Grace Art

I was cleaning/sorting today - as part of that task, I was deciding which pictures of Grace's to toss and which to keep (Can't keep them all - her art from the last 6 months alone would fill an entire dumpster).  Here's a few I snapped pictures of...

Wee Care Photos

Here's a few photos that we didn't take - these are from the Wee Care website.

Bell Museum

From last weekend: we went to visit the Bell Museum at Grace's request.  It was a terrific museum of natural history with a great touch and feel room that Grace and Holden both loved.

Wolves.

Going on a canoe.

Bears!

Grace and Saint Picard

Here is a photo of Grace with Mercy Seat's Patron Saint - Jean-Luc Picard. There is some internal debate whether Saint Picard has the requisite quantity of miracles to qualify as a Saint. Considering his miraculous descent into Borg-dom and return to humanity, we're pretty sure that alone qualifies him.

What does a duck say?

The answer may surprise you!

Turning Things Upside Down

In our house, we can't leave a cup anywhere if if has any liquid in
it. Or a bowl. Heck, even a plate. Holden will hunt it down like a
bloodhound and turn it upside down to see what comes out.

Waterfall

We took a quick trip on Saturday to the Falls that are about 20 minutes South of us.

Reading

One of those parenting milestones: Holden now grabs books and crawls into laps with the expectation of reading the book. It's quite comical to watch him plan how he's going to get the book on the couch, and then himself, and then lug the book to the lap of his victim.

Upload Problems

Well, I was going to upload some photos today, but I'm getting an odd error, "Unsupported output format: text/xml (status 400)."  What the heck does that mean?  I did a quick Internet search on this, and it appears to be some kind of connection problem between Google's photo uploader and the iPhoto.  All this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes in the movie Office Space,  as the office workers are struggling to get the fax machine to work and they get the error message, "Print Load Letter?  What the *#%# does that mean?"  

The bottom line being I have a gibberish message that something's not working.  So photos will be posted... when the machines start cooperating again.

Crossing the Continental Divide

I'm not sure what it is about crossing the Continental Divide that curses my family - but, whatever it is, it's started again.  See here and here and here for last year's various family adventures near the Continental Divide.

Eric and Anne decided that 2008 would be different, so they drove a car from St. Paul to Seattle this weekend.  They broke down in Billings Montana, and now it looks like they will leave the car in Billings, drive a rental to Seattle, and return for the car at a later date.  Fortunately, Dad lives nearby so they had family to visit while they became the latest family victims of the Continental Divide.

4th of July Parade

We had the choice of marching in the St. Anthony Park parade to represent three different organizations: Luther Seminary, Wee Care, and Lutheran Social Service of MN. Fortunately, they all staged right next to each other.  Grace was a little concerned since she had never marched in a parade before.  But she did great, carrying the banner for quite a long haul.


Grace pulling her friend Tovah to the staging area for the parade.


Holden and Mom at the staging area - Holden was impressed with all the activity.

Grace and Hannah.

Holden and Dad getting ready to march, with matching black shirts.

Wee Care day care students marching for freedom and protesting their enforced captivity 5 days a week.

After the parade in the park.

A Knock at the Door

Someone knocked at our door this afternoon. I opened the door and it was my brother, Eric, in Saint Paul from Seattle for the day - unannounced. He visited for a couple hours and left. Grace wanted to play Hulabaloo with Uncle Eric, so we played the game for awhile. What sort of brother just travels halfway across the country and drops in unannounced? Personally, I blame his parents for this behavior!

Utter Hilarity

Spinning

Zamfir-Holden, Master of the Banana Flute

Who is Zamfir?