Aaaarrrgggghhhh - Time for a Pirate Beer

Fall is in the air, must be time for pumpkin beer.

Duluth Trip - Part I

To spend our first weekend away from Sylvia (can you believe that!) Jamie and I spent the weekend up in Duluth. Most of you know that Jamie and I both went to school in Duluth, so while on our way to visit campus, we drove by some of our old college homes.

First the dorms:
The one on the left is Lake Superior Hall (Adam) and the one on the right is New Griggs (Jamie). It turns our that there is a newer Griggs Hall, so Jamie's dorm would now be called 'Not-so-new' Griggs.

Adam's houses are in the next two images. The tan one used to be red, which is still seen on the rails of the porch, but it appears the landlord ponied up some dough to put new siding on it. I wonder if they fixed the slanting kitchen?


The big white one was my last house in Duluth. We had friends that lived next door and across the block. It was a great house and had many bbq's on the front porch. Memories...Jamie's houses are similar in age and beauty. The yellow one below was shared with 6-7 other girls and in Jamie's words was terrible. It was off-campus and she didn't have a car, so getting to school wasn't very fun. She also mentioned that the house next store housed some murderers. (Not sure if they were ever convicted)


And finally, the house she spent the last three years of college in. The basement of the yellow house just across the street from campus. The things I remember about the house were it was always cold... The lady living upstairs kept turning up the thermostat, but when there is limited ducting going to the basement, you will not get any heat down there. The second thing was when she had company with a dog. You could hear the dog walking from one side of the room to the other and then plop down... It was funny and annoying at the same time.
And lastly, a quick picture of a boat from the view of my red (tan) house.

More to come in posting number 2.

Deer Park

As a kid we used to go to a Deer Park on the way to the cabin. We drove right by Paul Bunyan Land, but I don't have a memory of ever stopping there. I guess we went for the more exotic tourist stops.

Looking back this was a pretty strange park. We walked around the park petting animals and feeding them corn. I am not sure why we are squatting in the picture, but maybe it's normal to take strange photo's in a strange park?
I wish I had a picture of the bear in Hackensack. He lived in a small cage and we used to feed him mini marshmallows. I think the PETA people saved him.

Apple Picking

A couple weekends ago, we checked out one of our local apple orchards. Since the Woodbury area was hit hard with a hail storm earlier this year, the crop was damaged and the trees are yielding very little crop.

That being said, we had a good time checking out the rest of the farm. They had a couple goats, a bunch of turkeys (for Thanksgiving I am guessing), and a chicken coop.




They allowed us to walk through the orchard and pick any apples that we would find that seem edible. It turns out we found about two dozen various apples that worked out well for a couple apple pies that Jamie made.

Sylvia decided she wanted to pull the wagon into the orchard.
And also pull it out of the orchard... This time Daddy could help, however.
As we were leaving, the owner had us check out the mum farm that they have on the back side of the property. While only a few were in bloom, I can imagine this looks quite impressive as the season goes on.

Burrs

While at our weekly BBQ last night, Sylvia was unlucky enough to find a patch of burrs with her head. These were the smallest burrs I have ever seen.

While we were able to pick some off while over at Aaron and Jen's house, the final picking didn't happen until after bath-time.

Here is what they were like after bath time. It was amazing how these burrs made Sylvia's hair stand up on its own. It looked like dreadlock pigtails.

Fortunately, Dora the Explorer is a new cartoon in our house and the 25 minute episode was enough to keep her attention while mom pulled out all remaining burrs.

All back to normal now... just a little thinner on a couple spots!

Big Smiles

Just wanted to share a cute picture from daycare. They send us pictures once or twice a week which is a nice surprise in the middle of the day.

Two Year Check-up

This past week we finally got into Sylvia’s new clinic for her two year checkup. While we are a couple months delayed, her stats did jump up from previous check-ups.

Height – 32.5” (25th percentile)

Weight – 24 lbs. 12 oz (25th percentile)

The water in Woodbury must be to blame for unexpected jump in weight. No more 3rd percentile for this girl!

Take that corn!

More posts to come with the fun from the long Labor Day weekend.