tonyandkirsten.org

It’s the day after Labor Day, so summer is now “officially” over here in Minnesota.  While Labor Day is considered to be the last fling of summer in many places, it is even more that way here.  The State Fair always ends on Labor Day, the pools close their gates one last time, and the kids go back to school the next morning.

Summer always seems short here in Minnesota.  I don’t think it really feels like summer until the neighborhood kids are done with school for the year, and here in Minneapolis it was about mid-June when schools let out for summer break. The pools don’t open until around June 15th, and this year it wouldn’t have been warm enough to go swimming until then anyway.

We did “Mission to the City” with Urban Refuge at the end of June.  Looking back on it, it kind of feels like this was the beginning of our summer, because it was only really warm and summer-like outside for maybe a week prior to this.  I participated in almost all the Mission to the City activities, while Tony did the night and weekend events.  We even brought the kids along for some of the events (they liked helping out at the BBQs).  I really enjoyed having the time dedicated to serving in my community and learning more about the city I’m living in.

Fourth of July followed quickly after Mission to the City, which was followed by Tony having back-to-back deadlines at work, during which time he slept very little…  …And Tony also had the misfortune of getting sick while not getting much sleep, which resulted in him developing Pneumonia.  Tony spent the rest of July recovering and trying to get lots of sleep.  During the month of July, the kids and I spent a few days at the lake cabin with my mom, and also tried to get out and enjoy summer with trips to local parks and pools.

We made it to Ames for two weddings in less than a month in late July/mid August and also made a family trip to the lake cabin the first weekend in August.  The kids and I crammed in more and more trips to the pools as the month of August wore on, knowing that our outdoor swimming days would soon be over for another long 9+ months.  We all went to the Minnesota State Fair a little over a week ago and spent a day enjoying plentiful farm animals, 4-H projects, and, of course, cheese curds and various foods-on-a-stick. We enjoyed our final summer weekend this Labor Day weekend by doing projects around the house, going out for a picnic and concert at Lake Harriet, and having a special Labor Day dinner on our back patio.

We also tried to have a garden this summer, with a only small amount of success. (And by “We” I mostly mean Tony with a bit of help from Madeline.) Our back “yard” is really a big patio with raised garden beds surrounding it.  And a huge old Catalpa tree shading the whole thing.  We started tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, carrots, sweet corn and beans in small seed trays inside the house this spring.  We only wanted to make a minimal financial investment in our vegetable garden, since we knew that our conditions were not ideal for garden success.   So far, we have harvested a couple dozen cherry tomatoes (mostly picked and eaten one or two at a time by the kids), about 3 regular-size tomatoes, and one very tiny carrot. Only one stubby corn plant survived, and something ate it’s one ear of corn.  The peppers didn’t flower until recently, so won’t have time to develop before the frost.  The eggplants never did much.  We might still get some beans and a few more carrots.  And we’ll still get a few more tomatoes before it gets too cold.  At least we can have hope that maybe next summer we can have a better spot for a garden — we’ve already decided not to stay in our current house when our lease expires in 2009, whether that means moving to another house here in Minneapolis or moving back to Iowa or elsewhere if God so leads after Tony’s current job is finished.

The weather today is appropriate for the first day of “fall” — though it was approaching 90 degrees yesterday, today it’s raining and below 70 degrees during the mid-afternoon. I was originally planning on beginning our family’s fall schedule today and starting Madeline’s first day of home preschool for this year.  But, my mom asked if Madeline could come and spend a couple more days at her house (Madeline’s third trip to stay at Grandma’s house since the beginning of the summer).  So, our “fall” and our preschool year at home will wait until next week.

We’ve had the Ody about a month now, and I have been fortunate enough to always be able to find a place to park where I could pull in driving forward fairly near our house. The Ody is great overall, but it has the turning radius the size of a small house. A three point turn on a normal street seems like an impossibility. I could barely parallel park the Volvo, so parallel parking the Ody has seemed like an impossible task.

Tony is gone to a men’s retreat tonight, and so the kids and I went to have dinner and play with some friends at their house. When we got back, there were no obviously large enough places to park within a half a block. I circled a couple times and made a half-hearted try and a couple spots, but nothing looked big enough for me with my non-existent parallel parking skills.

Then I had a brilliant idea — I would just pull the car around and park in the off street parking behind our house! We usually never park there, because it involves going through three locked doors, while coming the the front involves one locked door. It isn’t extremely well lit back there, so I didn’t notice how high the snow really was…until I drove into it and promptly got stuck.

You would think I would know better since I have lived in a snowy climate my whole life, but I just wasn’t thinking very clearly at 8:30pm when I just really wanted to get inside and get my kids to bed. I rocked the car back and forth a little bit, but the tires mostly only spun. I knew that I probably needed a shovel and maybe some ice melting salt to get the car unstuck…but I also had two tired kids in the car that needed to get inside… and I didn’t think I could shovel it out very fast by myself.

The day was saved by our downstairs neighbor. We all went inside and knocked on Michael’s door downstairs. He was home, and came out to shovel the car out while I brought the kids inside, and he even pulled it around front and got it into one of the parking spots that I gave up on. I felt pretty silly making such a dumb winter driving mistake, but at least the problem was solved and the kids got to bed before it got too late. Maybe I need to find a way to practice my parallel parking skills in the Ody (or be willing to park way down the block!)

Tonight I witnessed two fairly amazing things. First, our BPOU (Basic Politcal Organization Unit) voted overwhelmingly for Ron Paul. Second, we brought four kids with us to the caucus. We had already promised to watch some friends’ kids, so after making sure the parents were okay with us taking theirs to our caucus, away we went!

The vote was something like:

• Ron Paul — 99 votes
• Mitt Romney — 84 votes
• Mike Huckabee — 53 votes
• John McCain — 53 votes

It seems that Romney won the state, but we’ll see how things go. The next phase of our caucus in March 15th. I’m an alternate delegate, so I’ll show up then and see what happens.

While our beautiful warm weather is not quite as beautiful and warm as the weather in Ames, Madeline and I have certainly been enjoying it.  Yesterday we did a few errands in the morning and then in the afternoon trekked over to our neighborhood park, about four blocks away.  We both wore our somewhat-waterproof boots, which was a good thing since the melting snow created huge puddles of slushy, icy water under many of the playground apparatuses.  A puddle under one swing was so deep in the middle that had I let Madeline step all the way into it, I think the water would have come over the top of her boots.  Despite having the rubbery boots on, somehow Madeline’s feet were still completely soaked by the time we got home. Of course, her clothes were also really wet from all the splashing, landing in the snow at the bottom of slides, and so on.

For today’s outing we went to the library for a little bit, and then later a short walk around the block.  “Walk” might be a generous term.  It was more like a very, very slow stroll.   We were gone from the house for about 40 minutes on our short-distance journey! (Not that I minded — my main purpose in taking the walk was to get out and enjoy the 60 degree weather while trying to get less wet than we did at the park yesterday.) Traveling that short a distance in that long of a time frame would probably be impossible without a toddler in tow.  Madeline is very curious about the world around her and stopped for lots of puddle splashing, looking at/picking up sticks, rocks and leaves, watching other kids, drawing lines in the snow with sticks, popping small bubbles in puddles, and generally asking questions about her world.  It’s actually a lot of fun, at least on days like today when we’re not heading someplace purposefully.  Even though Madeline was again wearing a pair of semi-waterproof boots and didn’t splash in any puddles that were too deep…her feet and pant legs again still got pretty wet. 

In an adventure completely unrelated to warm weather, we got a portable dishwasher today! Yeah for not spending 45 minutes to an hour per night doing dishes! We received a couple of belated housewarming/early baby gifts this weekend to be used “as needed” for something for the house or the baby.  We decided the best use of those gifts might be to buy a used portable dishwasher, since it is both something for the house and something we will greatly appreciate once the baby comes and we are going to be exhausted and have even less energy for doing dishes! When we looked on craigslist yesterday, there was only one portable dishwasher in our price range, so we made an appointment to look at it tonight.  It looked great and our gift money covered most of the asking price so we brought it home with us.  It seems like it works great so far!

As we arrived home from picking up the dishwasher, we noticed several parents and lots of small kids congregating down our block.  Since it has been wintry and cold most of the 2+ months we’ve been here, we’ve not met very many people in our neighborhood.  We walked down the street to introduce ourselves and had a great time chatting with several other families who live on our street. There’s another little girl who is within a month of being the same age as Madeline, and a number of other kids ranging from baby to young elementary school age — as well as two other babies “on the way” besides ours.  The people we talked to said that the block is pretty friendly, especially on our side of the street.  Apparently they try and do some social things together and it seems like the kids must play together fairly often.  We’re excited for the warmer months ahead and more chances to get to know our neighbors!

Bring it on, snow!

So, it’s snowing right now. Heavily. My office is right on the Mississippi river. Normally, I can look out the window where I work and see downtown Minneapolis and the Mississippi river. Today, I can’t. I can see the next building between mine and the river, and that’s it.

We got a little over a foot of snow this last weekend, and we’re supposed to get another foot between today and tomorrow.

I’m excited!

With the weather generally being warmer and more pleasant the last couple weeks (at least before today’s snow storm hit), Madeline and I have been getting out and about more to do new things.

Last week, after discovering that the Minneapolis public library system had several of the books I had been looking at on amazon.com, I decided we would take a trip downtown and visit the Central Library. All of the books I wanted were located there. Since I didn’t have a library card yet I couldn’t get them delivered to a closer branch without stopping at one of those branches first to get a card, and then waiting several days for the books to arrive.

My first plan was for us to take a city bus downtown, but when I noticed that the library had an attached parking ramp with a reasonable rate, I thought I would give that a shot instead. We drove downtown, only to find out that the parking ramp was full, and all the other nearby lots and ramps were more expensive. Since we were in the car at that point anyway, I thought we would just park at a “park-and-ride” lot for the light rail, and take the train downtown. I had looked at a map for the train system on line and it would be the same price as a bus, so it seemed like another good idea. Unfortunately I could only find the smaller of the two park-and-ride lots near the station I was familiar with and it was full too…so it was back to my original plan A — taking the bus.

I thought about giving up at this point, but Madeline was really excited about going to the library and it wasn’t like we had anything better to be doing right then. So, we stopped by our house to look at the bus schedule, left the car parked there, and walked a little over two blocks to a bus stop that would take us right by the library. Other than Madeline having a hard time sitting still on the bus, it was a pretty pleasant 20 minute ride. The central library building is less than a year old and is about as big as the Iowa State library. We enjoyed finding our books, getting a hot chocolate at a nearby coffee shop on our way out, and then managing to catch the bus home before our bus transfer ticket had expired — making for a pretty cheap round trip experience!

That was maybe our biggest “adventure”, but we packed in a lot of other fun stuff this week. On Monday at least two different chains of thrift stores here were having “50% off everything” sales for President’s Day, so Madeline and I visited three different thrift store locations. I was mostly looking for clothes for baby boy, but I found a couple of things for Madeline as well. I want to be all prepared with what we need for the smallest size of baby clothes (figuring that we’ll mainly get larger sizes as gifts later on or can get them at garage sales, and I don’t want to have to scramble to find things right after he is born). $1 sleepers and pants, and $2 sweatshirts and sweaters are definitely the right price!

Wednesday and Thursday we checked out opportunities for Madeline to get out and play with other kids, and for me to meet other moms. In Ames I hardly knew any women outside of church, and while I am meeting lots of women at Urban Refuge, I decided it would be a great time to break out and form new relational circles.

Similar to the indoor play gym for toddlers that Ames does at the city gym, there are indoor play times for young kids at various park-and-rec community centers around Minneapolis. Unlike in Ames, where it’s just at one location every day, each community center does one or two days a week. It’s still possible to go to one (or probably more than one — I was only looking in a reasonable driving distance around our house) on any give day, it just might be in a different place. We have several community centers within a 15 minute or less drive of our house, and on Wednesday Madeline and I went to a indoor play gym time at a center less than a five minute drive away.

I knew this would be a great time for Madeline to burn off energy and run around (and it was — she had a lot of fun), but I wasn’t sure if it would be a good place for me to meet other moms. In Ames I would always find it hard to meet new people at the play gym. Moms would mainly only talk to other moms they already knew from someplace else, or the conversations would be kind of awkward. This play time had a really different feel — A lot of the people there seemed to know each other mainly from coming to this place each week (interestingly, there were both moms and dads there with their kids — I think I only ever saw moms in Ames), and there was lots of friendly conversation while the kids played. I suppose because it is more neighborhood-centered and most people just plan to go at the same time each week at the location closest to their house. There is one other community center with a weekly play time that is even closer, and I am thinking we’ll try and make it a regular habit to go to one or the other each week (well, at least for the next few weeks, and then again after we get adjusted to having baby boy around!). If nothing else Madeline really needs the chance to run around until it gets warm enough to consistently play outside…which is probably May at the rate things usually go around here!

On Thursday we checked out a “playdate” with a Stay-At-Home-Moms “meet-up” group. Meetup.com is a website where people can link up with other people in their area with shared interests — anything from music to politics to stage in life. I found there is a very active stay-at-home mom’s group with members from all over the Twin Cities, most of whom have one or two young kids. Members of the group plan a variety of outings throughout each month, and the 130+ members pick ones that fit their interests, schedule and location. This was just a simple play time at another member’s house who also lives in Minneapolis. I met five other moms and their kids and we had a great time. I’m looking forward to other future outings — besides playdates, things like museum trips, visits to indoor playgrounds and get-togethers at a coffee shop with a kids play area are all regular occurances. I think this is going to be a really fun way to not only meet people but to check out a lot of fun things to do in the area.

Somehow in the midst of all the rest of this stuff this week, we also managed to briefly visit two different neighborhood library branches. After our visit to the Central library last week I had found two more books I was interested in, which I could now easily set to be delivered to a closer library branch. I got the notice on Wednesday that they were in, so we made a quick stop at a branch a little over a mile west of our house. Then on Friday, anticipating the weekend-long blizzard (which really didn’t get started all that much until a couple hours ago), Madeline and I stopped into a library branch a mile or so north of here (that just happens to be right across the street from Aldi, where I needed to go anway) to get a couple of videos to watch while potentially being snowed in. Amazingly, neither of these are actually the library location that will soon be our closest neighborhood library branch. There is a branch about a half-mile from here (near the target, cub and rainbow closest to our house) that is under renovations and will re-open in a week or so!

We’ve finally made it to the stage of settling in that we are working on decorating.  That means that while we had made great progress in getting our living room and dining room cleared out, it is now a big mess again! There are picture frames, candles and other decorating items strewn about the floor.   We got to a reasonable stopping point last night with our fireplace mantle.  We’ve never had one of these before, so we’ve spent a lot of decorating energy trying to figure out what to do with it. We need a couple of things to finish it up, but it looks okay for now. We’re also hanging up some of our wedding pictures for the first time.  Yes, it’s odd..in four and a half years we’ve never had our framed wedding pics on the wall before now. There’s still pictures of Madeline to hang in the bedroom, and we’re hoping to get a few more family pictures framed and put up at some point as well.

Once the decorating stuff is cleaned up (that’s my next task this afternoon during Madeline’s nap time — pick up all the stuff so at least it’s not in our way!) we have basically all of our unpacking done.  The main thing left to do is to find places to put away a lot of little random things that are sitting around without a permanent home.

We’ve also now made our church decision, having given it about a month of checking things out and praying.  Our decision  is to get involved with Urban Refuge.  It was definitely a hard thing to pick between two really good options, and there weren’t any lightening bolts from God telling us clearly what to do.  For me the big factor in wanting to pick Urban Refuge was that I was forming relationships there a lot faster.  I’m sure given enough time I would have formed equally as many quality relationships at the Rock, but with less than two months before baby boy makes his debut, I was excited to have a good start on making friends before that happens and life will get even more complicated!

This may sound a little funny, but I also like the change of pace of being some of the “younger” people instead being some of the “old timers” like we were in the Rock in Ames. Most people at Urban Refuge are in their 30s or so, with a few being younger than us.  At the Rock here in MN we would have been closer to the top end of the age spectrum with only a few people older than us.  Especially with the strong possiblity that we might end up going on a church plant in a couple of years with a lot of people around our age or younger from Ames, I see this next couple of years as a great time to learn from those older and more seasoned at the Urban Refuge.

I’m also really excited about the connection between Ames and the Urban Refuge with Mission to the City trips in the summer.  So, it’s an added bonus of going on one of these trips this summer that you’ll get to see us too! :)  We’re not exactly sure what our serving involvement in the Urban Refuge will look like just yet, but we’re going to start figuring that out and jump in where ever we’re needed.  And, even though we’re plugging in with Urban Refuge, we’re definitely planning on keeping up friendships with some people we do know from the Rock.

In case you haven’t heard, we’ll be in Ames this weekend!  I’ll be at the women’s retreat on Friday night and Saturday morning/early afternoon.   So, Tony  (and Madeline) will have some time free on Saturday if you want to see them.  All three of us should have some time free on Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning before church and possibly Sunday lunch if you want to schedule anything with us. Just email or call to let us know. You can also see us at the “Blue Party” that Holly is throwing for us on Sunday afternoon from 2-5pm at Wendy Rehm’s house.  This is an open house/party to celebrate the upcoming birth of our baby boy, and both guys and girls are welcome.  (You can bring a gift for the baby if you want, but no obligation — we’re really just excited to hang out with everyone!).  Chances are this is the last time we’ll be in Ames until sometime after baby boy is born.  But if you want to come visit us up here, just let us know! Now that we are getting settled in, we’d love to have guests!