somehow going from Wimbledon station to Waterloo station we ended up with a negative dollar amount on our Oyster card (underground pass). They would not let us out of the station and told us to "Top up our cards" but there was no where to top up our cards in the station. Finally after explaining that we would love to add more money onto our cards if they would let us...they let us out of the station so we could go to the kiosk and add more money. Of course first we had to get a lecture about how it is our responsibility to know when we will run out of money on our card. Well..ya...it is and every station we had been through had a place to add money...except for the one where we ran out of money. As to how we ended up with -1.81 lbs on our card I will never know. At least we are still not stuck down there.
- Highschoolers take the train between Hampton Court Palace and Waterloo station to get home from school. They are very loud and very obnoxious...

Tomorrow we are planning on hitting another museum and checking out the Shoreditch area. We have had fun but are getting ready to go home. I like the city but I also like some space and I am getting sick of the constant drone of people.

England Trip: Days 5 and 6

Day 5 was a big day; the trip to Paris. We got up at 3:30am and caught the bus (the only thing running that early) to St. Pancres Station. The Eurostar left at 5:25am. We ended up in Paris a bit after 9am. Bought a booklet of tickets and then took the RER train to Versialles.

Versailles was neat but not as big as we thought it would be. Only took a couple of hours to get through the palace. We walked around the garden a bit but it was (again) very cold and windy...there was ice in the ponds. So being outside wasn't at all pleasant. We snapped a couple of picks and then took the RER back to Paris.

We popped out at the Eiffle Tower, snapped some picks, and then took the Metro to Notre Dame. We ate in a nice cafe right across from Notre Dame. The French service at cafes was very good, even if we were all a little confused communicating. Lyle found out the Coca-cola is expensive in France and I found out the mulled wine is very yummy and cheap.

After lunch we went to Notre Dame. Notre Dame was awesome, we opted not to climb up this tower since our legs were hurting from the day before. Instead we walked along the river to the Lourve. The walk was nice, if chilly, Paris is a much prettier city than London. The buildings are more spaced apart and the scenery prettier. The Lourve was absolutely amazing. It is bigger than you could ever imagine. It was fabulous to see some works of art I had previously studied in my art classes. We got to see a number of amazing works including Mona Lisa, Victory of Samirath (sp?), some Michaelangelo pieces and many other amazing things. We only walked through two floors. My knee has decided enough was enough and was actually threatening to just collapse. So we ate a pain au chocolate and had some lemonade. Then left to see the Arch of Triumph. The Arc of Triumph was impressive.

Then we had dinner over at a pizza place and made our way back to Gard du Nord with a couple hours to spare. The train station was freezing so we went into a cafe and drank water and played cards for a while. Then we got back on the Eurostar and went home. We saw a lot of neat stuff in Paris, so it was well worth the trip.

Today, Day 6, we decided to chill. I was having trouble walking, so we slept in. Then we went to Westminster Abbey and took the full audio tour, taking our time and sitting and enjoying the amazing sites. No pictures allowed in here I am afraid. It was very nice. Then we went back to Oxford street so I could get shopping out of my system. We shopped for three hours, much to Lyle's dismay. I found some amazing clothing and Lyle even found a nice sweater. I will have to discuss my favorite shops later. We came back took a nap, ate at Pret again, and now we are fixing to go see Alice in Wonderland. So a much more relaxed day.

Anyway, I have to go catch a movie so more later. Maybe we will even get some pictures posted tonight!

England Trip: Day 4

Okay so I am a couple days behind in blogging about our trip. The last couple days were crazy!

Day 4, Tuesday, was our first day exploring London. We got up early, again, to catch an 8am tour bus for a city tour. The tour bus was okay. It was basically hop on an off privileges for 24 hours. Then you could plug headphones in for commentary about the city. At first the bus was frustrating because people walking were moving faster than the bus was in traffic.

So, we got on in Trefalger Square and hopped off at the Tower of London. I thought the Tower of London was a tower, it is more of a fortress. Instead of waiting for the next tour to start we decided to take the Medieval wall walk which goes through all of the outer towers; including the Salt tower a place where people were imprisoned. Then we went to look at the crown jewels in the Jewel House and to look at arms and armor in the White Tower. Lastly we went through the bloody tower to see instruments of torture...

When we got out we saw the changing of the guard there. Then it was time to move on. It was a toss up between taking a river cruise down the Thames or walking back to St. Pauls Cathedral and touring that. We went back to St. Paul's. Grabbing lunch at Pret Manger (a great sandwhich shop that has a billion locations in London).

The walk was nice but long and gave us a good taste for London City Proper. St Paul's Cathedral was beautiful. We decided to take a walk up to the top of the dome. The stairs got a bit scary for me being see through, skinny, spindly, and shaky. Oh and there were 390 of them. But the view up on top of St. Paul was absolutely amazing. Even if I did spend most of it pressed against the wall (I just don't like heights that much). Definitely a awesome thing to try if you can stomach the walk up there. I am happy we did it, even if my knee still hasn't forgiven me.

After that we caught the underground over to Westminister Abbey and decided to cross the bridge to ride the London Eye. We got excellent view of Big Ben and the amazing Houses of Parliament on the way over to the London Eye. There was a bit of a wait (Seemed like there were hundreds of French school groups in London) but we got to ride the eye. It was awesome for 10 minutes, but then kind of boring. If gives you some great views of London, but takes 30 minutes to complete a circuit). The last 15 minutes were spent admiring the marvel of engineering that went into building the eye so that the riding pods always stay on the outside.

Then we caught the tour bus again and rode to Harrods. Harrods was amazing and is like a city all into itself. They had a pet store, sushi bar, toy store, miles of candy, clothing. You name it. Very cool.

After that we had dinner at the Gran Cafe across the street and hopped back on the tour bus to take it to its end. Well it didn't end where we thought and we ended up in the Picadilly area. This was kind of cool lots of nightclubs, casinos, bright lights and huge digital screens. Pretty dazzling in the dark, it was fun to see. Then we found an underground station and went home. We were trying to get to bed early since for Day 5 we needed to get up at 3am to go to Paris.

Overall we saw a lot of excellent things, got a good feel for London and went to bed with sore legs from our hike up to the top of St. Paul.

England Trip: Day 3

So today was a big day for us. We went to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath. All of it was very cool.

We will eventually put up pictures. But, probably not until next week. All of the places were very neat. We've been very lucky in that it has been sunny since we got here.

We had an excellent tour guide with a lovely since of humor. The brits are very funny. They are all so chipper. Everything is "lovely". They don't have signs saying "Watch out for the gap" it is always much more polite "mind the gap". They are never detour signs but instead there are diversion signs. It's like everything is presented as being more mild and proper than it actually is.

We have also been eating good :-) Lots of bakeries and pastry shops. We had Thai food the first night, Italian the second, and then Turkish food tonight. All in all excellent eats no matter where we go.

Windsor Castle was cool, but would have been more impressive if Lyle and I hadn't seen Topaki Palace in Istanbul. Still the amount of wealth at Windsor is impressive.

Stonehenge was awesome too. You get pretty close to the rocks and it was beautiful blue skies (if incredibly cold). It has been more than chilly still out here, lows in the 20's highs in the mid-30's.

Bath was a beautiful city too. Reminded me a little of Dubrovnik with the skinny stone streets. Also reminded a little of Rhodes in Greece with the stone streets and all the little shops.

Overall a long, but good day. Tomorrow we will have our first full day in London. We are planning on hopping on a tour bus and taking a general city tour and then deciding what we want to see most.

So far it has been exciting and a fun trip. Too bad it isn't a little bit warmer!

London Days 1.5

So it is actually starting on day 3 of our vacation. Day included mostly travel and Day 2 a trip to Canterbury.

The flight out was good, if long. We had a toddler and a baby sitting next to us; which ended up being okay but was a bit of a bummer because we thought we were leaving all that behind for the week :-)

It took us around three hours to get from the plane to our townhouse because half of the underground was closed for maintenance. Once we finally got to the townhouse we were hungry. So we went to Chapel Street Market and looked around and then to a Thai place to meet.

That was pretty much it for the first day, we were in bed by 7pm.

The second day we struggled with the National Rail; which also had numerous shutdowns for maintenance. So far I am not impressed with the NAtional Rail's ease of use. The times posted for departure don't match the actual departure times and apparently they don't post actually departure times anywhere....

As a result of the above we had to take a bus for half of the journey to Canterbury. When we finally got to Canterbury it was very cold and windy. The hat, gloves, and coat weren't hacking it so I ran into H&M to buy a sweatshirt; after that life was better :-)

We went to Canterbury Cathedral which was very cool and to St. Augustine's Abbey. We tried to go to the Canterbury Museum but it was closed. Canterbury was a cute little place, a lot of very old building and a nice pedestrians street past numerous stores and cafes.

After all that we took the Rail back to London and took the Underground to Oxford street where lots of good shopping is. Cate and I spent a couple hours going through stores while Lyle and Chris tagged along. Found some good stuff at H&M and at New Look.

Then back to the house to drop off our purchases. Out to a little Italian cafe for dinner, stop by the bakery for dessert and back home again. We spent some time planning for today and that was pretty much it, bed by 9pm :-)

Today is a long one we are taking a tour to Stonehenge, Bath, and Windsor castle. Should be a lot of fun stuff to see.

Back home it sounds like Keegan is a little upset with us for leaving him, but he is doing well overall. He sure does love spending time with his grandparents and Auntie Kimmie!

Anyway almost time to go walk to the tour stop. Hope you all have a good day.

Keegan's Birthday Party

So Keegan's bday party was a couple weeks ago.  We had a really good time.  It was at Pump It Up and a number of people were invited including immediate family, our friends and their kids, and Keegan's friends. 

Pump It Up did a really nice job setting things up.  The kids were all well-behaved and so were their parents :-)  Lyle and I were surprised at and happy with how well everything went and it looked like everyone there had a really great time.  Everyone was laughing the whole time and that is what a birthday party should be like!

You can follow the festivities in pictures below or see all of the pictures here.

Here all the boys are listening to the safety video before going in to play.

 

Keegan flying through the air after sliding down the giant slide.

 

Robin/Gma/Mom sneaking out of one of the jumpers.

 

Keegan and his Gpa Rick playing in a jumper!

 

Keegan and Jared crashing at the bottom of the slide.

 

A great picture of the grandmas (Liz and Robin).

 

Me and Bruce (dad/gpa) racing down the obstacle course.

 

Keegan getting ready to blow out his candles.

 

Eating pizza and cake!

 

Opening presents in a huge chair, that makes Kee look teeny!

So overall we had a really great time!  We'd like to thank everyone who attended for sharing the fun with us, for the great presents, and for having such a good time :-)  Definitely something we will have to do again on another birthday!

Keegan's Bad Day

This last Friday Keegan had a bad day.  At least he thought it was bad.  We had his 3 year old check up in the morning...which actually wasn't a big deal.  They check Keegan's ears and eyes and had him walk on his tippy toes.  Hi Dr. asked him some questions and Keegan even same the MN fight song to her...don't ask.

Keegan measured in at 30lbs and 37 inches (average 3 year old is 33 lbs, 33 inches).   So I guess he is following in mommy's footsteps  because at three I was very tall and thin too.  So in general Keegan is a normal, healthy boy.

Then we went grocery shopping and Super Target had frosted cookies for the free kid's cookie instead of chocolate chip cookies.  Keegan loves frosting so he was excited.  Then off to the library, home to eat lunch, and down for a nap.  I thought it was a pretty good day, but Keegan did not.

I was kissing Keegan and tucking him in for nap when he grabbed my wrist and said (with the utmost seriousness):

Keegan: "Mommy, we need to talk."
Me: "About what?"
Keegan: "Today was just all wrong..."
Me: "How was it wrong?"
Keegan: "Well going to the doctor wasn't much fun."
Me: "You didn't need shots though, so it wasn't that bad."
Keegan: "And...the cookies at Target were all wrong."
Me: "Don't you like cookies with frosting better than the choc chip cookies?"
Keegan: "Mom, you don't understand.  They had yellow frosting."
Me: "Okay......"
Keegan: "Yellow frosting is for girls.  Everyone knows boys only eat pink frosting because it tastes much better."
Me: (trying very hard not to laugh, Keegan was very serious about this) "Well, we'll have to keep that in mind for future visits."
Keegan: "Yes we will.  It ruined the whole grocery trip."
Me: "Okay, well I think it is time for you to take your nap" (I can't handle any more discussions of the psychological effects of frosting...)

Where does he come up with this stuff???  I let my sister (who is now working at Target Corp in Minneapolis) that the color of the frosting on their store brand cookies is having a serious phychological affect on her nephew.  Definitely something they should follow up on.

Personally I thought Friday went really well.  Keegan was a wonderful little boy at the Dr. office.  He is usually so quiet when the Dr. comes in.  Well he not only sang the MN fight song to her, but even showed her how he can wiggle his eyebrows.  She made a note of that in his chart...I am serious...she wrote "can spell MN, and wiggle eyebrows".  I was excited for the frosted cookie because Keegan loves them (and didn't complain while he was eating it) and he really deserved something special for being so agreeable at the Dr. office.

Oh, well you can never predict what Keegan will come up with next.  I can't believe it is less than two weeks to our trip to London!  That is sure coming up fast.  Hope you all are doing well...

Keegan's Birthday Party...the Prelim...

I thought maybe when Keegan hit five or so he might want to invite some friends.  So this year we decided that we would have our friends, their kids, and our immediate family over to Pump It Up to jump and party.  Sounds like a good plan?? Right??  Well we found out that we were having maybe 6-8 kids of our friends' over which leaves a lot of open spots (you can have up to 14 kids).  Keegan solved the open spot problem for us.

Keegan walked up to me one day (remember he is not quite three yet) and said "Mommy are my friends going to be able to come to my birthday?"  I said "Which friends?"  He then proceeded to rattle off a list of 6 friends from daycare just as quick as you please.  I am thinking...isn't he a bit young for this?  Followed by...how do I contact other 3 year old's parents to let them know they are invited?

Well I shouldn't have been surprised I guess.  We talked to Keegan's teacher and asked if we could leave invites in their preschool folders.  She replied that we could and asked us if we wanted a list of his buddies.  I guess lots of parents do this.  Well we obviously didn't need her to provide a list, but I am glad we weren't totally looney for inviting our son's three year old buddies to a party.

So here starts something I have never had to do ever in my life...interact with other parents on behalf of my child.  I had so many questions (as a type-A personality like myself is wont to have).  Do I invite their siblings?  Do we have goody bags?  Do I put candy in goody bags?  Do I put Kee's wishlist url on the invite?  Can I just have them reply via e-mail or do I have to give a phone number?

Well a lot of other parents have more experience than I do about parties.  Apparently most parents don't want their son/daughter's siblings going along...this is something special just for the kid invited (usually the youngest kid in the family).  Goody bags are a must...we had fun making those up :-)
I provided both e-mail and phone number...most parents like to reply by e-mail (as I would) but a couple have called me.  Example...in the middle of Ikea my phone rings.  I pick it up confused by the lack of caller ID.  "Hello?"  A lady says, "Hello I am Jason's mom, he is planning on coming to Keegan's party."  I say "Okay, thanks for calling to let me know!" She says, "Uh, well bye then."  I am like "Okay Bye."  Then I feel kind of stupid for having such a truncated conversation, but as I am chasing Keegan through a very noisy Ikea I don't think I could have done much better.

So, everytime I get a reply that one of Keegan's friends is coming I tell him.  He gets so excited, he jumps up and down and tears through the house yelling "Jason's coming, Jason's coming, Jason's coming and I will give him lots of cake!"

Although there is a dark side to the birthday excitement.  Today we walked in and Keegan was telling some friends he was going to see them at his birthday party...but he also went over and yelled at another boy telling him that he didn't get to come because he wasn't a nice boy.  I was like...uh oh...hold it here.  I don't need to be the parent with the mean class bully.  So we pulled Keegan out in the hall and tried explaining to him that it's not nice to exclude people and it's mean to tell people they are mean (although there are a number of times when I wish I could just come out and tell people they are mean).

But I am a little stuck here.  How do you explain ettiquete to an almost three year old boy?  I can't invite all 27 kids in his class, so we are just inviting Keegan's friends which is 6 kids.  So obviously the majority of the kids aren't coming.  But how do I get Keegan to not rub it in the face of the kids who aren't going?  We talked to him about it but I just don't know if he will understand it, I really didn't like him being mean though.

Anyway, I guess we will just have to work through that.

On a side note Keegan did something kind of both sad and funny on the way home.  He asked if his brother was coming to his birthday party.  We explained to Keegan that he didn't have a brother and probably never would.  Then Keegan started crying like his heart was broken.  He said he wanted his brother at his birthday party.  We explained that if he did have a brother it would be a little baby and couldn't jump with him anyway.  Then he started crying even harder.  We were like, "What is wrong?"  He finally got himself under control and said "But my brother is supposed to be older than me and teach me things and help me."  Well...ummm...okaaayyy.  Then we tried to explain that even if we did have another child it would never be older than him and it might not be a brother but a sister.  He just wasn't happy about that.  Funny what he thinks of. 

He's been very emotional this week.  I think it's partly because he has molars coming in and has been complaining about his mouth hurting and he is getting a cold.  I also think he is just really wound up about his birthday and is wearing himself out.  He finally asked me "Mommy, why can't my birthday be sooner!"

I was thinking well because we have to pick up the cake, pick up balloons, and make up party bags...but really because none of us get to choose when we are born!

Ummm...yes we are still here

So apparently we fell off of the face of the earth for a while..no not really. We are still here but just not blogging.

We are pretty much crazy from now until March. And it took a couple weeks to recover from our Christmas hangover. Do you know what I am talking about? After hitting 5 different present openings in two days and trying to find places for all those new toys, take the tree down, send out thank you cards etc. You need some recovery time. Not to mention having to go back to work after taking the majority of two weeks off over Christmas/New Years.

Then there was the horrible cold streak that made me want to crawl deep toward the center of the earth in search of heat. I like the snow, but am not too big on the -30 wind chills. The up side of all this is that now that it hit 33 above zero today, it feels practically balmy outside.

So you are saying...wait...stop...what happened at Christmas?? Well Christmas was a lot of fun and a lot of crazy like it normally is. Everything was pretty pleasant. We opened our presents to each other Xmas Eve morning, then went to Lyle's parents Xmas Eve Afternoon, then went to my grandparents' house Xmas Eve night. Then Christmas Day we got up and opened presents from Santa and then went over to my parents' house to open more presents to each other.

Lots of wonderful presents were obtained, much food was eaten, and much fun had. Keegan woke up the day after Christmas and exclaimed "Where are we going to today to open presents!?" Keegan really got into Christmas this year. He was almost as excited about giving presents as he was about receiving them. Of course where-ever we were he had a lot to say to everyone...he is still quite the ham.

Speaking of Keegan being a ham one of the highlights of the Christmas season was Keegan's Christmas Program at daycare.  They sung us three songs and it was super cute.  Of course in one of the songs Keegan has to interrupt the whole thing and ask..."Do Candy Canes Wink?"  How's that for a life question I thought I would never have to answer?  Check out a short video clip of it at the below link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW2zCewcYfQ


But then after Christmas is the recovery period. So for a nice easy recovery we have the following planned...
- Plan Keegan's third b-day party
- Go out to the plant in Oregon for work for basically the whole week next week.
- Get back from the plant; meet with financial adviser, have company CEO out for a visit at my work and do presentations
- Have Keegan's bday party
- Finish planning our trip to London
- End of Feb. go back out to the plant
- Return from plant go on our trip to London, England.

Amidst all of this are other things like swimming lessons, trip to the ice rink, and hopefully some sledding. Then other less fun things like our company taxes, our personal taxes, and work, work, work.

I try to remember I am lucky to have an awesome job...even though that awesome job requires me to travel almost once a month now. I try to remember that at least I am not traveling to China. I actually don't mind Medford, OR. But it puts a bit of a hit in the personal plans. And on months where we go on a personal vacation I feel like I am somewhere else more than (or as much as) I am home. It is general craziness. But in its own way it is fun sometimes too.  It is always interesting to have a lot of variety in a month.

On top of this all my book blog has been slowly gaining popularity and momentum. I have been getting contacted 1-2 times per month to review books for authors; so that is kind of cool. Unfortunately I spend probably an hour or so on the blog every day and another hour or so reading. The other interesting thing is author's have been asking me if I want to do interviews on my blog...so far I have been kind of opting not to do that.

I mean interviews would be cool; but it is just another thing I need to organize on top of having a family, a job, and a company. A lot of people have asked if I will start running contests...I am not sure. Another thing that takes time. One new thing I am doing this year is a bunch of reading challenges. So, that should be fun. But as time goes on it just takes more and more time. I enjoy doing it so that is cool; but a girl only has so much time in one day. I wish I could go with less than 5 hours of sleep a night, but that's not an option :-)

Anyway, enough about that.   To see all of the Christmas madness you can go here.

Hope everyone had equally awesome holidays.  Maybe for the next blog entry I will talk about Keegan and his love for dams and his concern about dams getting too tired because daycare uses too much electricity...

Becoming a Big Boy

Keegan has been going through a lot of "Big Boy" things lately.

He was moved up to preschool a couple weeks ago. Usually they don't move them up until 3 years old, but they moved him up early because his speech is so advanced and he is friends with the older kids that they were moving up. You would think he would be happy to move up. He was not.

They ended up transitioning him over to the new classroom over a week. Keegan was just very sad to leave two of his teachers. I agreed with him, I really liked his Twaddler teachers and am sad that we don't get to chat with them everyday. I also think, though, that his new teachers are also very nice. They have such a great group of teachers at his daycare.

This week is the first week that he actually enjoyed going to his new classroom. In the morning he is in with the "Big Kids" (the kids that go to school from daycare). A couple of the "big kids" have been very sweet to Keegan and let him join in on their games. It is funny to see him interacting with kids that are 4 or 5 years older than him. It was very intimidating to him...and I can see why. He would walk in and all these kids that are a couple feet taller than him would just stare at him. It got better though.

He is only in that room for the first hour and then they switch to the preschool room. He does love his preschool room. There are so many cool toys. They are learning things like how to tell time, read graphs (yeah I thought it was a bit early for that), do puzzles, and play games. He is loving it. His favorite thing is that they go to the big play Village room that the daycare has set up.

Keegan, like the lovable guy he is, has already won the hearts of his new teachers. Yesterday afternoon one of his teachers told me "Keegan never has a bad day and is so much fun." This morning a different teacher stopped me to tell me that "Keegan is doing great in his new classroom and is so funny." So I can breathe a sigh of relief that I am not leaving him in a room where he is miserable...I knew he would come around in time! Okay, enough about how proud I am of Keegan :-)

Then there are other big boy things. The potty training has regressed since Kee switched rooms. He tells us he doesn't like using the potty in front of his new teachers. Again, I totally understand. We laid off use the potty pressure for a couple weeks while he adjusted. Now we are back on him to start using it again. In his old room he rarely ever wet his diaper...so I know he can do it. Keegan is realizing that it's time to move on. He actually wants to wear his big boy pants now and the other night he asked me "Mommy if I keep peeing in my diaper, is Santa going to bring me baby toys for Christmas?" I told him that Santa might do that and he should start using the potty.

Right after that episode he went into this bed and handed me his nook and said "Mommy, big boys don't need nooks." I asked him if he would like to trade his nooks in for a toy and then gave him the night to think it over. In the morning he had collected all his nooks and told me he would like to trade them in for a toy. So that's what we did. He got this awesome little tractor and a small Duplos set for his nooks. He's been really good about that. Every once in a while he sighs and says "No more nooks for me..." kind of depressed...but he seems okay with it.

Then I let him buy Lightening McQueen toothpaste at Super Target, not realizing that it was real "contains fluoride" toothpaste and not training toothpaste. No worries, Keegan adjusted right away to rinsing his mouth and spitting out the toothpaste. In fact, I think he likes it a bit too much. Spitting out that water and toothpaste is quite a bit of fun for him.

So lots of new big boy things that Keegan is doing. He is getting so old! I can't believe he is almost 3! His reasoning skills continue to impress me and Lyle; sometimes we have to step back and remember he isn't even three yet. He's been a joy to have around.

We have gotten a lot of outside time the last few days. We have a snow tunnel that we made and we've been sliding in the backyard, we slide around on the ice on the lake, and have started building a snow fort. Too bad we will have to take a break because today it is just too cold to be out! Lyle and I are both looking forward to taking him sliding down some "real" sliding hills and to getting some ice skating in. I love that I have a reason to spend all this time playing in the snow. I always felt a bit stupid when I was in my 20's out in the yard by myself building a snowman all by myself :-)

Hope everyone is having a great holiday season. We are looking forward to my mom's birthday on Thursday and to my sister's arrival from London. Then Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!!!!

Crazy Thanksgiving Weekend

So like normal for us Thanksgiving weekend was crazy. It would have been nicer if I hadn't been sick the whole time, but who can plan a sickness?? I ended up staying home from work on Tues. and Wed. with a fever, all over body aches, and chills. It was a wonderful progression from there to a sinus cold complete with horrible headaches, to loosing my voice on Friday - Saturday, and finally settled into a wonderful case of chest congestion with a racking cough. All I can say is at least the illness is progressing through a wide variety of stages :-)

Enough about being sick. Thanksgiving itself was actually a bit milder than usual this year.We only had one set of grandparents to visit, since Lyle's parents are in Australia on vacation right now. So we messed around the house in the morning. Not much to do outside of home on Thanksgiving Day. We made cookies, watched "Franklin and the Green Knight", slew dragons, did puzzles, played Hungry Hippos, and many other things...all before lunch. Then we had a light snack and Keegan (and I) took naps. Then it was over to my parents' house for Thanksgiving dinner.

My mom did a great job making dinner, my dad fried the turkey in his fryer outside. It was super yummy. We all enjoyed it a lot. Although I don't think I ever expressed much enjoyment because I felt pretty crappy. Then we went bowling; something that is becoming a family tradition for us. Had a pretty good time doing that and then back to my parents' house for pumpkin pie. By then I was absolutely wiped out and it was time for Keegan to go to bed, so we went home.

Friday was another crazy day. Keegan woke up really early. So we made some muffins and then went to Super Target...because we could I guess. It opened at 5:30am so it was novel to be there by 7am or so. We bought a lot of junk we didn't need and some we did. Then met up with my parents again around 8:30am to go downtown to the Macy's Christmas Display. I had read it was going to be something with Mary Poppins but it ended up being the same thing as last year. Which was okay because Keegan didn't know any better. Below are some pictures of the display, a picture of me and Keegan (I look a bit, well, out of it) and Lyle and Keegan.









Then we went and got pictures taken with Santa Claus. Keegan was super about Santa, although he got a little shy. You should know he did manage to blurt out that he really wanted a "lawnmower" and a "Ride-on excavator". He has been talking about those two things forever. So Santa is well aware of his needs :-) Below are some pics of him and the big guy in the red suit.





Then we went out to the Crystal Court and hung out a bit. Keegan finished his huge green frosted cookie and we watched some guy doing work on the ceiling of the glass tower. Then Keegan drove his King car that grandma got him around the fountain for a while. Then is was time for phase 2 of the day...which involved eating.





We went to PF Chang's in Maple Grove. This has also become a tradition because it is on the way up to Albertville Mall. We ate...it was good. We left. Well not before mom and I hit Francesca's Boutique and scored some lovely necklaces. Suddenly with the prospect of shopping ahead of me, I started to feel less sickly and crappy..it could have been all the napping in the car too.

Then we drove to Albertville, phase 3. There is now a Charlotte Russes Outlet store there. I almost died of excitement. I scored a cute dress, some awesome cable knit leggings, and a flouncy little skirt. My next big score was at the Gap Outlet store. Me and the Gap Outlet always get along very well...too well. I ended up with a great pair of grey skinny jeans, some lovely straight legged trouser jeans, a pull over sweater, a ruffly sweater, and a plaid ruffle dress shirt. Yeah, I spent a lot. But I had so much fun. I keep telling myself I don't need more clothes...but it is kind of a hobby for me. I wish I could rent cloths sometimes...

Then we went to Axel's Bonfire for dinner. They now have a Gluten Free menu, so yeah for my mom! It was yummy. Then back to their house for more pumpkin pie. Kee went off to bed and we played Five Crowns with my parents.

Then Saturday was putting up the tree day! We did that in the morning and ran some errands. Then nap time. Then we met my parents at the Mall of America. For two reasons. One so I could use my $15 gift certificate to Express (I know like I need more cloths); two so we could use up the ride pass we bought last week. Keegan got to do a few more rides in the park and was very happy. Then dinner at Chevy's. Back home, Keegan to bed, and Lyle and I played "Borderlands" on the PS3. I *finally* got a gun that lights people on fire...it is awesome! Of course Lyle is in sniper heaven the whole time. Then to bed.

Sunday was the least eventful. We ran lots of errands. Went to Whole Foods, went to Best Buy, went to Super Target...mostly finishing up the last of our Christmas shopping. Then Keegan napped and Lyle and I wrapped presents. I also had a lot of blogging on my book blog to catch up on. Then Keegan woke up. We played for a bit. Lyle was a dragon and Keegan and I fought him *again*. Keegan's rocker was a boat and it crashed like 5 times. Soon it was time for dinner. We went to IHOP because I really wanted their gingerbread pancakes and I am sick so what I want matters. After that off to Pet Smart to get kitty litter, drove around some and looked at Christmas lights; there are a ton of lights in our neighborhood. Keegan went to bed, I worked on the 2010 family calendar, Lyle left for hockey, I finished the calendar, I read "Kin" a graphic novel by Holly Black, and then sat down to summarize the weekend for all you folks.

On a side note, I am thinking of participating in some reading challenges for 2010. We will see, I think I will keep it to 3 or 4 reading challenges since I am new to them. So keep an eye on my book blog and they will show up there.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends and family! Just writing to let you know we are very thankful to have you all in our lives.

We will be doing the normal, kind of, today. Lyle's parents are in Australia on vacation right now so we will only be hitting my parents for Thanksgiving this year. Then on to some Thanksgiving Day bowling :-)

Tomorrow we will do the usual and run down to Macy's to see the Christmas display, go eat at PF Chang's and hit Albertville (after it's been decimated by the midnight crowd).

The Saturday is putting up the tree and fun stuff like that :-)

Hope that you all have an excellent Thanksgiving and a wonderful weekend!

On the road

Okay so I am out in good ole' Medford, OR again on a trip for work. We are coating at the pilot plant for the new product I am working on. Not a bad trip; only 2 days at the plant. Unfortunately it takes almost a whole day of travel to get out here. I started driving to the airport at 9am our time and got to the hotel at 6:00pm there time.

Now, I find myself in a rather strange situation. I have nothing to do. I have my computer, everything in Medford closes around 6pm on a Sunday, and I read two books on the plane on the way over here...so for once I am a bit burnt out on the reading thing.

So, then why not update our blog that has been sorely neglected this last year.

My trip out was good. Travel went well, no delays. I got a nice car, I got decent seats on the plane..I didn't have to sit next to anyone who stank, oozed outside of their seat, or babbled the whole way...no screaming children or kids kicking my seat. So I really can't complain.

I don't know how many of you have been to small airports before. Medford has two terminals for prop planes. You get in and there is one baggage claim, five feet from that is the car rental. Not too tough to get around; not all that interesting either. But, I can get off my plane and be to the hotel in 15 minutes...so it beats the Minneapolis airport from that aspect.

Tomorrow will be the true test as I am the only engineer sent out for this run; at least we are only scheduled for 10-12 hour days...so no 16 hour days I am hoping.

Anyway, back to family. Keegan got his stitches out and did wonderful. A little over a week later and he has a small read line with a little slight scabbing on one side. I can't believe how fast that kid heals.

We did family pictures on Sunday and they turned out really well. We told Keegan he was getting his picture taken like a Rock Star. He was a bit shy at first, then he started really hamming it up for the photographer. She got a real kick out of him :-)

The Daddy, daddy, daddy thing has switched track. This week it was mommy, mommy, mommy. Suddenly I wondered why I was worried about Keegan preferring daddy. I also wondered why I didn't appreciate the stage more while it lasted, because now I am on mommy, mommy, mommy duty way more ;-) Seriously though it makes me feel good he wants me again. Of course, he made this switch just in time for me to go out of town.

I hope he doesn't get too upset, we explained it to him and he seemed cool with it. I promised to bring him a toy; which I went to Toys R Us and acquired when I got here.

What else...I, at least, am preparing for Xmas shopping. This takes a lot of mental preparedness to spend all that money and figure out who is getting what. I took Keegan to the toy store on Friday and have since concluded that he really wants everything for Christmas.

Christmas with an almost three year old is much cooler than Christmas with a almost 2 year old. The toys are awesome! I want to get him all of them so that I can play too. The next big age jump is 5-6 years...then we can start in on those cool Lego sets and the K'nex!

Keegan continues to make us laugh and come up with funny things. He is such a goofball. When I tell him that he says "No mommy, you're a goofball." and I say "No you're a goofball." We argue back and forth until Lyle says "You are BOTH goofballs!"

Anyway, I am sure they will do fine without me. But I will be happy to go back home. The silence is novel, but the novelty wears off quickly. I hoping to hit the Medford Macy's and use my $10 gift card while I am here. Other than that I am hoping things go decently. Maybe for once progress at the plant will go faster than molasses and we will get done early...okay I hear people laughing from here...it won't happen but you never know.

Keegan's first ER visit

So we have had quite the week here. On Friday the drier broke down so we ended up shopping for a new drier. On the way to play Dungeons and Dragons on Saturday the tire went flat on our car. I am thinking that that's enough for this week; should be smooth sailing from here on out.

Then I get the dreaded call...from daycare. "Hi, Keegan had an accident and you need to take him to the ER." Ends up Keegan was running and smacked his little head on the corner of a table and ripped a dime size hole into his forehead. They were having a lot of trouble stopping the bleeding.

So into frantic mode at work. I work 40 minutes away from daycare so I call my mom who lives 5 minutes away. She takes off to pick Keegan up, I leave work and start on the way to the ER to meet them there. I call Lyle too; he decides to meet us there. I call my boss and let him know I am going to be in the ER and won't be back until tomorrow.

Lyle and I get there and my mom pulls in right after. Keegan has band-aids over his forehead and doesn't look too bad; he's a bit pale and he looks a bit upset. We rush into the ER sign him in and wait. 20 minutes later we get to go into registration. The band-aids have pretty much done all they can so we are blotting blood off as is drips out from under the band-aids. They finally call us back into the room.

20 minutes more pass as we watch PBS on the TV there. I am thrilled there is a TV; I can't imagine what we would have done otherwise. Keegan is chilling on grandma's lap; he is so happy to sit with grandma. Then the doctor appears and they take off the band-aids. My first chance to see the wound. It is a dime-sized hole; you can see his forehead bone underneath. I start to get faint and have to sit down. I am not sure why, this stuff doesn't normally bother me. I mean I worked at the vet's for 3 years and saw many things worse than this. But it is Keegan, so I guess that's the difference. Dr. applies a numbing gel to the cut. Keegan is supposed to lie down with pressure on the wound for 20 minutes while the gel takes effect.

I am happy there is a TV. Keegan lies on Lyle on the bed while Lyle put pressure on the wound. Time passes. The Dino Train show ends and Sesame Street starts. More time passes. 40 minutes to be exact. The nurse brings in the suture cart and asks Keegan what kind of Popsicle he would like. That gets his attention. Gma and I exclaim over all the really cool things in Sesame Street. Finally the doctor comes back.

He wants to know if he should put Keegan in a restraining papoose. I tell him no, let's give it a shot without. So they clean up the wound, leave Keegan laying on Lyle, and Gma takes one hand and I take the other.

They put a blankie over Kee's face with a hole in it that exposes the wound. The doctor starts to stitch. Keegan is amazing. We tell him to hold still and it will go fast. Unfortunately the doctor has to do two stiches in the sub-layer of the skin next to the bone and five stitches in the top layer of the skin. Keegan is awesome, there are one and half stitches left when he starts to cry and scream. Around the third stitch I start to sweat, get dizzy, and I go sit down.

Since they don't need the nurse for Keegan he is watching me, he says, "I think mommy needs to take some deep breathes." I think oh yeah that would help. Gma is stuck holding Keegan's hand by herself while I speak encouragement from the chair.

As the doctor finishes up Keegan's greatest concern is his promised Popsicle. He wants cherry. He gets cherry and a ton of praise about what a brave amazing kid he is to take all that stitching so well!

While we wait for release papers Keegan wanders out of the room to talk to the policeman and nurse standing out there. In his normal manner he starts chatting them up. He tells them that he ran too fast and got a hole in his head. It's okay though because the doctor fixed it all up. He got a Popsicle and he really liked it. Oh and he doesn't really want to do that again. He has them in stitches (good pun huh) by the time he leaves.

I couldn't believe how good he was and how quickly he was making people laugh again. I also couldn't believe how close I came to passing out, I mean really, I guess it is different when it is your kid.

Then we go to Target to get him a cookie with frosting and sprinkles and a toy; his reward for being wonderful. We also drop some Make-a-Wish donations off at daycare and let him go show off his stitches. It was nice to drop by because his teacher felt really horrible and he scared a lot of people there. So, he was in telling them about the doctor sewing the hole in his head shut and about his Popsicle. He was hamming it up; he also told them he really doesn't think he wants to get stitches again. That doctor kept poking me in the head over and over, he says.

So we leave. I find out while I am there that daycare will cover any of the cost of the incident that our health care doesn't cover; how cool is that?! They apologized so much, and I am like you know this could have happened anywhere. Really I am amazed we haven't been in the ER yet with all this kid's antics.

Then home for a nap. We spend some time looking at Keegan's stitches with him in the mirror. Explaining what they do and how they are like the stitches that hold his shirt together. We talk about when he goes in Monday to have the stitches removed it won't hurt and he shouldn't be scared. He is cool about it all. Miraculously the wound is completely scabbed shut shortly after we get home. I am amazed at the healing rate of kids.

After all the excitement we realize that there is an interesting irony to this all happening. We have family pictures this Sunday. Oh well, I guess these will be unique pictures. We are hoping he doesn't bruise too much.

The whole affair made me very thankful to our modern health care system, and our local ER who thinks to provide Popsicles to injured kiddies. It also made me very very thankful to my mother. Who helped us get Keegan to the ER half an hour earlier than we would have otherwise; I am also glad that she at least isn't a fainter so Keegan had her to hold his hand the whole way through! Thank you mom :-) Below is a very blurry picture of Kee's stitches...

Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy

So, we are fairly used to Keegan switching allegiances. One week he wants mommy to do everything, the next week it is daddy. I am also used to the Friday night "I want daddy phase". Keegan and I stay home all day together on Friday and then he is really excited to see daddy when daddy comes home. That is totally understandable.

What I wasn't prepared for was a month long boycott on mommy. When me and Keegan are together by ourselves (like Fridays) we have a lot of fun. We do lots of neat stuff. But when Lyle is there it is a different story.

When Lyle is home (like every night after work) I am banned from Keegan's presence. He is only two and a half you say...ah well he exercises what power he has. All night long I am subjected to "Mommy go away", "I need daddy to do it", "Mommy you can't come down here, I want only daddy", "Mommy doesn't get a hug", "Mommy can't read me books". And the all time heart-breaker "Mommy I don't love you."

I know the boy is only two. When he hurts himself the first place he comes is mommy. When he is sick he comes to mommy. Last weekend we were playing board games and he didn't feel well. So he came over to sit on my lap; of course he had to ruin it by telling me (As he snuggled in my lap) "Mommy, I would rather sit with daddy." I offered to move him over to Lyle's lap, but he wanted to stay on my lap...he just wanted me to know that he usually likes daddy better. Are you confused? Me too...

Okay, so he is only two. Keegan is a pretty smart cookie, so every once in a while I forget he is only two. Who knows what is going on in the two year old head. The boy goes from loving the color purple to hating it in 5 seconds. Unfortunately that doesn't mean him "not loving mommy" doesn't have an effect.

I try to look at the bright side of things. I have more time to get things around the house done if we split up and daddy does the Keegan things. I have more time to myself, it is kind of nice. On the other hand though, well, it kind of hurts my feelings and makes me feel sad. Silly, I know, but I feel upset that he doesn't want to spend time with me. I mean in another month, he will probably be all about mommy. But, a little voice in my head whispers, "What if he never likes mommy again? What if this is just a prelude to his teenage years? What if I am doing something to inadvertently make him hate me?" Do I know this is silly, you bet! Does it still make me sad...yep.

So when in doubt I turn to the source that always at least provides interesting reading. I go to Google and type in "My toddler only wants.." guess what Google fills in for me.."My toddler only wants DADDY"

Apparently I am not alone in the world. Most of the issues are around stay at home moms and the kids loving daddy more when he gets home from work. I get that, kids don't get to see dad as much so they want more daddy time. That is sooo not our issue. Then the other issue was with working mothers. In these cases mom and dad spend equal time with the kid, but the kid prefers daddy. This is harder on working moms because we already feel like we only get a few hours a day with our kiddies and to loose that time is devastating.

Is there a theory for the second issue? Of course there is, this is the internet you know! Apparently a lot of working moms multi-task (okay all moms do that, I am not trying to be biased here) but I know personally I am trying to do wash, pay the bills, get dinner ready (sometimes Lyle does this), read the mail, and do a million other things while I play with Keegan in the 2 hours that he is with us when we are home. Could I do this after he goes to sleep? Yes, and I do some stuff. But to spend every hour of my free time doing this leads to madness...I just can't do it and stay sane.

Apparently kids (especially boys) can feel nervous when mom is multi-tasking and whipping around too much. So, they stick with the parent that will sit with them and not do anything else. Lyle does a ton around the house. But he is not a multi-tasker. I have often asked him why he can't pay bills and play with Keegan at the same time :-) I guess maybe his way is better than mine in this.

Unfortunately a constant state of movement is integral to who I am. I always have to do four things at once at work and I did that in school and I continue to be that way. How else would I do all that I fit in to one day?

So then comes the question what should we do? Realistically, nothing. This is a phase and Keegan will get over it. We have already seen him picking mommy and daddy for certain things. He loves to play hockey and rough house with daddy. If he wants to read a book or color, he usually comes to mommy. I am fine with this, it makes sense. Mommy and daddy have different things they like to do.

So when Keegan wants mommy to go away, should I? My initial reaction was No! I can't let this little 2 year dictate what I do. Well, that doesn't change what he wants. After a couple weeks of forcing my company on him. Lyle and I discussed it. We decided that (as long as Lyle isn't feeling overwhelmed by Keegan's neediness) when Keegan say "mommy leave" I will leave.

Last night Keegan wanted me gone in the worst way; he wanted to read books "only with daddy". So I gave him a hug and a kiss and left. Afterwards he kept asking Lyle where mommy had gone, Lyle is like "Well you wanted mommy gone so she left." Keegan went to bed. 15 minutes later I hear crying over the monitor "I need a kiss from mommy! She didn't really leave did she?" So I went down and we talked about how he makes me feel sad when he tells me to leave and how would he feel if I told him to leave. He said it would make him feel sad. We hugged, kissed and I thought good, issue solved.

Then the same thing happened tonight. He wanted me gone, I left. But this time he never wanted me to come back down :-( Ah well, issue not solved. I guess we will just have to wait this one out.

I leave to go out to the plant for a few days early November, I am kind of looking forward to it. Maybe Keegan will miss me and be happy to see me when I get back. Hah, how sad is that? I try to remember he is two...this isn't a popularity contest. I am surprised though at how sad it makes me, even though it doesn't make a lick of sense. Ah, the joys of being a parent. I can't imagine how I will feel when he is in his teens and hates his parents ;-)

Yet more toddlerisms

Having a toddler is great fun! Keegan with his broad vocabulary comes up with lots of interesting sayings and doings. So here is a brief recap of some of them.

The other night we were drinking apple cider from the orchard with dinner. Keegan asked, "Can I have some more apple spiders, please?"

On Friday I was doing laundry and Keegan laid on the floor and started screaming "Help me mommy, help me!" I ran out and was like, what's wrong. Keegan said, "I am a fishy and I got stuck in the mud." So I un-stuck him from the mud, but then he said I was stuck. We unstuck ourselves from the mud (Living room floor) for quite a while.

Then there is the big bad wolf. I was informed one night last week that I was a "big bad mommy wolf", Keegan was "a little piggy", and daddy was a "daddy piggy". I ran around chasing the piggies and growling on them. Then the "little piggy" lead the "Daddy piggy" to the couch. Of course the big bad wolf followed them, the piggies jumped on the couch. Keegan informed me that the couch was a brick house and that I would never be able to huff and puff and blow it down. We did this running and hiding act for an hour or so.

Then last Friday I was getting sick of hockey. Keegan and I had played hockey forever. I tried to get him to draw some on his Magnadoodle, he got it out and then told me the Magnadoodle was an ice rink and the magnets were a Zamboni. I was like "seriously Keegan, does everything have to be about hockey?" So he stopped playing with that and stared at me. Then he got up, got the blanket off the couch, got a flashlight and handed them to me. He then drug over his tub of duplos. I was like "okaayyy." He looked at me like I was stupid, turned on the flashlight, put the blanket over our heads, and opened the duplos. Then said "Mommy wants different, let's build towers in the dark." Okay, that was totally different. I have never before in my life built duplo towers under a blanket in the middle of the day by flashlight...

Then there was the lengthy conversation we had with the cart boy outside of Menards. I have recounted it below.
Keegan to cartboy: It's raining
Cartboy: It sure is buddy.
Keegan: It will snow soon.
Karissa: Only when it gets colder
Cartboy: Do you like snow?
Keegan: Yes, I like Halloween and Christmas too
Cartboy: You aren't shy are you?
Keegan: (Speechless)
Karissa: No he's not shy. You have a good day.
Cartboy: You too.
(We start to walk away, Keegan stops.)
Keegan: You know guy, I like candy too.
Cartboy: Oh, well Halloween and Christmas have candy.
Keegan: Yep, and I really like candy canes.
Cartboy: Me too.
Keegan: Yep, they're good.
Karissa: Okay, well you have a nice day.
Cartboy: Yep

This whole conversation took place standing in the rain, in the middle of the sidewalk. No, Keegan is not shy. Yes, he loves it when people talk back to him. Yes, I get stuck in strange conversation with strange people all the time now. It is okay, it is actually fun. No one thinks Keegan is strange he is just too darn cute :-)

The last odd thing I will talk about it Bunny. Bunny is one of Keegan's favorite stuffed animals. Bunny is a Plaja Pet, one of the stuffed animals where the tail and head come off and can be interchanged with other Plaja pets. Imagine Keegan's teachers' surprise when Bunny's head fell off during naptime. Keegan also brought Bunny grocery shopping. It was hilarious. Keegan had to explain to Bunny where everything was. He showed Bunny where the eggs were. Then told me we had to go by the pizza. I was like "we don't need pizza". Keegan was like, "Yes, but bunny needs to know where it is." So around Super Target we went, leaving numerous people laughing behind us, as Keegan explained the location of all food items to Bunny in meticulous detail. To add to the hilarity, occasionally Bunny's head would fall off...startling some poor person. To get the full affect Bunny has on people I have attached a picture below. Bunny looks like he is on crack full time, so when his head falls off it is very, very strange.


That's it for now. I am sure I have forgotten a million other funny stories. But there's a sampling for you.

Snow in October....early October

On Saturday day morning I woke up to snow. Then I laid back down for a moment to brace myself and then sat back up and peered out of the window in disbelief. I know they had predicted snow, but predicting and having are two different things. I suddenly felt like I should be Christmas shopping, even though we just got all of our Halloween decorations up Sunday afternoon.

Keegan of course was thrilled and greeted me with the questions "Is it Christmas now? Is Santa bringing presents?" Of course after breakfast we had to go out and play in the snow right away! Luckily the new boots I had ordered for Keegan came Friday afternoon (Yay, for Amazon Prime 2 day shipping). Unfortunately his new coat is still on the way. Lucky for us, his coat and snow pants from last year just barely fit him.

First thing to do was make a snow angle. Which was a bit confusing to Keegan at first but he got the hang of it pretty quickly with some guidance from daddy.


Then we went back to the backyard. The sight was a bit disturbing. There was snow all over the wildflowers by the lake, I took some pictures below. Oh and, of course, the boat and dock are still in the lake. We usually don't take the boat out until November, but well...we were caught a bit by surprise.




Wait let's back up for a second. Did I mention that last week I was washing shorts in the laundry? Two weeks ago we had some days in the mid-80's. Okay so now we need full mittens, boots, hats, etc. Wow...it was like weather whiplash. A bit of an extreme change, even for MN.

Well after our snow fun it was time to do something new and exciting (besides make snow angles the second week of October). Our library has a cool program called Museum Adventure Pass, I don't know if all counties have something like this but our library does.

There is a large display with a ton of museums in the Twin Cities area; each museum has a description and pocket below it with laminated tags in it. To use this service you take a laminated tag out of a pocket on the display and bring it up to the counter to "check out". The tag gets you two free passes to the museum in question. The passes are good for a week. What a cool way to check out some of the stranger MN museums? Or you can also get passes for the Walker, the Zoo, the Science Museum, etc. and many other more popular museums.

So there were two museums in the display that we hadn't been too. The first was the Firefighters Hall and Museum in Minneapolis. The second was The Works (Hands On) Museum. We opted to go to the Firefighters Museum. So after our snow fun, we headed out to the Firefighters Museum...which will be called the FFM from now on :-)

Little did we know it was "get in free day" (the only free day of the year) and they were doing lots of fun activities. They also had lots of volunteers on site to explain everything to us. It ended up being a lot more fun than we thought it would be. See pictures below.

There was one Firetruck you could climb into and operate the lights and horns. Keegan and I did this one and got a kick out of it.


Here's a view of the museum from up on the back of the fire truck.


Here is Lyle operating a water hose gun thing. It was pretty cool, you could move it up and down and rotate it and everything.


The next three pictures are of modules that they had set up for kids. On these mini-firetruck modules the kids could climb in and operate the firetruck (horns and all). They had a video screen set up so that it looked like the kids were actually backing up, driving down the street, and putting out fires! They also had cloths for kids to try on, a huge train table, model firetrucks, and lots of neat pictures of past fires. We weren't expecting much, but it was way more fun than we thought it was going to be! I recommend it, especially if you have a toddler that loves firetrucks :-)






So it was fun. On Sunday we went to the MN Zoo. Guess what the snow was gone, but at temps in the low 30's there definitely wasn't a crowd to fight. The neat thing was that the chilly temperatures made all the animals really active. So we got to see lots of activity while we were there.

Then we get to Monday. Would you believe I wake up and we are under a Winter Storm Advisory? So more snow. I had to take some visitors out to dinner tonight for work, so Lyle and Keegan were left to fend for themselves. When I pulled in the driveway a big beautiful snowman greeted me :-) Keegan was very proud of what he and daddy had done. Oh, I should mention that this morning Keegan was literally bouncing with joy at the sight of more snow. Again the question was, "Mommy, now is Santa coming?" I reminded him that we have Halloween to celebrate still, and really that is a holiday that we don't want to miss out on!