Finding Fun in Your Own Backyard

Good babysitters are a scarce and therefore unnatural resource, in my opinion, and great ones are even harder to find. I know because a) I was not one of those good babysitters (and that's all I'll say to avoid any chance of litigation) and now, as a mom, I have had nine years experience in hiring (and even firing) babysitters let alone trying to schedule them.

So when a great one comes along, his or her identity becomes something of a guarded secret so the sitter's availability is at a maximum.

When we moved to Fairmont, we were blessed with a set of sisters who could tag-team when babysitting for my girls as I did my writing. Alas, that was short-lived as the older sister felt the need to continue her education in college--two hours away.

Fortunately, the "little" sister enjoyed the kids and stayed with us that summer, and the next, and the next. Having the same sitter-nanny for three years is a luxury, let me tell you. And the kids adore her and her creativity. You may know her as Gertrude McFuzz from Seussical the Musical. My kids are probably the only people on the planet that now call her Cait, an abbreviation of her given name, Caitlin Parsley, and she's exceptional at finding fun right at home.

Em, Erin "Green Bird" Bankson, Meg, Caitlin "Gertrude" Parsley,
Annika and Lauren after Seussical the Musical

As I began writing this, Caitlin had my four daughters (ages four to nine) at her house for a water carnival that Caitlin and her mom had created. Water carnivals, of course, include water, squirt guns, relays and shaving cream. Two of Caitlin's nieces are in town so each relay team had six members. Hearing Megan, my four-year-old, give me a play-by-play of the shaving cream relay after the fact was pretty cute.

A few weeks ago, Caitlin helped the girls create their own restaurant in our home: Figlie's (which means "daughter" in Italian). The menu choices were pizza or fettucini--and Caitlin brought the necessary ingredients with her. The girls chose pizza, complete with mini pepperoni. That means the fixings for fettucini were available for the girls to make for me and my husband while he was home for his lunch break. 

Meg, Annika, Caitlin Parsley, Lauren and Em

Great shot of Annika's crimped hair...Meg's face? Not so much.

The girls were totally adorable as they did their best to mimic every waiter and waitress we've ever had, complete with refilling drink glasses. And then, of course, there were the bonus services you typically don't get in restaurants like the back massage from Emily and Lauren climbing on Daddy's lap while he ate.  Great service when it's your kids; awkward when it's a regular server!

And Caitlin isn't afraid to jump right in when dress-up is involved. Over the years, Dan and I have been to various masquerade parties. Dan has a seriously awesome vest and suit pants from the 1970s complete with white Italian loafers. I have some unique gowns, including a knee-length, gold lame' dress from the 1960s. 

Anyway, tucked along with those great wigs, cigarette holder, and elbow-length gloves was a crimper and some fabulous silver shoes that fit Caitlin. She got all the girls dolled up, complete with crimped hair (which may make a re-appearance in school this year), and they created their own storyline to accompany their wardrobe. It never ceases to amuse me that playing dress up in our home requires a British accent.

Meg modeling her dress-up gown

Em doing her best Jackie O impression with the
dress-up sunglasses.

Perhaps one of my favorite memories of this last summer with Caitlin is the tea party the girls had with her and Erin Bankson and a miniature tea set, because history is starting to repeat itself. Caitlin and Erin come from families which only had daughters, like ours. And, on Facebook, Erin posted a picture of the Bankson and Parsley sisters also having a mini tea party. For some reason, that just connects with me--the past being mimicked in the present. I'm excited to see the future.  

Meg and Lauren showing off their "ballerina" hair-dos
that Caitlin created.

Cutest hair model ever

Spontaneity, Surprises and Vikings Training Camp

Some days just don't turn out the way you imagined they would.

Earlier this month, I decided we'd be spontaneous and drive up to St. Peter to play at their really cool "Tree-mendous Playground" next to the St. Peter library. It is one of the more amazing parks we've been to in Southern Minnesota, complete with a lot of tunnels underneath for extensive games of hide and seek or make-believe espionage.

It didn't matter that it was still in the 90-degree range.

With all the stops and starts of life, we finally got to St. Peter around 1 p.m. We headed first to the St. Peter Co-op for lunch since we'd never been there before, and I had read about their seriously yummy deli with homemade foods with all fresh ingredients and no preservatives. We picked up some organic spaghetti sauce for less than $3 (good deal!) for later on in addition to our lunch of homemade pizza, organic chips and salsa, organic fruit, and organic chocolate milk. Then, off to the park we went.

On our way back toward Mankato, we were passed by a very bright canary yellow Thunderbird filled with three male twenty-somethings in Vikings jerseys. Seeing an educational moment, I proceeded to proudly tell the girls that Minnesota Vikings training camp--which was going on now--was always held at Mankato State (which is a lot easier to say in a conversation than the new official name of "Minnesota State University-Mankato") and surmised that the guys in the bright yellow car were probably headed in that direction.

Annika then asked the million dollar question: Why can't we go? Oh, a girl after my own heart!

Well, why not? I called Information--otherwise known as my husband--for details on what time the team practices were. We still had time!

We arrived at MSU for our inaugural visit at about 4 p.m. The girls had a chance to bounce in the bounce-house football while I threw a junior football at a large blow-up Samsung phone with a picture of a wide receiver on it. I connected with the receiver on my first throw, thank you very much. (The other two throws? Let's just say I should have hung up my cleats while at the top of my game.)

As we watched the Vikings during their first full-pad practice, I could answer a few of the girls questions. It's been awhile since I've gotten to see the Vikings play much. For nine years we lived in Wisconsin and Chicago so we only got to see the Vikings play when they were playing the Green Bay Packers or the Bears. And, once we moved back to Minnesota, I got too emotional as my team continuously threw the game in the fourth quarter so I stopped watching. But, I still knew what the "orange thingy" did (kept track of yards as we progressed toward a first down) and that the guy in the red shirt was the quarterback. Surprisingly, the girls didn't ask me what a QB did.

Then there were the questions like "Who's number 26? Who's number 81? Who's number 7? Can we go home now?" to which I responded, "I have no idea, don't know, Christian Ponder, no." A nice gentleman from Truman (his Fairmont Medical Center water jug gave him away) offered us his umbrellas for a bit so that helped extend the girls' patience because, after practice, I really did want to go see the players up close and get a few autographs.

Which is just what we did. At 5:10 p.m., with many of our fellow bleacher-mates, we trooped down Stadium Road to stand by some blockades set up by the field house.

Fans, a lot of whom were pre-teen boys, were clamoring for autographs. We got as close as we could to one of the players when a tall gentleman said to us, "Did you want his autograph? I'll get it for you. That's my son." I was talking to the dad of Brandon Fusco, a rookie center in 2011 who only played in three games. Meeting his very proud dad was pretty cool! Brandon talked a bit to 4-year-old Megan who proudly spelled her name for him as he signed our training camp playbook. From there, the girls' enthusiasm for the experience and the team grew.

We ended up with six autographs (Fusco #63, Kicker Blair Walsh #3, Wide Receiver Jerome Simpson #81, Linebacker Solomon Elimimian #59, Running Back Toby Gerhart #32, Offensive Tackle Phil Loadholt #71) and some good stories and a lot more enthusiasm for the pre-season. Cost? Parking was $7, the Sharpie marker for autographs was $2.50, and a bottle of water was $2.50. Overall experience? Priceless.

Road Tripping for Quality Family Time

(Sorry this is so late. I thought I'd posted this last month!)

Ah, the great American road trip! Who hasn't taken one of those during the infamous Summer Break? This year, I had the chance to go on a road trip with Annika to visit family in the Chicago area. For us, this was a big hairy deal as it isn't often just the two of us get to spend time together.

So, of course, there was the prerequisite planning for the best way to get there. For Annika, one highlight was finding out it was legal for her to ride in the front seat through three states.

For me, the best part was picking our music playlist. So I chose about 30 CDs that I know my husband doesn't particularly like listening to that I thoroughly enjoy. En route, Annika then got to choose which six went into the CD player.

Dan and I have quite a CD collection which doesn't get used much now that he has a small mp3 player. But me? I'm old-school. I have a "dumb" phone and don't text. And I don't own any cool little musical gadgets. I mean, I just finally got rid of my Sony Walkman about two years ago. I still haven't gotten rid of all my cassettes yet. Fortunately my Swagger Wagon (a term coined by Toyota in some of their ads for the Sienna mini-van) still has a cassette player.

But I do love my tunes, and this was my chance to help Annika become a renaissance kind of girl, well-rounded in her musical tastes. (This comes after my successful campaign to help my "baby" brother become a renaissance man which included holding doors open for me and being able to correctly identify two singing cowboys!)

So, armed with our Pringles and Crystal Light To-Go packets, Annika chose the discs as we began our eight-hour voyage. Now any of the selections would have been fine with me. What's great is that Annika really had no idea what any of them were. I mean, what nine-year-old has heard of Barry Manilow? (I admit, when I was 17, I went to one of his concerts with my mom at the University of Minnesota. I don't think there was a single guy in the audience.)

Annika chose The Monkees, Songs that Got Us Through World War II, Celine Dion, Nichole Nordeman,  Stacie Orrico, and Jake. So we covered pop from the 1960s, classic tunes (like "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy") from the 1940s, adult contemporary from the 90s and Christian Contemporary that was cool 10 years ago.

Well, Annika has a new favorite group--The Monkees. I'm kind of hoping that since I got to her first she'll be more partial to my styles of music than Dan's (which include a lot of "hair bands" from the 1980s along with U2). So far, so good! (Alas, when we got to Celine, Annika deemed the music "cheesy" and then asked what cheesy meant.)

The long drive to Chicago went quickly and was surprisingly like taking a road trip with a friend. During our week-long stay, we stayed with my aunt and uncle. During the day, we had no plans which was fabulous. We would just go with the flow.

While in Illinois, we had a chance to go garage saling with my Grandma Dawn.
This was at one of the sales!

What Annika wanted to do many days was learn how to sew! We had brought some sewing pieces from my Gramma (yes, that is the correct spelling for that grandma!) that Annika wanted to stitch together as a shirt for her 18-inch doll. She began by taking some of the Americana fabric and piecing together, by hand, a folk-art United States flag for the shirt design. Because it was only her second time sewing and hand-stitching is painstakingly slow, that's as much as she completed during her several sewing sessions. But she got rave reviews from my aunt on her neat, small stitches.

My uncle also took us to see some of the best thrift stores in the area. We had a lot of fun picking out some wonderful finds. And, since we had driven to Chicago, we had plenty of room to take all of our finds back with us!

My sisters Sara and Becky also made a quick trip to Illinois.
This is Lucas and Kennedy in Uncle Brian's back yard.

Go, Brody! Rockin' the Hula hoop.

My cousin Judy wearing the mini-Hula.
Oh, if only my waist were this small! 

While in Illinois, we went to a baby shower for Laura,
my cousin's wife. She has since given birth to healthy twins!

On our way back to Minnesota, Annika and I made a point to go through Lake Geneva, Wis., and pass by Stone Manor, the largest mansion in that area. Built by a Chicago real estate tycoon in the early 1900s, the 18,000-square-foot Italianate palace is now houses five condos priced at over $1.6 million each. But the building is still amazing. (You can take an online tour of one of the home here: http://bit.ly/Stone1.) And it gave us a chance to get some Caribou Coffee and Potbelly sandwiches before returning home.

Our trip was an awesome way to spend some quality, captive-audience time with my daughter. I'm thinking, if I can talk Dan into it, I might do this again next summer with the next oldest daughter. Hopefully, she too will share my eclectic musical taste!

**
While at Uncle Brian's, we had dinner with quite a few people, including the boyfriends of my two cousins. This vid shows the crew getting into the fun of freeze tag as JC and Judy chase the kids (much to the peril of JC's health) and Nick helps unfreeze my nephew...