Puppy Clouds

Yes, I am guilty of using the dvd player in the van as a babysitter. Yea, yea, yea - before having kids I would see soccer moms tooling around in their minivans with their rug rats zoned out watching Toy Story and think "That's Crap! When I was kid ~ my brother, sister and I were crammed into the back seat of dad's piece of shit car with no air conditioning, crank down windows, fighting over who had to sit on the hump, while listening to WCCO. And we survived just fine".
Now that I have children and the luxury of the dvd play - hell yea I'm using it - because as a parent all we want is five minutes of peace and quiet!
Yesterday however I was 'Mean Mommy' and turned the movie off and made everyone listen to a little Acoustic Sunrise on Cities 97. There's nothing better than cruising along on a bright Sunday morning with a hot cup of coffee and Neil Young Long May You Run on radio.
While cruising along, Lucy hollers out "A puppy! There's a puppy out my window"! Then Piper says "It's a poodle"! I quickly look around to see if I'm going to hit the poor little thing and say "I don't see it girls". Lucille then say's "mom he's in the clouds by the hamburgers". I looked up and sure enough the clouds did look like puppies and hamburgers. For the rest of our trip we looked for cloud animals and played the alphabet game and say songs ~ kinda like when I was I kid in my dad's piece of shit car.
I'm sure when the girls grow up they'll remember how they had to sit a spacious minivan with their own seats, and their own temperature controls and automatic doors and windows with a dvd player and headphones and complain about how sometimes I would make them listen to Folk music!

Smelly Cat, Smelly Cat, What are They Feeding You...

Lucille and Grandma Deb

K~not exactly the Smelly Cat Song at Central Perk, but sitting in our local coffee shop listening to my mom sing and play guitar does remind me of Phoebe from Friends.

My mom has been doing The Sunday Jam for years and is now in spot light at our local coffee shop, The Coffee Bean. I love going to the Sunday Jam but it makes for long Mondays, so the little ladies and I have been hanging out at the coffee shop lately. The girls love it! We sit at the special "reserved" table, and the owner of the shop always has juice boxes and hot from the oven cookies ready for the girls. Piper and Lucy bring coloring books & markers from home and sit just right so they watch grandma and color at the same time.

Last weekend at the coffee shop, Piper said to me"your mom is a really good singer and her voice is so pretty, how did she learn how to sing like that?" while giving me the look like what the hell happened to you and why didn't you get any of that talent?

Hey - I've got talent! I can tie a cherry stem into a knot without using my hands - so there!

Kindergarten Round-Up

Last night was Kindergarten Round-Up at Sweeney Elementary!
We met the principal, Mr. Orlowsky, and the kindergarten teachers. We visited the kindergarten classrooms and also had a tour of the entire school, rode on the school bus and had cookies and milk in the cafeteria! Piper kept saying "Orrrlowwwwskeeeee" over and over again. During the tour, Mr. Orrrlowwwwskeeeee asked Piper and Lucy if they had any special talents. Lucy held her hand up and snapped her finger. Mr. O said "Oooh" and asked Piper if she could do that. She also held up her hand and snapped her finger. Mr. O asked how they learned how to do that. Lucy said "our mommy and daddy teached us, but they can snap A LOT louder"! Mr. Orrrlowwwwskeeeee smiled!!
If you like, check out Piper's new school at http://www.rschooltoday.com/se3bin/clientschool.cgi?schoolname=school429

Princess Stories V

The girls had their yearly check ups, and here are their stats...

Piper
44" tall = 97% for her age group
39lbs = 45% for her age group

Lucy
39" tall = 55% for her age group
32lbs = 24% for her age group

The little ladies also had shots at this visit - ouch!
They were SO brave.
Piper insisted on sitting with the nurse by herself. When the shots were done and the nurse left the room, she looked up at me with tearful eyes and said "Boy, I sure didn't think those shots were going to hurt that much!".

We went to Dairy Queen for ice cream cones and all was well again!

St. Paddy's Day in Crosslake

Once a year Trent and I let our hair down and go away on an Adults Only weekend!
It has become tradition to go up nort der to Crosslake for the grand St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Our first parade experience happened by accident. In the Spring of 2003 Trent and I spent a weekend in Crosslake with our dear friends Steve and Aleen. It was an unusually warm March morning and Steve had read in the local paper that Crosslake was having their Annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in the afternoon.
We thought - why not - it's warm - we'll get a bite to eat - couple pints of Guinness - Let's go! We found some green Mardi Gras shirts from back in the day, loaded up a few lawn chairs and headed into town. We settled on a nice "island" on the curb across from Zorbaz. I say "island" because it was a patch of grass surrounded by snow and was just big enough to set up four lawn chairs.
Ah - it was almost 70 degrees in the middle of March and there we sat with a Guinness in our hands and sunshine on our faces! It was fabulous!
Over the years the gathering has expanded from the four of us, to a fun group of about twenty five crazy friends! We love to get dressed up and see who can catch the most goodies tossed from the floats, aka Street Candy. To increase our quantity of Street Candy, Trent and Steve have invented the Candy Catcher. It is made from a 10 foot rod with a fishing net attached at the end. The Catcher is a crowd pleaser and we have been in local paper a few times!

Lucy's 4th Birthday Party

Lucille and 8 friends ran wild at an Open Gymnasium Birthday Party at our Community Center!
They played relay games, parachute games, hula hoop, basketball and lots lots more.
Kids and parents were exhausted by the end of the day!

Happy 40th Birthday Mr. Stern!

Trent Arlan Stern
March 2, 1969
Albert Lea Navy Hospital Minnesota

Let's take a trip back to 1969 shall we...

NOTABLE:
• Popular songs:“Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In,” Fifth Dimension;
“Sugar, Sugar,” the Archies; “In the Year 2525,” Zager & Evans;“Get Back”
The Beatles.
• “The Saturday Evening Post” stops publication.
• Mohammar Gadhafi seizes power in a Libyan coup.
• Television show debuts: “The Brady Bunch,”“Love,American Style,”
“Marcus Welby, M.D.,”“Room 222.”
• Popular movies:“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,”“Easy Rider,”
“True Grit,”“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

COST OF LIVING:
• The cost of first class postage is 6¢.
• Average Cost New Car $3,270.00
• Average Income per year $8,550.00
• The average cost of a gallon of gasoline is 34¢.
• Average Cost of new house $15,550.00
• Average Income per year $8,550.00

SPORTS:
• Major League baseball introduces divisional playoffs during its
100th year anniversary.
• The New York Mets, once the worst team in baseball, win the
World Series in five games over the Baltimore Orioles.
• In Superbowl III, the underdog New York Jets topple the
Baltimore Colts, 16-7.
• UCLA wins the NCAA basketball title by defeating Purdue, 97-92.

HEADLINES:
• On July 20, Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon.
• Richard M. Nixon is inaugurated as the 37th U. S. President.
• Senator Edward Kennedy is involved in an auto accident at Chappaquiddick
(Martha’s Vineyard, MA) in which Mary Jo Kopechne is killed.
• Charles Manson is arrested for the murder of Sharon Tate and
four others in Hollywood.
• James Earl Ray is sentenced to 99 years for the murder of
Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death for killing Robert F. Kennedy.