Amateur Shutterbird

Sunday was absolutely beautiful here in the Not Yet Great White North.  So, in the morning, we took the bambini over to the Lake Harriet playground.  Julie brought the camera along and took a bunch of pictures of them running about on the benches in front of the band shell they have there, and by the boats in the water nearby.  Clara wanted to bring the camera Aunt Kate, Uncle Scott, and Cousin Nick gave to Joe some years ago.  After Julie was done taking pictures, Birdie took some pictures, too.  Julie took this picture of Birdie taking pictures.  (Julie's pictures might have been better than Birdie's, and not just because Julie had a great subject--just look at our little shutterbird.)  At dinner, Julie said an offhand thank you to the family for letting her take pictures of them.  All.  The.  Time.  Birdie piped right up and said, "You forgot to thank me for taking you picture, too!"  Thank you, Birdie.  You make a beautiful picture.

Read For a BMX Stunt Guy (Among Other Things)

Fans, as you know, Our Hero has started kindergarten.  That's right: a journey of at least 13 years of learning and enrichment, and--fundraising.  But as the Susan Lindgren Read-a-Thon Co-Chairs would have you know, "We don't want your children (or you!) to sell wrapping paper or magazines."  Oh no, no! "We just want your kids to read like crazy for two weeks and ask friends, family and the community to support their reading with tax-deductible donations to our school."

This year's Susan Lindgren's Read-a-Thon theme is Read to the X-treme.  (Extreme things are always way more extreme when they are not extreme, but X-treme.)  The school-wide goal is 123,000 minutes of reading (and oh yeah--$31,000).  If every student meets the challenge of reading 140 minutes over the course of two weeks (10 minutes a day), then they are bringing in a BMX stunt guy.  (Presumably, he will be X-treme.)

So Fans, should you feel so inclined to pledge a flat amount, or an amount per minute, to Our Hero, please e-mail or text Julie what you're good for and we'll write your name down on the front of this envelope we've got that's due by October 11, and let you know what you owe us after that date when we will be fronting the money Joe raises because the co-chairs apparently assume that all of the pledges will be collected by the final day of the read-a-thon based on a pledge of planned minutes spent reading rather than actual minutes spent reading (which is not X-tremly great planning in our humble opinion).

Should you wish to consider your pledge, we can share that, three days in, Joe has read for 75 minutes (an hour and 15 minutes)--!!!!!  You can see two minutes of that reading right here.

Painting Plates With Silvia

Clara and Julie met Clara's friend, Silvia, and Silvia's mom, Carolyn, at Paint Your Plate this afternoon. We can confirm that the most popular colors to use were pink, purple, and yellow (this last only because it is one of Julie's favorite colors and thus, also Clara's; Julie is cool because Clara is three).  The girls--the little ones--also would only use purple paint brushes.  Paint Your Plate may have been temporarily cleaned out of purple paint brushes.  Certainly, there was also a run on dark purple paint.  Things wrapped up just as the girls--again, the little ones--began to jump around the store filled with shelves of (overpriced) ceramic pottery.  When it was time to hug goodbye, Birdie burst into tears.  Who can blame her?  As Birdie herself said on the way home, "Sometimes you just miss your friends."

When you run out of ceramics to paint purple, you can paint your thumb purple.

No paparazzi please.

Can we get both looking at the camera?

Probably not.

Yeah, that is a really hilarious thought.  So cute.

A Visit From Simone (and Amanda and Josh)

A few nights ago, Joe was asking Julie what the bones in the forearm were called.  Julie has no idea, but it was all good because right then she remembered that her friend, Amanda (whom she first met in eighth grade!), was coming to visit on Saturday with her husband, Josh, and daughter, Simone.  Amanda and Josh are both doctors!  (They are here for the year while Amanda does a colon and rectal surgery fellowship at the Mayo Clinic.  It's true: she's been in school a long, long time.)  So Julie informed Joe that there were two doctors coming on Saturday who could answer that question, and more.  Thereafter, Amanda and Josh were called "The Doctors"--as in, "When will The Doctors be here?"  Once they arrived, however, their shine was quickly overtaken by Simone's.  The first thing Simone said when she arrived was, "I'm three!"  Well, you know how it is with the wee set: "You're three, too!  Great!  We're going to be friends forever!"  Joe, Clara, and Simone spent the next several hours screeching at, and generally being delighted with, each other.  We went to the park and Joe tried to impress Simone by showing her how he now knows how to jump off the twirly slide halfway down, hanging off its edge before dropping to the ground.  He almost kicked her in the head doing it, but whatever.  (Apparently this is also what he is learning in kindergarten.)  So when Amanda and Josh shared that the bones in the arm are the humorous, the radius, and the ulna, Joe sort of couldn't be bothered.

Joe can also do the monkey bars now.

Simone and Birdie

Don't Drink the Water

Julie read to the bambini together tonight on the big bed because Ted is at the last home Twins game with a friend.  She took this very sweet picture from the foot of the bed before clambering up there and in between the bambini.

But shortly before it was taken, not long after Clara pointed to a sizable smear of poop on the edge of the tub and said, "Mommy!  POOP!"--which was just as Julie saw Joe drinking bath water out of one of the miniature plastic Twins caps one can get a sundae in at the Twins' ballpark--Julie had hollered something like, "PLEASE DO NOT DRINK BATH WATER.  PLEASE DO NOT DRINK BATH WATER.  ESPECIALLY IF THERE IS, APPARENTLY, POOP IN IT FROM ONE OF THE PEOPLE SITTING IN IT!!!!!  IT'S NO DIFFERENT FROM DRINKING WATER FROM THE TOILET.  AFTER YOU'VE POOPED IN IT!!!!!  I'M SPEAKING LOUDLY BECAUSE I FEEL THIS IS AN IMPORTANT POINT I'M MAKING."

It's still a sweet picture.