Filed under: St Paul
We did a lot of our holiday celebrating the week before Christmas this year. It started with our annual Christmas open house. We took no pictures – but we did make a lot of food. As always we left everything until the very last minute – but all of my family is so great about helping. The Saturday before the party the girls and I go to Grandma’s for a marathon cookie bake. Our big lesson this year – don’t try to use healthy peanut butter for cookies. Dad and I went to Sam’s to get good things like shrimp trays. I try to hide one every year – but it never works out. So we share.
We opened presents mid-week. Everyone was very happy with their haul. Presents included a big princess tent, betta fish and Flip Camera.
We went on our annual sojourn to the Children’s Theatre. We saw A Christmas Story. It was a family favorite. Actually it’s always fun to see who likes which plays. Katie’s favorite was Frog and Toad. Patrick liked the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Many of us still go with Wizard of Oz.
The adults had an amazing dinner at Luci’s. Sadly Mom was sick – clearly sick if Luci’s was out. I’m trying to remember what we had – it was a 5 course meal. And if that wasn’t enough we also got an extra dinner of scallops just because we all wanted to try them. If you haven’t eaten at Luci’ you should try it. They have a 3-course meal that you just can’t beat. And much to our delight, there’s a special rate on Thursdays. We had hoped to go earlier in the week but snow helped us decide on Thursday.
One last thing I remember from our whirlwind week was the Mall of America amusement park. Due to a some excessive holiday spending and a bargain they were running we got some very economical free-ride bracelets. The kids had fun. There is a huge difference between the rides that O’Donnell’s think are fun and the rides the Lynch’s like. In fairness they have season passes to Dix Flag so they have been desensitized.
Filed under: Minneapolis
All of the Treacy cousins met up for the annual Christmas Pizza party. I think everyone made it, which is fun. Every year we meet up at Broadway Pizza in Minneapolis. And this year we proved that we met in all sorts of weather. The snow was really coming down, In fact I think we were all about 30 minutes late.
Filed under: St Paul
So Lily and I have taken on a new challenge. We are the neighborhood correspondents for the Twin Cities Daily Planet. That means we interview people in Mac Groveland for the online newspaper. We started with our neighbor Pete Greenheck up at the Nativity Christmas Tree Lot. We’re still working on our second interview. Got an idea? Let us know!
Filed under: St Paul
At Nativity (the girls’ school) they don’t have an all-school Christmas pageant, which is kind of nice. Rather a couple of the grades have different events. The first grade did a reenactment of the of the Nativity. Aine was an angel – so that wasn’t too much of a stretch for her.
Filed under: St Paul
I’m back. I’m going to catch up the blog because we did something fun today and I want to post about it – but I can’t until we’re up to date. So we might be heavy on pictures for December.
We got a lot of now in December. This picture was taken after the 18 inch snowfall early in the month.
Filed under: Chicago
We arrived in Chicago on Thanksgiving. We had two turkeys (one deep-fried) and a ham. Really we had enough food for about 100 people – I think there were about 25 people there: us and a lot of Dan’s family.
We packed up snack packs for the homeless. All of the kids helped. Nothing like a little assembly line work to build up an appetite.
The next day we went to a kid’s improv show. The younger kids loved it; the older kids got busted having to play the teen dragon. The improv group did a really good time and I have to think that kid-friendly improv is not always that easy.
As always we ended our trip with an amazing meal for the adults at some restaurant that I can’t remember – but I have to say that bring your own would be an excellent idea for restaurants in the Twin Cities!
Filed under: Wisconsin
OK I’ve been super lay about the blog since Halloween. I’m going to try to catch it up. Maybe the best way to do that is to skip right to Thanksgiving.
We went to Chicago for Thanksgiving. It was my fourth trip to Chicago in 2010. We drove down with Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Billy – it was a convoy! We stopped in Madison on the way down because we were expecting terrible weather and Katie didn’t want us until Thanksgiving Day, which I can understand.
Madison really is a nice town. And Grandma scored us rooms at one of the best hotels. So we were very happy to stop. We enjoyed a swim and a nice dinner at some Irish restaurant. On the way down I learned how to use my new Droid Phone. Although admittedly most of the apps that are on it are still from the kids who needed no time to make good use of it.
Filed under: Chicago
We had a very Halloweeny weekend in Chicago. On Saturday afternoon we went and painted shop windows in Glenview – we were invited to do so. We weren’t going for any graffiti gags. The girls did a nice job with their painting. (Sean was at a birthday party.) Later that evening, we went to break a world record – the most jack-o-lanterns. They were going for 36,000 lit jack-o-lanterns. We personally carved 8. It was very fun. We got there right at dusk so by the time we figured out the pumpkin process it was pretty dark. It’s perfect environment for carving pumpkins with kids.
Actually it wasn’t bad. Aine let me help a little. Bridie was OK with a lot of help – and the other girls were fine on their own. Then the big girls started to light up pumpkins. As you can see from the pictures, there were 5-6 rows of scaffolding for the pumpkins. I at least made the girls promise to focus on the lower rows.
We thought the planners were very lucky with weather. They had been predicting storms all day and it had rained much of the morning. So when we felt a few raindrops we headed for the car. We got there just before the big downpour. We’re not sure what then become of the pumpkin light – but I think they were very close to the numbers they needed. And everyone had to sign in when they carved a pumpkin so I think they’ll be OK.
Filed under: Chicago
Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry was my favorite place as a kid. It’s still great. We went with the cousins. We went to see the Jim Henson exhibit. It was fun to be so close to Miss Piggy and Kermit. Aine couldn’t actually name Kermit – but that was OK. I think she could probably have named Elmo . Betsy was selected to be one of the puppet volunteers, which was excellent. It’s tough to be a good ham as a puppet, but she succeeded.
One highlight of the trip was the egg incubator room. We actually saw a chick come out of an egg – that’s always fun!
We met the Museum blogger – which is a job I should have.
Aine and I went through the Net World exhibit. It was OK – but again, they should hire me to put together a good Net World/broadband exhibit. I could do a better job. They talked a lot about the difference between dialup and OC3 – but not so much about what you can do with broadband and what a difference broadband can make. I think they should have the Social Revolution YouTube video and some telehealth applications. Maybe doctors in training could be taking shifts examining people remotely at the Museum – now that would be cool.
We did like the game room – and we all loved the skiing games. We went to the weather area and learned about the Tesla coil – think a million volts of electricity and some great lightning. Aine and I toured the 727 – which seems a lot bigger than any airplane I’ve been on lately.
We left tired but a good kind of tired. Dinner in Greek Town spruced us up. They are so nice to families and kids in Greek Town. As soon as we sat down there were kiddie cokctails all around – then more bread and flaming cheese than anyone should have!
Filed under: Minneapolis
There was a great Groupon on the multi-people bikes at Minnehaha – so we went. I kind of forgot that I don’t really like bikes when I went for this – but I was quickly reminded once we got going. It’s hard to pedal a bike with 5 people on it – and Patrick’s a good biker. But it was beautiful day. And there was a fun historical recreation at one of the houses around Minnehaha. OK, recreation might be over stating it – but the girls got to play some old fashioned games. The Historical Society does a great job on stuff like that.
For folks who don’t know Minneapolis, here’s a quick description…
Overlooking the Mississippi River, Minnehaha Park is one of Minneapolis’ oldest and most popular parks, attracting over 850,000 thousand visitors annually. It is located at the intersection of Hiawatha Ave. and Minnehaha Parkway.
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