The Great Minnesota Get Together

The State Fair is a pretty big deal around here.

I don't consider myself a "fair person," and I don't totally get what people DO all day every day if they go for repeat visits, but I consider it a tradition and the girls seem to like it.

On the very last day of the run, off we went to the park and ride to meet the Nonners and Papa.  The fair report is, so far, kind of the same each year.  So rather than a full round up, here's what was new and notable.

New rides.  (Brave girls.)

French Fry bucket and classic rock for a little morning snack.

Little Farm Hands

Eleri chose not to participate.  Clio got to ride a tractor, dig up "crops" and trade them at market for a little stuffed sheep.  Eleri wanted the sheep, too.  Valuable lesson learned about commerce?  Maybe.

Papa procured this inflatable Kemps cow.  He claims it was through his power of persuasion.  Others think he paid for it.  Jury's out.  Girls love it.

Clio carried him the rest of the day.  Papa named him Milky Way.

Along the way we also checked out the Fine Arts building, watched a troop of drummers, ate ice cream, chicken nuggets, and cheese curds, petted baby animals, and just missed the horse show and some lumberjack pole climbing.  Maybe next year.

The biggest deal, perhaps?  No strollers needed.  I forgot it in the trunk when we got to the park and ride just as the bus was going to pull out, but everyone did just fine.  These are some big, big girls.

A Room of One's Own

We are very lucky to have a nice house with plenty of space.  The girls have an awesome room and lots of space throughout the house dedicated to them (including a playground in the basement.)  And yet, they are always carving out their own little spaces around the house.

This might be my favorite.  They have taken to listening to the Beauty and The Beast soundtrack on this little old boombox, and they like to set up a pair of chairs facing it, as if they are watching something.

So sweet.

Oh, Summer, Where Did You Go?

Last Monday it was 90 degrees.  We spent a lazy day swimming and flipping through magazines at Nonny and Papa's house.  Two days later, frost.  Just like that, summer was over.  Nothing gradual, no reprise in Indian Summer, just: fall.  Winter feels imminent.  I put the down blanket back on our bed, and was not too warm.  I'm not ready.  All of a sudden I'm having visions of shoveling mountains of snow, of bundling everyone into insufficient layers, of hibernating for six months, just when we're ready to get out there and do some things.

Most of the summer was lost to this blog, too.  I didn't take nearly as many photos of our family as I usually do.  Used to do.  Partly because the girls just scream at me when I get out the camera, partly because I just got lazy, partly, I'd like to think, because when I was with the girls this summer, I was WITH them, and not hovering above to record and remember.  That's a good thing.

I never got around to describing the girls' birthday party, which started as a disaster and ended in great good fun.  Coming out of a government shutdown, we didn't know if our desired venue--the north commons water park--would be open.  Turns out they were (yay!) just not at the hour we specified (boo!)  So we lost several people along the way, but ended up having a marvelous picnic with two families, including self-frosted cupcakes and presents.  As we were about to wrap it up, we decided to hit the waterpark instead just as they opened, and the kids were in heaven.  Not bad for the grown-ups, either, with the two huge water slides for us, too.  We wrapped up at our friend Silo's house for pizza.  A long, wonderful day.

We went camping with the Harringtons.  It was perhaps the most humid weekend of the year.  There were trains that ran so close to the campground I could swear they were barreling through our tents.  And there was an insane lightning and thunderstorm that wind whipped the tents and sent fear through my fingertips: what if the lightning strikes the tree we are camped so near?  What if it runs through the ground, drawn to our metal tent poles?  We were in separate tents, Dave with Clio, me with Eleri, and that sweet girl slept right through.  IT lasted 45 minutes.  when it was over, another train barreled through.  You know what though?  The campground had a lovely beach on Lake Pepin, and we spent most of the time in the water.  Despite everything, the girls loved it.

We spent time in the garden.  And drawing with sidewalk chalk.  And visiting the local playgrounds and water features.  Minnesota has a LOT of amazing pools and wading pools and sprinkling devices.  A LOT.  Especially for a state that freezes over for half the year.

The girls went to Grandma and Grandpa's when I went to NYC.  They always have a great time with the kittens.

It's always so weird to wrap up a season in a post.  It always feels both forever ago and just like yesterday.  That will never be revelatory, but it will always be true.

School has begun.  Leaves are changing.  Life moves forward.

Coming Home

Dear Daddy,
You come home tomorrow.  When I started writing this, we had a few days to go, and Clio had started counting the days until your return.  Not much to count now.  In fact, you must be traveling already, though the time difference confuses me.  It is tomorrow there already, but you are moving backwards through the time zones and will arrive here 3 hours (and something like 24 hours of travel) after you left there.

Eleri sometimes forgets, still, and thinks you are at work and might join us for dinner.

We have been pulling the house together, not that it got out of control while you've been away, more preparing for the fall and back to school.  I'm trying to get organized.  The kids are decorating the sidewalks with chalk.  The garden is wild: sunflowers halfway to the roof, squash vine halfway to the garage.  The squirrels have dessicated your beautiful delicata squash, I'm sorry to say.  I was about to get out the lawn mower but the grass is wet and rain is coming, so I weeded the raspberry jungle instead.  I'll need your help to get the massive pile of bracnshes into some yard bags.  There were actually some beautiful berries under all that mess, and the girls ate them up, then yelled at me when I ate the last one: I was supposed to save it for you.

Orientation started at school this morning, for both girls as it turns out.  I think they had a good day.  When we got home, my cousin Jesse called and suggested swimming at my mom's.  Tonight as we ate dinner, all chlorinated and sun tired, it felt like summer vacation has a last little stretch to it yet.  Did I tell you already that we tried out the Highland Pool and it is awesome?  That we spent a morning at Nokomis beach, with barely anyone else, and counted the planes and the minnows?  I keep finding that I am holding my breath--that old bad habit--and when I think of my time with my girls in the sand and the sun and this beautiful late summer Minnesota weather that I am remembering, finally, fondly, and with nostalgia, I remember to breathe deep.

While you've been gone, people have said things like "That's a long time to be a single mom."  But we have been very well taken care of, with dinners at Nonny and Papa's and at Rory and Nicole's and that whole weekend at the cabin.  I think this has saved us not so much for the help with meals but for the adult contact it has provided me, re-energizing me so my patience will stretch.  And it has needed to be supple: the girls are at each other quite a lot.  But then they hug, and Eleri announces "I LOVE you Clio," in this very sweet cadence, and all is fine for the moment.  They had some much-needed separation Saturday when I took Clio to Silo's birthday party (making his card she was delighted to discover that their names share three of four letters) and Eleri happily spent the day with Rory and Nicole, then we all had dinner there, with Erin and Kyle and River and Autumn, too.  River and Clio made a couch fort.  Eleri did the same puzzle over and over.

There are puzzle stations all over the house.  One in front of the fireplace, one in the office, one in front of the island in the kitchen, and tonight Eleri made those two-piece reading puzzles (Bear and Cub; Goat and Kid) in a long line across the office doorway.  She is doing a puzzle every time I turn around, and won't leave the house until she finishes.  True story.  It is still sort of cute and endearing, but if it lasts I think it will get old, fast.

We went through the girls' toys and books and brought a big bag of each to Oliver and have more to donate. We cleaned out the art supplies and turned over their closets.  We empty the de-humidifier regularly, and each time the girls want to come downstairs with me, but of course then they don't want to come back up.

Do you find it hard to believe we have been here over a year now?  I think about what we have done--and not done--in this time.  How I like our life here and what I would like to improve.  I wonder most as you head home if you feel like you are coming home, and if you do, if that home is about people--your girls--or if it is coming to be about this place, too.  I hope so.  I know time away can amplify the things you leave behind, and I hope you like some of the things you see.

See you tomorrow,

Heather

At the Lake

Dear Daddy,

This weekend we got to go to Lucia and Finn's cabin.  We had a lot of fun, and everyone's favorite activity was fishing off the dock.  We fed the fish bread in the mornings so they would be nice and fat when we caught them in the afternoon.  We used leeches and worms as bait, and Mommy even baited the hooks for us, but Maud was the only one who could get hooks out of fish bellies if they swallowed it whole.  She had special pliers and calls this "surgery."  We saved our fish in a bucket, but they kept jumping out, so we put a net over them.  Clio held it closed.  We released some, but kept five fish to eat.  Maud showed us how to clean the fish.  When we cut the heads off, they still move around.  Maud and Mommy told us about nerves.  When Maud tried to cut the biggest fish, it flipped around and around.  Lucia and Clio got to eat that one.

We took boat rides, and Finn went tubing, but Clio wasn't ready to try it.  Maybe next year.  She says she doesn't want to try it ever, but we'll see.  While we tooled around the lake, under beautiful blue skies, we missed you, and I thought that you would trade one day of your time in Japan to be there with us like that, if only the logistics were not so complicated.  I hope we can all go next year; we know you would have the most fun of everyone.

Yesterday we took the boat to the sandy point.  We built a river.  We put rocks in it, and when it was full we made a dam so the water wouldn't go out and come in again.  We built a rock wall around it.

In the cabin, we did puzzles and Eleri is getting really good.  We did a 60 piece floor puzzle of pirates.  Clio and Lucia built a fort in the living room, using every single blanket and towel in the place.  They also found some old baby gates to use, and said No Boys Allowed.

My favorite thing was watching the girls swim.  They called the wading area by the shore the "shallow end" and the lake the "deep end," which is really very cute.

Clio would like to sign off now.

xoxo
(Clio typed those hugs and kisses)

Love,
Your girls

Dear Daddy,

What a day we had!

This morning we had a visit from Connor.  He helped us finish our new puzzle.  Then we went to Nonny and Papa's to go swimming.  Clio would not like to report about her mood, but we can tell you this.  Pool success!  Mommy forgot the back floatie, so Clio discovered she can swim just fine without it--even in the deep end, even going off the diving board.  Amazing.  She can even swim across the pool with her face in the water.  As for Eleri, she has taken her daredevil ways to the big board, throwing herself into the water with glee.  (wearing a life jacket, of course.)

We got to swim with Joy and Frank before they left for the airport, and Molly, Mike, and Connor came by, too.  More puzzles, lots of popcorn, and one pair of raspberry chocolate ice cream bars made it a great day.

We got stuck in traffic on the bridge coming over the Mississippi, so we ran through McDonals drive through for Happy Meals.  Our prize was a car that had a man pop out of it.  They go realy fast, and the man comes out all the way, or hides in the car.

The treats didn't end there!  Since it is movie night, we got to watch some TV.  But we got home late, so we just watched some Diego.  It was the funniest episode ever.  There was a penguin who tried to slide on her back, but they have to slide on their bellies.  And also she was just a baby and so she tried to climb a rock but she kept on falling anf falling and falling and that was so funny.

We are going to bed now so we are rested for our drive to the cabin tomorrow.

We were so glad to get your note that you arrived and found your family.  What a long journey that was!  We couldn't believe how long it took.

More soon,

xxxxxxxxxxoxxxxxxxxxxxxxxooooooooooooooooooo

Clio, Eleri, and the mommers

While Dad is away....

We dropped Dave (aka The Dadders) at the airport bright and early this morning for his family trip to Japan.  He will be gone for two whole weeks, which already kind of feels like an eternity.

The girls and I decided that we would miss him less (and he might feel less left out) if we recorded messages for him here.  So here goes.

After the airport, we were still so sleepy, we decided to get bagels and juice and eat them at Bruegger's.  After breakfast, we tried out the new Hello Kitty puzzle, and got it done together.  We went to the wading pool, and Clio's bathing suit ripped wide open.  Oops!  When we came home, she tried to put it in the recycling, but I explained it belongs in the "garbagh," thereby introducing Clio to this fancy term for plain old garbage.

We all took naps, each in a room of our own.  Eleri thought it was silly to sleep with her pillow halfway down the bed.  After nap, we went to the playground, but Eleri had a little accident, and the fun was short lived.  We picked up our farm share, and you'll be happy to know that greenilocks was revived.  This time her adventures took her to an island in the middle of a pond with a turtle house that has smaller and smaller and smaller doors to get in.

For dinner we had Grandma's meatballs, corn on the cob, french fries with ketchup in special bowls, and tomato cucumber basil feta salad, with ingredients from the farm.  The girls each had three servings of salad.  Eleri ate watermelon, and Clio had peaches, and I remembered that those were my favorite foods with each of them when they were still in my belly.  We think this is like magic.  We marveled at the fact that you are still not in Japan yet, after this whole long full day.

We had bath right after dinner because Eleri wrote on herself (in pen.)  The little plastic flounder went missing from the tub and Clio started some detective work, first looking for footprints, then handprints, then hair to see if we could track down the fish.  She did find some hair, but the fish remains at large.

After we say good night to you, we will go up and read library books for stories.

Clio is dying to type "xoxo," so I think it's time to say we love you.

xoxo

Your girls