Sickness

We brought back colds from Lac du Bois - all 4 of us. Aimee and
Holden have the worst of it. Aimee's not feeling well at all. Holden
and Grace and I spent the afternoon at the Como Park zoo and
conservatory to let Aimee get some rest.

Dignity Watch

Speaking from experience, it is extremely difficult to maintain your adult dignity while simultaneously pretending to be a chicken perched on pretend eggs in a nest of sticks and grass atop a children's play structure.

Banff Update

This is an update from Nelson's brother, Eric:

Here's an update – just spoke with Mom.  The fix-it shop in Banff found one place in Kentucky that has the part needed. The part is very specific; it must be for a two-wheel drive Toyota pickup with cruise control, made between 2002-2007.  The Kentucky shop will ship it to Montreal, and then it needs to be shipped to Banff, but due to holiday and customs, this means the truck will not be repaired until Thursday, September 6 ^th.  In the meantime, it appears they can rent a car for the duration of their stay (hopefully), however, they are losing the cabin they've been renting tonight, and must find a campground to stay, probably until early next week. 

Their "vacation" is being extended a full week, and will be back the weekend of September 8^th/9^th – they must be having fun!  And I must housesit an extra week for them.  Thankfully, I do enjoy the company of cats as well as the hot tub perk.

An Adventure In Banff

You might recall that we had car trouble in North Dakota last month, and that not two weeks later Nelson's brother, Eric, also had car trouble just outside of Glacier National Park. Undissauded by these stories, Nelson's Mom and Stepfather, Katie and Milt, pointed their truck North on a trip to Banff in Canada ( http://www.banff.com/). They left Sunday. Yesterday their Toyota Truck broke down somewhere outside of Banff. After waiting four hours for a towtruck, their truck was towed to Banff. There they were told that the throttle cable had broken, and that it was extremely rare for this part to break, so rare in fact that there wasn't a replacement throttle cable available in North America. They can get the part in 1-2 weeks. Katie and Milt have rented a car for the time being. But the rental car is due back tomorrow, since the upcoming weekend is Labor Day Weekend. Everyone is having their last vacation before school starts the following week. This also means the area hotels are booked. And Katie and Milt were planning on camping, so they don't have any reservations at hotels. After tomorrow, they don't have a car, or accomodations. That's as much as we know for now.

Housing Update

Well, it appears we won't be moving into our 3-bedroom apartment for six weeks.  The family living there will be moving out by September 30th - and then Luther Seminary Housing will need a little time to paint, make some repairs and updates, etc. Until then, we will have access to another 1-bedroom apartment, where we can unload our moving pods. Unfortunately, the moving pods can't be delivered to the Seminary until September 6th.

Holden Crawling Update

For the last couple weeks, we could set Holden down and he would remain within about a two foot circumference as he learned how to crawl. Today, something seemed to "click". He was crawling around the living room and anything he could reach was fair game.

Dancing at Lac du Bois

There were lots of opportunities for dancing, and the staff were very good at getting Grace involved with the other villagers.

Click here to go directly to the video.

Back from Lac de Bois

We got back yesterday from Lac du Bois on Turtle Lake, outside of Bemidji, Minnesota. French immersion camp was exciting, exhausting, and refreshing. Grace didn't hardly seem to pay attention to what was going on sometimes, since her attention wandered often - and yet it was very clear by the end of the week that she was picking up everything. We have some photos of the trip posted that you can see by clicking here. I have some of the photos below.

Would we go again? Absolutely. Aimee brushed up on her French, Grace got her first experience, and I finally developed a foundation in French. By the end of the week, I was understanding something new every hour. It was amazing how the immersion experience worked. The staff was outstanding - including native French speakers from Morocco, Canada, Cameroon, Switzerland and of course France.


Paris in the center of all action in Lac du Bois. This is where meals are served and where everyone congregates for activities.


Twice per day, we broke into small groups, divided by our ability to speak French. Here an instructor helped us practice speaking French. This is Nelson's group, led by Josephine from Cameroon, who was fantastic.


Aimee was in the more advanced adult group, led by Yani, from Cameroon.


This is the Swedish language village for immersion into Swedish culture and language. All of the villages owned by Concordia Language Villages are constructed in the style of the country.


They have all sorts of creative ways to get everyone speaking French. Here, at the Crocodile Cafe, the children pretend to be waiters taking orders in French from the customers.


During fencing, I was unbeatable!
(Actually, I duelled with the two instructors.)


The food was excellent, and all food served was traditional food in a French-speaking country. Beacoup du baguettes. They had an espresso machine for the adults available all day long. And before every meal they took 15 minutes or so to talk to us in French.


Speaking of baguettes, Holden loved them. And they were an ideal distraction to let us eat.


And of course, Turtle Lake is beautiful, and excellent for canoeing.


Staff perform skits at various times of the day to help teach French. One of the staff studied acting in Paris, so the skits were often quite funny with pratfalls and other humor.


They pull out any trick they know to get and keep the children's (and parent's) attention.


The staff don't see any babies all summer - so Holden was very popular. The staff would pass him from staff person to staff person, and we would see Holden being carried all over the village.

Here's a slideshow of all pictures:

The news from Concordia Language Villages

The weather in fair and the children are all above-average. We're having a great time in French Immersion camp. I'll post pictures and highlights later. But my favorite conversation so far happened on the first day, on the way to camp:

Grace - When will we get to see the Statue of Paul Bunyan?
Aimee - We're driving to see it now.
Grace - Driving to see what?
Aimee - The statue.
Grace - What statue?

French Immersion Camp

We're leaving tomorrow morning to spend the week in French immersion camp at Concordia Language Villages in Northern Minnesota.  You can click here to see information about where we'll be spending the week.  We are registered in the  family program - learning to speak French.  I think we'll be out of email and phone contact until Saturday, since they ask us to preserve the integrity of the immersion experience as much as possible.  (For instance, we're not supposed to bring in books written in English.)  We return to Saint Paul Saturday evening.  The food is supposed to be good.  For the Swedes in this family - do note that they also offer Swedish immersion.  No charge for mosquito bites.

Floods in MN

No, we're not floating away in Saint Paul.  It did rain as hard as I've ever seen it rain, though.

Holden, 7 months

Here's a video shot this morning of Holden:

Deluxe Entertainment Center

Our new deluxe, luxury entertainment center.

Apartment Update

We're still in base camp, we still haven't received clearance to summit. We don't know exactly when the party that is currently encamped on the summit will finally break camp and descend. There is much confusion, rumors, and lack of communication. Next week we're going to French camp, and hopefully when we return we can move in to the 3 bedroom apartment and setup house.

Highlights, 1st week in Saint Paul

We went to Comotown with Aimee's cousin Jessica.

Grace was very brave about wanting to try all the rides. Grace and I rode the Hopper.


After the first drop, she gripped tightly.


Grace loved the bumpercars and laughed maniacally as we hunted down other cars to bump.


She was impressed with how fast the rollercoaster went.


But she preferred the teacup to the rollercoaster.


We also visited the Minneapolis Zoo (again, with Jessica, who is on a break for a coupe weeks from her regular teaching gig).

Eric and Anne: We're here....

We're here.......at The Badlands.
-Eric

Eric & Anne - Roundup Update

Eric & Anne, not content to merely copy our itinerary, driving from Seattle to St. Paul via Glacier NP and Roundup, MT to Anne's Mom's house (which is located a few blocks from the Luther Seminary campus), are now copying the particulars. Coming out of Glacier today their car broke down - a flat tire, and it turned out they didn't have a lugwrench or an inflated spare tire. (They did have the spare tire; it was missing the rather important and underrated condition - inflated with air.) Total delay time on their drive to Roundup: 2 1-2 hours. The same as our delay time for our breakdown in North Dakota.

Cousins

We've spent much of our first few days in St. Paul visiting with
Aimee's cousins - this was a big reason why we chose to come to St.
Paul for seminary rather than another Lutheran seminary. We're happy
we have family living so close. We notice nearly every hour something
that we don't have that is currently in storage in the moving pods.
(i.e. candles in case of power outages due to thunderstorms, towels,
wine opener, basic spices, knives, etc.) It has become an ongoing
joke. Aimee's Aunt Sara came to the rescue by driving up to the Twin
Cities bearing towels, dishes, and a couple pots and pans to cook in.
We also borrow stuff from our friends Natalie and Brian who are living
in an apartment next to us.

A Quick Note On Comments

Hi. All of a sudden a few people have started to leave comments on
our blog - and I just wanted to assure everyone that we automatically
receive all comments and read them. So keep the comments coming!

Base Camp

We have now setup base camp in the 1-bedroom apartment. We are told by Luther staff that we may perhaps possibly begin our ascent to the 3rd floor next week, but we expect we won't summit for a couple weeks.

Holden celebrated the occasion by figuring out how to propel himself forward on hands and knees (crawling).