How Much Can We Do This Weekend?

Two weeks ago marked our first family camping trip of the summer. Our neighbors were kind enough to invite us to set up our tent alongside their campsite. We set up on Saturday afternoon and packed up on Sunday afternoon. We thought it was a good idea make our first tent outing of the year a short one. We also made sure the campsite was only about fifteen miles from home.

The campsite is on a large lake with a very nice swimming beach. So, predictably, we spent most of our time there.

We were also visited by our other neighbors who just happened to bring their boat to the lake. They were kind enough to pull us around the lake on their tubes.

The kids really were having fun despite their bored expressions. At one point their tube dipped under the water, flooding the tube. Once we noticed the kids were submerged, the boat slowed down to see if they were alright. Once the kids had air to breathe they both screamed, "That was AWESOME! Do it again!".

After an afternoon of swimming and tubing the kids were tired enough to sleep right through a rain storm that night. Lady Di and I, however, enjoyed the constant noise of a million rain drops trying to tap their way into our tent to soak us. Luckily, the tent proved water proof and the rain gave up around 2:30 am. We packed up our wet gear early Sunday morning and started the long drive home. Fifteen minutes later I was home re-setting up the tent to dry it out.

This left us just enough time for a short rest before surprising the kids with a trip to the X-cel Energy Center to see Star Wars In Concert.

When I say we surprised them, we didn't let them know where we were going. The kids only found out at the front gate when Lady Di told them to read what their tickets said.

Then we had to race to our seats because we were three minutes late thanks to the 'wonderful' detour signage put up by MNDOT.

It was difficult to get any good photos of the concert, but the music was very good and the sound was great considering we were in a giant hockey arena.
The concert consisted of a full orchestra playing score music from all six of the Star Wars movies in front of a large movie screen which showed various clips of all of the movies. The actor who played C3PO, Anthony Daniels, narrated the show introducing each movement. Every once in a while a laser light show would dance to the music too.
We had a twenty minute intermission to enjoy the Star Wars displays in the lobby.

The displays consisted of authentic costumes and props from the movies. In this picture Number One Son is trying to be cool by not smiling. Newsflash N1S, if you are at a Star Wars event, coolness pretty much gets checked at the door.

The lobby also had these large backdrops to take pictures in front of. Lady Di drew a laugh from the kids when she told them to stand in front of this moon. "Oh Mom, don't you know that's the Death Star?!" We couldn't get a picture of the kids with the Ewoks because they were laughing too hard when Lady Di called them bears.

Here we caught the kids red handed playing with fire again.

This wasn't a display. Just a dad and his kids, but Lady Di thought they were good enough for a picture.

After intermission was over and we had avoided buying a $30 program, we found our seats for the second half of the show. I saw more than a few families with the expensive programs though. And even though it was only 3:00 in the afternoon, I also saw many parents come back from the concession stand with beer. I can understand drinking beer at a ball game or even something cool like a rock concert. But this was Star Wars. This was classical music set to space movies. It all just seemed a little too nerdy for beer. But perhaps some parents needed a few beers to make it through to the end. I asked Lady Di what she thought of the show so far. She confessed, "This is torture for me."

She isn't much of a fan.

She also was a little bit miffed when she saw a couple dozen audience members video taping the concert from their seats. Then she realized that the lights from the camcorders were actually little pen sized light sabers that were sold in the lobby.

All in all it was a very busy weekend. Thank you G & P for letting us crash your campsite. Thank you D & T for towing us around the lake on your tubes and thank you Lady Di for enduring an hour and a half of nerdy torture for us.

Now what are we doing for next weekend?

Recycling?

When the back door slams summer's butt on its way out, that means it's time for fall to come dancing through your front door. Our September weather has been great, but the first day of fall was overcast, cool and wet. It rained most of the day so the kids played inside. So I had to march way back into the archives of my brain to come up with something to occupy the kids for more than 2 minutes. Because 2 minutes is all the time they are willing to allow before their 'I'm bored' alarm goes off.

So what do you do?

You go into the garage and find two shoe boxes. Give them to the kids and tell them to make dioramas. When they stare at you with bewildered faces, you tell them to make a cool display for your Littlest Pet Shop or Star Wars action figures.
That seemed to work better. This is what they came up with.

As you can see, Sweet Pea's Pet Shop pets are enjoying their local playground. Complete with a drinking straw swing and teeter totter. Some pipe cleaner ropes to climb and a few cups of dry macaroni and beans for safety. We wouldn't want any pets to fall and skin their knees. Sweet Pea is pretty creative with art projects. She usually needs more than just crayons. She always asks for extra things like tape, string, glue, marbles, sticks (popcicle and tree branch), soldering iron or a circular saw.

Number One Son decided to use his Lego people instead of his action figures.

I think he did pretty well with the volcano and Jedi fighting in the background. He usually doesn't like to do art projects as much as his sister but he put a lot of effort and creativity into his project and it turned out OK.

Now we have to decide how long to 'display' our artwork. I think after a week on the kitchen counter, we will relocate the exhibit to a shelf in the closet that the kids can visit at any time. In another week, the closet exhibit will hopefully close for lack of interest and be moved to a temporary location at the Cylindrical Museum of Domestic Relics. From there a government official will personally deliver them to their permanent homes at an open air sculpture garden of similar items a few miles out of town. The pets and Legos will have to be removed for historic reasons as they are still being intensely studied by their curators.

How's that for recycling?

Morning at the Museum

Well, Thursday was the much anticipated day at our house. On Thursday, the whole family visited the Science Museum to become part of the Star Wars world.

Number One Son was so ready to go, he asked if we could change our tickets to Wednesday instead. But he made it to Thursday. Sweet Pea was also bouncing off the walls to see Yoda and R2D2. Lady Di fixed SP's hair in a fashion appropriate to the occasion.

It looks like even Yoda was impressed. Lady Di's enthusiasm for Star Wars was somewhere between 'I hope we don't have to stay long' and 'Do we really have to go?'. Needless to say, she isn't quite as big of a fan as the kids and I. In fact, she often gets Chewbacca confused with C3PO when the kids and I force her to watch one of the movies.

Our tickets said to arrive 1/2 hour early because of record attendance and long lines. Our tickets said nine o'clock, so we got up early and had great intentions to be there by eight-thirty. We got there at eight-fifty and were pretty much the only ones there. I guess the museum opens its doors at eight-thirty. Sometimes being nerdy does pay off.

At nine AM we were the first to enter the actual Star Wars exhibit. But just before we went in, we had a pre-emptive bathroom visit. That made us the sixth or seventh ones in the exhibit.

N1S really enjoyed seeing the model space ships and reading the interesting facts about the making of Star Wars. We were both disappointed to find out there was no 'live light saber' demonstration. Sweet Pea liked getting her picture taken in front of all of the Wookie costumes.

We got to see an animatronic show in the robot theatre. Various robots on the stage would move and talk in time to the lesson about modern day robotics. The theatre sat about fifteen people. On the bench behind us, a grampa pointed out R2D2 on the stage to his granddaughter. SP turned around and piped up very lecturely, "That's not R2D2. That's R4!"

It was one of my proudest moments as a Dad.

Each kid also got their picture taken and inserted into a Star Wars scene of their choosing. SP wanted to be either Princess Leia or Darth Vader. N1S had a more difficult decision. He couldn't decide between a dozen different pictures. One princess and one sith lord isn't too bad.

The climax of the day was tickets to the IMAX theatre to see a documentary about special effects in the movies. Three-fourths of our family loved it and learned a lot about special effects. One-fourth of our family got an $8 nap.

I'm Too Excited to Sleep!

The countdown has started. We will be there in less than 12 hours.........

I think N1S might pull an all-nighter just thinking about it.

Report to come.

Prepare to Dye

This week was our time to color Easter eggs. As usual, we waited until just before the weekend. That way I could throw the eggs out in a couple days. Lady Di and Sweet Pea are the only ones in the house that like to eat boiled eggs. I can't even stand the smell of them in the refrigerator. I will leave a few of the especially artistic eggs in the fridge for a while, but the plain old pastels get a quick trip to the landfill.

Here's another tip. Don't tell your five year old girl about dying eggs until you get home and are ready to do it. When we mentioned it, she demanded that we start boiling the eggs in the van, on the ride home. When we did get home, we tormented her even more by boiling the eggs more than ten seconds and allowing them time to cool.

We usually get the cheap Paas tablets, line up the vinegar filled coffee cups and start dunking. This year we upgraded to the Star Wars Ultimate Jedi Egg Decorating Kit. The kit included plastic Star Wars sleeves to shrink around the egg. The kit also includes a plastic C3PO mask.

The kids had their plan of egg attack ready. The yellow egg would be C3PO, the green is Yoda, red is Darth Maul and we were going to dump all the colors together at the end to make a black Darth Vader egg.

Here are some of our creations. The Darth Vader black egg didn't really work, so he got dyed pink instead.

Happy Easter to all.

Don't Force us to Watch

This Christmas, Number One Son received a Star Wars DVD from his golfing Grandma and Grampa. He was very excited when he opened it.

"Oh my gosh! Do you know how much I've wanted this!", he rejoiced.

A couple weeks later, N1S came home from school a little run down. He wasn't very attentive at piano practice and didn't want to build a snowman with his sister. Sometimes kids have tough Mondays too, I guess.

So we had an early supper and while I was cleaning up, I thought it might be a good time to watch Episode I, The Phantom Menace.

I secretly put the disc in the player and and started it up. Sweet Pea excitedly asked, "Are we having a movie?"

"It's a surprise."

So they both sat on the floor and waited for the FBI warning to finish. Then the Star Wars logo came on with the loud music. SP dejectedly moaned, "Awww, not Star Wars."

N1S had the opposite reaction.

"Yes! This is Episode I, The Phantom Menace, this is where it all started, I like the cool ships and pod racers and the destroyer bots and Darth Maul and Qui Gon Jin and Obi Wan, but Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia are not in this one, they start in number III and this is so cool and.....jibberty, jabberty, flibberty, flub........."

I had to throw a bucket of ice water on him to calm him down.

SP was still a little disappointed until she learned that Queen Amidala was in this one.

This was all before the movie even started.

Once the movie progressed to, Long Long ago, in a galaxy far away..... both kids turned their full attention to the film.

SP then complained to N1S, "How come they always have all those words at the beginning?"

I thought, "Oh boy. You are asking the wrong person for a Star Wars explanation." Unless you want a half hour thesis about both sides of the force.

N1S surprisingly kept it under 500 words and explained the introduction.

After a while I heard SP exclaim, "Yes!" I wondered if she was finally getting into Star Wars.

Then I heard, "Finally, those words are done."

After a while she did somewhat get into some of the action scenes. She really likes Darth Maul, but who wouldn't like a cutie like that?

The kids both enjoyed the rest of the movie until bedtime. We only had one other incident before bed. Toward the end of the movie I paused it to allow both kids to get PJ's and brush their teeth. While they did that I thought I would fast forward just a few of the slow scenes to get to bedtime quicker. When Sweet Pea came down the stairs and saw that the movie wasn't still paused, she started to wail.

"Waaaaah! I wanted to watch the whole movie!"

No amount of consoling would do. She literally only missed one scene where everyone was walking into a space ship, buckling up and opening their complimentary peanuts. Even though they opened their peanut bags with light sabers, it wasn't that important of a scene to miss. But I rewound and she got to see the whole movie. I used to be able to advance the movie and fool the kids better when they were younger.

I guess I should be happy that I have two other Star Wars fans in the family. I just need to start the movie earlier. May the force be with you.

According to Emery

This weekend we visited an old friend of Lady Di's. Karen was a nurse that took care of Lady Di when she was on hospital bed rest with Ethan. Karen had been a nurse for 39 years and was retiring. At her retirement party, various friends and colleagues gave speeches and told stories. During one of the stories, a friend told about their work together in OB/GYN. Ethan asked, "What's O/B mean?"
Without missing a beat, Emery answered, "It means Obi Wan Kenobi." Then she went back to eating her cake.


May the force be with you.

This is Ethan and Dr Munson. Dr Munson was one of the NICU doctors who took care of Ethan for the two months he was in the hospital. Dr Munson remembered when Ethan weighed just 3 pounds. It was nice to catch up with these people who have had such a great impact on our lives.

Karen was also presented with a giant quilt that had many mother's signatures and dates from when they were under her care in delivery. Lady Di was also included as you can see. We owe Karen and Dr. Munson and many others our deepest thanks for what they did during Ethan's delivery. In our eyes, they are all miracle workers.

Happy Retirement, Karen.