10 Questions About…

I’m behind on the blog – again! I’ll do my best to catch us up and try to be better.

We had our big Christmas party the Sunday before Christmas. It was fun to get ready for it after taking last year off. We had 60-70 people stop by – so that’s always fun. I think I have a picture or two. I’ve had more if I could figure out how my brand new camera works.

A couple days after the party we went to see A Christmas Story at the Riverview Theater. Our friend Josh knew about it, went in advance to get tickets, and saved us primo places for the show. Everything was 50 cents – the tickets, the popcorn, and the drinks. We saw some neighbors there. But mostly it was fun to see a Christmas favorite in the cinema.

I hadn’t seen a movie in a theater in probably 2 years. It will probably be 2 years before I see another movie in the theater – but it was fun.

Here’s a short video from Lily’s Christmas pageant. She made me promise not to bring my laptop – but I was allowed to bring the FlipVideo.

On December 14, we all went to Kate’s recital with the Center for Irish Music. Kate started taking tin whistle this fall. I have to say if you have a kid thinking about an instrument – go with the tin whistle. They are cheap. We didn’t have to buy a book. It’s easy for her to carry her own instrument. And she can already play a couple of songs!

Aine was also invited to be in the recital as she took a singing class at the CIM too. So we have a video of both performers.

Patrick and Lily have decided that they are going to learn to play the bodhran after New Year. (The bodhran is the big round drum.)

On December 13 the girls and I went with Grandma to see the Best Christmas Pageant Ever at Stepping Stone.  Stepping Stone is a theater where shows are done by and for kids.

The show was very cute. We had primo seats as we were early enough to be the first people in the theater. A first for us!

My best hour of December was getting a massage from Emmy Vadnais. Why don’t I do that more often?

On December 8 the girls and I went to the SPNN Open House. The fact that we went is a sign that I don’t drive enough and had completely forgotten about snowstorms. The weather was terrible. It’s about a 5 mile drive – tops. And it took 45 minutes.

But we got a fun tour of the studio and we won a tote bag. My hope is that the girls will take classes at SPNN at some point so that they can learn how to create a TV show. It’s not that I want to have a TYV show or anything. I just think it would be cool.

So one of the things I missed most when we were in Ireland was the Roller Girl bouts. So last Saturday night we all went. We went with Anita and Uncle Billy.

The Roller Girls skate in the Roy Wilkins. It’s flat-tracked roller derby, which I think has to be a lot harder than a banked track.

Here’s the scoop on the bouts. Usually there are 2 bouts a night (well game night). Two teams play each bout. There are four 20-minute periods. The teams that skate first also skate third. There are several jams in each period. A jam is a scoring opportunity and it lasts 2 minutes or until the lead jammer calls time.

So each team has a jammer, pivots and blockers. Only the jammer can score. The object of the bout is to get your team jammer out ahead of the other team and each time the jammer laps the rest of the group, the team scores.

OK, I don’t really know the nuances – but that’s about it. You can bump and block out other skaters. The skating this time was markedly better than when we left and that blocks looked super painful.
We caught some of the match on video.

Sunday the girls and I went shopping with Grandpa at Rosedale. Mostly we tried to get out of Patrick’s way so that he could work on his PhD. I’ll be glad when he gets that done. (It’s not for a while.)

We had a nice dinner at some place with a revolving door – that was kind of the highlihgt for the kids.

Saturday night Patrick and I went to Forepaugh’s – they recently updated the whole place. It will always be the sort of place that Patrick likes more than I do – but it was very nice. We started with bacon-wrapped shrimp – so how can you go wrong.

After that we went to a show called Hot Ink at the MN Museum of American Art in St Paul. It was all comic books and graphic novels. I thought it was cool. Two of the artists were older than me, otherwise it seems as if they were all born in 1985. So not only is it fun to see the art form but it’s fun to get a feel for what people who are (slightly) younger are thinking about the world.

Lily got a “how to draw cartoons” book out of the library last week so I thought she would enjoy this and the themes weren’t too adult. We’ll see how long the show is there.