Filed under: St Paul
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.
Filed under: Chicago
When I was a kid I loved the Museum of Science & Industry. It is great. We went the day after Thanksgiving. We were there when it opened – and we ran to the new toy department. So we had all of the great machines to ourselves. Everyone got a chance to drive the car or be the skier going down the slope.
As soon as it got busy we had to hightail it to the U Boat exhibit, which is what we came to see. Most of the adults have read The Shadow Divers, which is the best book ever even though it’s about submarines.
So we took the tour, which is very cool. The U-Boats were super powerful until the US figured out the code that the Germans were using to communicate with the U-boats. Then they became underwater death traps.
The tour of the U-boat walks you though it’s capture. Although the U-boat is huge, I think they said a city block long, it’s tiny inside. I think they said about 50 soldiers lived on the submarine – and all of them smoked. I can’t even imagine what it smelled like back them.
It was cool to kind of experience the capture. Once the U-boat was spotted it dove deeper into the water – kind of like a free fall and the men had to be silent since noise carries so much farther in the water. It was a cat and mouse chase until the Americans actually took over. Apparently they just stormed the U-boat and were then able to get the Enigma (decoder) machine and tomes of code notes. They didn’t admit to capturing the U-boat because they didn’t want the Germans to know that they had the cheat sheet to their codes. So the men on board were in a POW camp in America.
It was interesting to see the war propaganda. They didn’t just promote shopping as your patriotic duty back then – and that was good to see. They had an amazing visual that showed how many men were killed by U-boats over the years.
It’s also kind of amazing to see how they got the boat to Chicago, where it sat outside for decades and then into the Museum of Science and Industry.
We visited some other rooms in the Museum – like the Christmas trees and some Main Street setup – but the U-boat was the coolest part by far.
The Chicago museum is a little like the museum we visited in London. It’s very cool – but so busy that you can’t handle being there for very long.
Filed under: Chicago
Ok it’s been a month since I last posted. That’s terrible. I’m going to try to bring us to date quickly.
Thanksgiving… We went to Chicago for Thanksgiving. We had a convoy going. Kate made a really nice Thanksgiving dinner. It was warmer in Chicago than Minnesota so it seemed like a good break.
We have some pictures of everyone bagging up lunches to drop off to Katie’s church. They do a nice job there of coming up with projects that everyone can do to contribute to the community. Well, maybe not to the local community of Glenview – but the Greater Chicagoland anyways. Also you’re never too young to learn how to work on an assembly line!
Filed under: St Paul
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.
Filed under: St Paul
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.
Filed under: St Paul
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.
Filed under: Minneapolis
So how does a mom make it up to 3 girls when she has been gone for work all week? Well by waiting in line for an hour to go into the new American Girl Doll Store for the MOA Grand Opening. We were in the shop about half the time we spent waiting in line.
The cookie shop from the MOA gave out cookies in line so that took the edge off –a nd was such a good marketing move! The people in line were in a good modd and the line was ever-growing so we were always ahead of soemone, which makes it easier.
We didn’t buy anything. I’m prety sure we were the only ones who went through who didn’t buy. I do have some dieas for Christmas but we knew going in that we weren’t going to buy.
The shop is not as big as the one in Chicago but it was nice. After the tour we went to lunch at the Twin City Grill and that’s always fun.
Filed under: Minnesota
I have started a fun project with Extension Services and the NWAF. They are doing poverty reduction programs in various communities throughout Minnesota. Part of the program is to get community members to blog about their experience and progress.
I get to train the bloggers and offered technical assistance. So Grandpa and I hit the road last week so that I coidl do train 3 night in arow. The people are great and it is fun to see different parts of Minnesota – more fun when you are traveling with somoene – but it is tiring!
Filed under: Minneapolis
Sunday night Patrick and I went to see Shadowlands at the Guthrie. It’s a biogrpahy of CS Lewis, who wrote the Narnia series. It’s about how he met his wife and their short life together – I won’t go into the details and ruin the surprise for anyone who was thinking about going.
It was good maybe a little long, but good). It’s a tear-jerker – although I was too tough to cry. But the story is good and the stage was amazing!
Filed under: St Paul
- st martin day
On Sunday we went to a St Martin’s Day festival at the Landmark. It’s a German festival. We made lumiere-type lights and then walked around Rice Park. It was beautiful, but cold.
St Martin (not the real one) showed up on a horse. Most of the significance was lost on us – but we had some excellent struedel.
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