10 Questions About…

The River is as high as I have ever seen it. I tried to take some pictures. I really took pictures for the girls back in Ireland so I took pictures of things that I thought they would recognize. I don’t know that the pictures are super impressive if you don’t know what the River usually looks like in these places. They were expecting near record-breaking heights (or would that be depths) for the River – but the River crested on Wednesday, a foot short of expectations in St Paul.

The amazing thing is that despite the high levels of water there has been little to no damage. Rover Road is closed near both downtowns but we walked by these areas are they seem OK. The bridge in Stillwater was closed the other day.

Christmas seemed even more hectic than usual in many ways. The storm of the century was predicted days before Christmas, which actually closed a number of places and caused the Chicago to leave a day early. Turned out, we did get a foot of snow between December 23 and Christmas. It was pretty! Some of our regularly planned activities did go on as usual…

Big Christmas Party

We had our annual Christmas party the Sunday before Christmas. Patrick’s stew was a big hit. We had a bunch of new people come – like some high school friends of mine who I were delighted to see. The nicest thing was that we had the basement set up for kids so the house felt a lot less crowded – and a ton quieter.

Cinderella at the Children’s Theatre

We saw our annual show at the Children’s Theatre with all of the Treacy’s. This year it was a Cinderella pantomime. It was very funny. Most of us loved the step-sisters, Pearl and Dorkus. Aine and Bridie loved Cinderella.

Presents

Another big highlight was opening presents! It was definitely an electronic year for us. Partially that’s what everyone wanted; partially that’s usually easy to pack for a 6-month stint in Ireland.

So I work with a fun company (Learning ZoneXPress) that does nutritional curriculum, games, posters and stuff for schools. They have a great series of foodscape cards, posters, stuffed animals… Foodscapes are animals and other things created from fruit and vegetables.

Anyways, LZE has started to post ingredients for Foodscapes! So we took on the challenge and create our own cauliflower and broccoli sheep. Ours do not look as good as the originals – but I have to say that Aine ate the rest of the broccoli over the next two days so maybe we’re going to start making more foodscapes.

Here are our creations!

The girls were worried that we wouldn’t see any snow before we left for Ireland. That would not have made me sad – but in the end we did get snow. All told we’ll have almost a month of snow before we go back to Dublin.

The girls built a kind of fort in the front yard. And we spent a good day sledding in Grandma’s backyard. Unfortunately, Lily had a little run in with a bush. We’re hoping it won’t leave any scars.

Lily has been taking trombone for two years now. I voted for the flute – or anything else that’s easier to carry but Lily wanted the trombone. She has been great about practicing and I was really proud of how well she’s been playing. Actually the whole band concert was very good.

The video is a little shaky – I hired a videographer who would be able to sneak into the front row – but the sound is good.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whtOWjUHxD0]

On December 5 we took a tiny trip to the Grand Meander – specifically we went to see the penguin. I love that Grand Ave has events like that – and it’s so close we can walk.

We were kind of the rerun family this month; we also went to the History Center twice this month. We hadn’t been there is years. Aine was still in God’s pocket last time we were there. But I have to say, the History Center was fun – a ton cooler than I remembered or maybe the kids are just at better ages to enjoy it now. (In other words, maybe we’re cooler now.) I’ll just tell you about our favorite parts…

The tornado room
There’s an exhibit on weather – big shock for Minnesota. But there’s a cool reenactment of the 1965 tornado in Fridley. None of us were around for the 1965 tornado, but we’re all experienced tornado watches so we knew a little bit. But this exhibit gives you a much better sense of having been there. It’s in a space that looks like a basement. You turn on the radio and you start to hear the radio report from the day of the tornado,. You can see the sky changing color out the basement window. You here that it’s coming. The hear and see the hail and then the yellowish quiet before you hear the loud noise like a train going overhead – then you see a tree fall down out the window. It’s pretty scary – in a good way.

Fighter Plane
The next exhibit is cool in a sad way. You climb into an old fighter plane as if you’re a new recruit on the way to Normandy or someplace like that. The exhibit doesn’t have a super high tech feel but you do get the sense that you’re taking off and flying through a little vibrating, the noise and the change in the clouds out the window. They talk through the history of the time by talking to you as If you were a soldier. Talking about how so many of the soldier would have been sick on the plane – too many to all reach the sick bucket. They give some context for why you’re going over in the plane – and then you’re hit and the plane starts to spiral down. Only 3 make it out alive. As I said – it’s sad. Even poor Aine left saying – so we died then, huh? But I feel like if you’re country is in a war that maybe you ought to get what that means no matter how old you are.

It’s part of the Greatest Generation exhibit. We were with Grandma, but she isn’t from the Greater Generation but the others who were there at the same time were a little older. It was kind of interesting to be there with folks who might have remembered some of it. Grandma did remember other parts of the exhibit – in fact I remembered some of the plates and other items because my Grandma Murphy would have had all of it still when I was a kid.

The House
Finally there’s a house replica and the historians have tracked the owners of the home since it was built. It’s from the East Side, which is an areas that we don’t really know – but it’s fun to walk through the rooms and learn about the inhabitants. You see how it went from what seemed like a pretty fancy place to becoming a duplex and what that meant for the new inhabitants. You get a sense as you read the info from the families that the neighborhood was super friendly at one point but that it became less so – maybe because everywhere just became less friendly, maybe as new immigrants moved in from new areas, maybe as the house got older and older and probably fell into needing more repairs.

They have a class at the History Center where you can research the history of your own house. Maybe I’ll do that with the kids when we get back this summer.