Odd

Like most people (I hope), I find some odd things while sorting laundry. Tonight I found the following in the pockets of Robert's jeans:

rock
quarter
Lego person head
AAA battery
pencil top eraser
empty Milky Way wrapper
half a yellow crayon
rubber band
green froot loop (uncrushed)
and.... drum roll...
a clove of garlic

Perhaps it's Halloween related. Whatever the case, I'm glad I checked the pockets before throwing them in the washer/dryer.

How about you? What crazy things have turned up in the laundry at your house?

Finally, Autumn

We can't seem to make sense of the weather lately. We saw 80 degrees last week. But now we're back to wearing sweatshirts, rather than shorts.

The snap dragons we planted for Colleen's birthday in April continue to bloom into October. Here you see they are slightly crowded by fallen leaves but still going strong.

A leaf blower is a handy tool, especially when there are four children waiting to jump into leaves. Do you know how hard it is to get all of them to look at the camera when there's a giant pile of leaves to be scattered? The photo below is earlier this week. You can just see Amelia in there sitting in front of Elizabeth.



While searching for photos I came across this photo of Amelia and Colleen (lowest), taken one year ago and shown here for comparison.

Fun with The Works

As an end-of-the-summer gift, Nonna got us a Groupon for The Works, a handmade mini-science museum in Edina. This morning we went and spent many hours there. The kids even ran into a few friends. Although they enjoyed the zoetrope, pneumatic bike, binary machine, giant zipper, pulleys and a foaming lab experiment, their favorite things to do were building and racing K-nex cars and the foam bricks. Literally hours and hours of building walls and knocking them down, over and over. Huge fun!!

There are lots of photos on Flickr.

Robert's singing debut

Robert has been in the children's choir at church for a year now, and Mary, the choir director, suggested when the summer started that he and I should cantor a Mass together.

I wasn't quite sure he was ready, and I couldn't really get Robert to practice music with me. But during the school year we also have a weekly prayer service before religious ed starts, and since those are geared toward the kids, it's all stuff the kids know, including Robert. So he stood up there with me, with his own microphone, and sang.

Once I knew he had it handled, I just tried to stay out of the way and let him do his thing. He did great!

I hear through the grapevine that Cate was beaming with pride. Robert also said he got plenty of compliments.

P.E.

Robert came to me this morning, feet dragging, shoulders down, and said in his why-me? voice:

"Mom, this is the day. It's the one mile run. I need a protein bar or something to get me through this."

I gave him a Clif bar which he promptly flipped over to read the nutritional information on the back. With relief he said, "Thank goodness. 10 grams of protein." Then he shuffled off to the bus stop, resigned to his fate.

... and beyond!

Colleen showed me a new trick - pinching a rubber band in half. I said "Great fish, Colleen!" to which she replied,

"It's not a fish, Mom. It's infinity!"

That'll teach me not to underestimate a kindergartner. I asked her what infinity is and she told me that "infinity is a lot. It goes on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and evvvvvvver." Yep, she knows what she's talking about. What are they teaching kids in school these days?

I think we have a problem

Setting the scene, Colleen and I are in the kitchen on Saturday. Colleen comes in to look at the calendar.

She asks, "What day is it today?"

I told her it was the 18th.

She said, "What regular day?"

I told her it was Saturday, Sept. 18.

She said, "OK," and left.

Two minutes later she comes back into the kitchen and says, in a voice worthy of a confessional: "Mom, I think we have a problem. I forgot to go to school yesterday."

Colleen stayed home from school on Friday because she was sick. But we had never told her she wasn't going in to school.

I gave her a hug and told her she would go back to school on Monday.

Cousins Group Photo, sort of

Every August since moving to Minnesota the cousins have posed for an official photo. I think I'll leave the photography to Neil or Patrick because this is what happened when I tried. Sigh.

Don't we all?

We've overheard some good stuff over the years. Here's one from this afternoon. I was in the kitchen and the kids were downstairs playing I don't know what. There was some excited, unintelligible chatter, then this....

Colleen: "I will not run for my life. Why are you always telling me that?! You have issues with running I think."

Colemans at Wrigley, and more

Phew, what a whirlwind! Day Two of our one and a half in Chicago ended sometime around 11 p.m. when we finally got out of Wrigleyville. Although we had to leave the ballpark in the top of the 11th, hey, we had three kids happy (despite the look on Robert's face, promise) up until that time. With the Cubs-Cardinals game tied and no end necessarily in sight, we walked. The go-ahead run came up as we left Wrigley and the noise of Cardinals fans was deafening.

Robert was very much into this ballgame, rooting hard for the Cubs because we had Cardinals fans behind us. They loved the kids, especially Robert wearing his Joe Mauer jersey. I had thought perhaps he would not be the only person in Wrigley Field last night in a Mauer jersey, although I don't know that for a fact. (We did see a bunch of Twins hats and shirts and one Denard Span jersey.)

Earlier in the day we attended Mass at Nanny and Pa's parish in Niles, Ill., where Nonna and Da were married. We visited Nanny's grave, the first time for any of the kids, none of whom were alive when she died in 1997. That was followed by a trip downtown to go to the top of the Sears Tower (Robert refused to call it by its new name, the Willis Tower, and they were still selling Sears Tower memorabilia). The kids were great with the hour-plus wait in line. Colleen was a little scared but not so scared she wouldn't go up to the windows and look out.

Plus we had found a free parking spot on the street just two blocks from the tower.

It took us a while to get to a spot on the beach -- where does one park to get to the lake? We drove around a lot and finally found another free spot on the street. We did well on parking early in the trip, which made the $20 we paid to park near Wrigley more bearable. So we had to walk three-quarters of a mile to get there, in flip-flops, not a problem. Unfortunately, because of high levels of bacteria, they were not allowing people in the water. Robert was bummed out about it but got over it by eating one of the best cheeseburgers he's ever tasted. (He got one fresh off the grill because the ones already cooked and wrapped all had tomato on them. The kid behind the counter wanted me to just pull the tomato off. I told him my son was allergic.)

They also built sand castles with the John Hancock tower in the background. Colleen was sad when we had to leave, but not for long. We also saw no fewer than five rabbits on the lawn of apartment buildings along Lake Shore Drive on the walk back to the car.

The ballgame was a great time, too. Everyone got free T-shirts (I saw another fan wearing theirs when I stopped to get the kids into the bathroom somewhere between Des Plaines and Rockford.) Colleen didn't ask "when is it done?" until the sixth inning or so, and didn't make life too miserable when she was trying to take a nap in the ninth and 10th. Robert got very upset when Colleen was rooting for the Cardinals, following the crowd behind us.

Other highlights.

• Colleen was a great walker, all weekend. I put the stroller in the trunk but never pulled it out.
• Colleen sang every word and every note of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Better than Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly did, if you ask me.
• Driving down Waveland about an hour before game time and just watching the crowd.
• Robert letting Elizabeth use his camera pretty much all weekend without a complaint. She made use of the panoramic feature, including the shot at the end of this post of Wrigley about a half-hour before game time. Click the image for a bigger version.
  
• The giardiniera at Wrigley, immediately made me wish I'd gotten the Italian beef sandwich instead of the sausage, but I put it on anyway. Nice and hot.
• We couldn't get down the Obamas' street on our visit to the Hyde Park neighborhood. Blocked off by Secret Service.
  
• Elizabeth was a trooper, a couple of times, especially taking Colleen to the ladies room in a couple of key circumstances while I either had to stay in a line or stay with the car.
• The trip home was pleasantly uneventful. A special shout-out goes to the nearly full moon, which was bright and helped keep fatigue away until the pre-dawn light took over in the final hour of the drive.
  
• The kids slept all the way. And then for five more hours after we got home and poured ourselves into bed.
  

Great day in Chicago

Thankful for the following:

Rain that happened before we got here.

Kids patient enough to wait for dad's deep dish pizza.

A museum that has membership reciprocity with the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Two little kids who think sleeping on the pullout couch in a hotel is a cool adventure.

A cool IMAX film everyone could enjoy.

Dessert for four for $2.50 at Target.

An oldest daughter who can get the youngest one bathed.

Hope for such good fortune tomorrow.

Photo: The kids outside the Museum of Science and Industry, posing with an R2D2 mailbox.

Midnight Mumblings

The latest installment of Midnight Mumblings, where one of the kids walks into the room three-quarters asleep and says something nonsensical. Tonight it was Elizabeth again.

"It was the floor. It wasn't the books. It was the juice, so it didn't get hurt."

She says this while showing me her water bottle.

Elizabeth also wandered into the bedroom a couple nights ago and said, "I was just checking where everyone was. Where did everyone go?" Everyone was in their proper bed. Except her. She didn't remember getting up when I asked her the next day.

So far, Colleen has always been coherent, at least when talking to me.

More about Dimensions Academy

We've raved a couple times about the school experience that Elizabeth has received here in Bloomington and ranted (more privately) about the poor experience we had in Minneapolis public schools.

Minnesota Monthly magazine caught on to all the fuss about what's going on here in education in Minnesota, and specifically in Bloomington, writing about Dimensions Academy, the gifted program Elizabeth spent her past year in in sixth grade, and Elements, which Robert will be joining next year as a third-grader. Many people commute their kids from our former Southwest Minneapolis neighborhood to take advantage of the program, and in fact, Robert has a friend with an older sibling who gets driven in from Prior Lake to attend Bloomington schools for the DA program. Even not in the Elements program this past year, Robert received just a fantastic education from his second-grade teacher, Mrs. Evans.

I shudder to think of where we might be living and where the kids would be attending school if the gifted and talented coordinator at our Minneapolis school hadn't told us, off the record, about Dimensions Academy.

I recommend reading the article.

Four days in ...

So we're four days into our grand Bloomington adventure. Cate is safely in Ireland with Patty and Jeannie. And so far the kids have gotten all their meals, have been to bed on time, the laundry and dishes are caught up and all that jazz.

Elizabeth is trying not to let the extra authority go to her head. I do definitely need her help, just because I'm still working at home during the day. But in the afternoons she has taken to crocheting upstairs in our bedroom while watching TV. She needs her alone time, after all, and basically neither of us is going to get much of it the next few weeks. She and I also have a touch-base meeting every night, where I encourage her to speak freely. She did ask one good question and I hope she will continue to be honest.

Robert shows most outwardly how much he misses his mom. Colleen will mention Cate in passing and Robert will instantly look a little sad. He mopes. He recovers. He doesn't like to talk about it. Tonight he didn't feel much like dinner but he was quick to remind me that he had a whole sandwich for lunch instead of his usual half, so I didn't make a big deal out of it. He asked if he could have cereal for dinner, but I told him cereal for breakfast, PB&J for lunch and cereal for dinner was not going to cut it.

Colleen is doing great so far. She doesn't have a whole lot of worries. Someone gets her breakfast in the morning. She plays on the computer, reads books, gets outside a little bit but has a hard time getting her siblings to go along with her outside. She and Robert each got a new Webkin in a care package from Patty, while Elizabeth got a Harry Potter game for the Wii. My goodness, they can kill a lot of time with those things!

Elizabeth has the night off, sleeping over at a friend's house. Much deserved. There she doesn't have to help get anyone ready for bed or clear dishes. Well, she might have to clear the dishes, not sure.

For a high-tech guy, I keep the calendar pretty low-tech. Any new appointments or items for the to-do list are on the one-a-day calendar on the desk in my home office. Tomorrow is pretty busy. Robert was invited to a classmate's birthday party, Elizabeth needs to be picked up from the sleepover, Colleen is spending the night with Neil and Alicia and Elizabeth and I are going to a family get-together. So, today we had to go out and buy a gift and drop Elizabeth off at her friend's. Also, Mom came over and picked up the kids and took them to the park for a few hours, helping them knock an item off the bingo card.

Sorry, no pictures. But I promise they are all still alive.

This summer's to-do list

Two down, 23 to go. The summer bingo card is Cate's concoction -- a way to keep the kids engaged, perhaps, or keep them from asking to do too many things? Not sure. But what we have is this:

So far only the free space and one other have been marked off in the few days since Elizabeth drew this up. And click on the image to see a larger version -- the details are worth it.

Some of these are things Elizabeth wants to do, some Robert wants, some Colleen wants. I have something on this list, too.

When the first bingo is achieved, we take a trip to Dairy Queen. If we get the cover-all, well, we'll figure something.

Meanwhile, we'll see you at the bandshell sometime soon, or maybe riding the trolley!

Safe travels

As we speak, Cate is on the trip of a lifetime, as she's heading to Ireland with her mom and sister.

There were more than a couple of tears shed by the youngest members of the family today as we dropped Cate off at the airport. She won't be back for more than two weeks.

I hope she thinks about us but doesn't worry. We'll be fine. She's left town for a week at a time a couple times before in the past couple of years, so we can take it. Meanwhile, I'll whip these kids into shape.

Ehh, who am I kidding!

Have fun, Cate!

Welcome to Xzandorf

In looking back at a few old posts, namely ones with the label Somehow the kids all smiled and looked at the camera, I was reminded that Elizabeth dubbed a "planet" set up in the center at Linden Hills Park as Xzandorf.

At the time I noted that word was not in Google's database.

This is no longer the case.

Do note that all of the other references are newer than Oct. 31, 2008.

Grillin' with Grands

It's way too late in the evening to think of anything clever but I wanted to share the latest photo (taken by Uncle Neil) of the kids. Here are Pat and Donna with their four grandchildren. We had a great visit last weekend. Good food, good company.

Losing part of the family

Nikki was a much-traveled, well-loved cat, and had been part of the Coleman family off and on for as long as the kids can remember, until she died Tuesday night. We believe she was 21 years old.

Nikki was not actually our cat -- she was Jeannie's cat. But she's lived in our house off and on for probably 10 years. Cate's family rescued her when she was abandoned by downstairs neighbors in the Chesterfield Apartments in Levittown, Pa., sometime before Cate left for college in the fall of 1990. Nikki was not fully grown yet. She had been left on the balcony of the apartment when the renters moved out and they heard her meowing.

Nikki lived with us for most of a decade, starting in our Reston townhouse, where she joined us and Todd, before Todd died in November 2001. She came with us when we bought the house in Sterling and Patty took care of her there before Patty left for Ireland.

She loved the back of the chair, and as a baby Robert (this photo is April 2004) loved to play with her. She was very calm and peaceful, sitting almost like a statue of a cat. She would roll over and expose her tummy for you to pet. She had an insistent purr, probably like most cats, but really wanted you to continue petting her.

My brother, Ryan, has long been a cat lover and took Nikki home with him on a 20-some-hour drive after covering the Stagg Bowl in 2007, at a time when we had three kids and were still trying to manage two children who were under 5 along with two nearly full-time jobs. We visited her a couple times at Ryan's place while living with mom and dad. But she came to live with us when we bought the house here. And we've known she was on her last legs for a long time.

Nikki was diagnosed with breast cancer about six months ago, and it was clear the spring in her step was long gone. When she was younger, the kids used to love playing with her, using the flashlight to throw spots on the wall or the floor that she would attack. She and Todd co-existed well. Nikki only walked out onto the back deck of the house in Sterling a few times, and a quick rattle of the food container always brought her running back.

She never lost her love of eating, however, or her plaintive meow when she thought it was time to be fed. She couldn't jump up on the kitchen countertop anymore, but the table was still accessible (if she was able to use the chair as a launching point). To the last, she would be so insistent on eating that she would stick her head in the food bowl while you were pouring it, meaning you had to battle her to get the food in the bowl and not all over the floor.

When Nikki went to the vet Tuesday night, we knew she wasn't coming back. Elizabeth understood. Robert had been prepped many times but still didn't fully understand until I called him over, sat him on my lap and told him Nikki would not be coming home. He cried. Colleen perhaps still doesn't understand -- last night she talked again about "when Nikki comes home from the vet" and I decided to use the D word in response and tell her Nikki died. She had a sad look on her face, and I told her it was OK to be sad, so she cried. But she was on to the next train of thought in a couple of minutes.

Todd died the night before Thanksgiving in 2001 and we buried him at the edge of the backyard in Reston, eventually covered by a flagstone to keep scavengers away. We'll do a short memorial service and place a marker in our garden for Nikki.

Thanks for letting her be part of our lives, Jeannie.

The things you hear at night

My goal isn't usually to embarrass the children, but I just have to say: One of our children makes nursing sounds when sleeping at night. This child hasn't nursed in a while. Heck, none of them have.

Just saying.

A good question

One of the benefits of working at home rather than 'nameless office park Verizon facility' is that my home office is a lot more like any other newsroom. I have more than one computer at my disposal and satellite television next to my desk.

While the marathon tennis match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut was in progress this morning for the third day, I invited Robert in to witness history and made sure he understood that what he was watching had never happened in the history of professional tennis. And I explained some of the rules of the game to him, which, he informed me, are different from the way tennis is played on the Wii.

The fifth set is tied somewhere in the mid-60s at this point, in the third day of competition after it had been suspended twice because of darkness.

Then, Amelia walked in, saw the television, and promptly asked Robert, "who win?"

Indeed, such was the 11-hour question. About 20 minutes later, it was Isner. And Robert had long since returned to the Wii.

Pasta on the patio with Pa

Going out to dinner

As the family got larger, going out to dinner gradually went by the wayside. It was about the time that Robert started needing his own meal, then Colleen came along and took up space and attention and made it a lot more expensive and less enjoyable to just sit around a table anywhere, let alone out to dinner.

But lately we've ventured out a little bit, and it's been downright pleasant. The kids can read the menu for themselves and decide what they want. We don't have to do the talking for all the kids when the waiter comes. There's no wrangling a highchair.

Tonight we went out to dinner courtesy Mom and a gift card to The Cheesecake Factory from about 2002. It's been in my wallet for the better part of a decade, unused. With a brand-new baby in the house, we weren't going out anywhere, and in those days finding babysitting wasn't a given. The Cheesecake Factory has been loud and difficult to get into -- who can wait 40 minutes for a table with kids in tow? Dinner out for a while was destined for pizza places or semi-fast food (Cate and the kids eat McDonalds while I walk over to grab takeout from Chipotle), or the occasional trip to Applebee's.

And not that The Cheesecake Factory is so darn fancy, either.

So it sat, unused. Mom would ask (bug) me about it on occasion, and you know how gift card issuers used to like to charge a fee for not using the card. So I thought perhaps it might have had its money run out. When cleaning out my wallet I would see it and wonder if it was still good, but always hang onto it, even while assuming the worst. I told Mom many years ago that we had used it, just to get her off my back about it. (Nagging me about something is a sure way to keep me from wanting to do it.)

But today I looked up the phone number of their gift-card balance check line, punched in the number and was somewhat surprised to find it was still good for the full value, so we packed up our somewhat larger and older family and went. We got there about 5:30, so seating was not an issue at the only Cheesecake Factory in Minnesota. We had a nice meal, everyone ate until they were full, and you can see above that there are plenty of leftovers for future meals.

The only downer: Elizabeth is too old for the kids menu. We knew that already and loyal readers of the blog have already seen her tastes run to the expensive end of the spectrum, but we have a no-steak policy. She had a Thai chicken pasta dish, Robert had pasta with marinara, etc., and all the dishes were gigantic.

And Robert had a good time afterward playing around the gigantic horse, which is actually part of the P.F. Chang's exterior next door, but so be it.

So, Mom, thanks. Finally we used it.

One year of one car life

We're about one year into living with just one car. Our Nissan Sentra bit the dust after it was totaled about a year ago. At that time, I thought it would be only a temporary situation, but we ended up having to take that insurance payment and rolling it into the down payment for our house.

So here we are. As a result, I work from home about 95 percent of the time. We can't always do the things we'd like to because we can't be two places at once. We've gotten by with occasional lending of vehicles by friends and relatives, but don't have the money to afford either the down payment or any kind of monthly payment.

Meanwhile, we keep looking at vehicles that can seat more than five -- not that we are going to have more children, but so our growing three can spread out a little bit. Or if we want to, say, go buy a snowblower, we can transport one. Or when we have guests in from out of town, all of us can go somewhere in one vehicle.

Cate and I have had two cars for a while, but it was deceiving. We've never had two car payments at once -- the second car was almost always one bought or gifted from a relative. I was sure we'd be able to save money in our new house but income is flat and my health insurance went from bad to awful last winter.

Reminds me, I should really be writing my freelance pieces for USA Today rather than writing on the blog. Whoops.

The day Robert turns 8

I don't particularly remember third grade with any fondness. I didn't know the term then, but I feel comfortable in retrospect in saying my teacher was a prick. Going into third grade, Robert will hopefully have a bit of a different year.

We celebrated Robert's last day of 7 last night with a quick trip to Dairy Queen (don't tell Elizabeth) and Robert was particularly wired all evening. Elizabeth stayed home and put Colleen to sleep, but that's OK -- she is particularly eager to earn money for a purchase she has in mind, so we'll see if she can make it.

Robert was greeted at school by his friends, who wished him a happy birthday en masse as he walked in. Presents will come tonight, but he also got to sign up for one of his first big-kid/grownup privileges last night: Robert now has a gmail address. I suppose we could give him access to write his own blog posts, too, but that will have to come later.

One of my first emails to Robert was to thank him in advance for not waking me up at 6:45 a.m. like he did eight years ago today. Thankfully, he complied.

And tonight, pancakes for dinner!

Robert's journey continues

I really should let Cate write this blog post, since she has worked very hard on this all year, but we only have a few minutes to blog today, so I'm here to report that Robert got into the Elements program for the Bloomington schools for next year.

After a disastrous first-grade year, we weren't sure if Robert was going to realize his potential, but he's really blossomed at Ridgeview and with Mrs. Evans as his teacher.

Elements is the relatively new second- and third-grade version of the Dimensions Academy (gifted and talented) program that Elizabeth is in. Cate has been painstakingly collecting Robert's work and tidbits for this program ever since we found out we couldn't apply for the program last year. (We didn't have the test scores and Minneapolis Public Schools was extremely unhelpful. We were glad to commit to leaving MPS for Bloomington even though we didn't have a house here at the time.)

We are so psyched. He is going to do great.

Colleen is a kindergartner!

Many a milestone in the past month or so, some of which we've missed talking about. Robert made his first communion in April and Colleen turned 5. Robert is riding his bike with super-duper confidence, which is a nice change over last summer.

But yesterday was Colleen's preschool graduation, so she is now officially a kindergartner. She made some really good friends in preschool, including Tess, whom she only talks about all the time. I chatted with her dad picking Colleen up from school yesterday and was glad to find out the feeling is mutual.

I came armed to get pictures of the "graduation" ceremony and a photo of Colleen and Tess. What I wasn't expecting, though, was the coordinated outfits.

Not that 5-year-olds are capable of coordinating outfits. Heck, this was the first time Colleen had ever worn this. You can click on the photo for a larger version but the only real difference is that Tess is wearing a butterfly and Colleen a mermaid.

Happy birt

Just wanted to take a moment to wish our oldest daughter a happy half-birthday. So Elizabeth is just six months from being a real teenager -- unlike the emotional teenager she sometimes is.

I had a shopping errand to run tonight and took her out with me. We were successful. Then she just casually mentioned it was her half-birthday. (Sure enough, May 24, you could look it up.) So, when I stopped for gas I brought her in to the convenience store and told her she could pick something out of the ice cream treat freezer.

A little private time.

The drain brain

Robert is a big fan of listing pros and cons. If you want to know every eventuality or consequence to even the simplest choice, Robert is the one to ask. He can dream up dozens of consequences, several times removed from the initial question.

Recently he debated whether we should fix a slow drain in our bathroom sink. He googled the problem and found several easy fixes but he hesitated because seeing the water in the sink might teach Colleen exactly how much water she was using and possibly wasting when she brushed her teeth. Then he changed his mind because he didn’t think it would take her that long to learn that lesson and it would probably be more expensive if the clog got larger over time.

He told me that “plumbers are expensive because they are skilled at stuff nobody wants to do themselves.”

Robert offered to help me plunge the drain but, as he said, “for safety issues” he didn’t want any part of pouring boiling water down the drain.

Eaty gourmet

I'm sure we all remember the great stuff we used to make ... or make our parents make, as a kid. Peanut butter and banana sandwich, grilled cheese with a pickle in it, some potato chips on top of our bologna sandwich.

That last part was important. It was the only way I could choke down the bologna sandwich on wonder bread that went with me to school for lunch on occasion. (Sorry, mom.)

Well, Colleen has been experimenting for herself lately, and using most of the same materials I'm sure we all used. Except that the other day, she took it one step further.

This is Colleen's banana dog. It's a banana with peanut butter and grape jelly on a hot dog bun. She pretty much ate all of it. In fact, I'd say it might not be that bad.

Oh, Robert!

I'm such a sucker. Just before bed Robert came across one of his favorite non-cartoon t.v. shows - Build it Bigger. I let him stay up to finish the program. They were in a gold mine in South Africa. Robert was exhausted but fascinated.

Quote, when they blasted a few tons of rock: "I could totally do that."

Photo No. 1: Tired Robert watching TV.

Photo No. 2: Robert perks up when the host and crew experience an earthquake a gazillion feet below the surface of the earth.

Happy Easter from the Colemans!

The pork shoulder is about ready to fall off the bone, so I don't have time to write, but it was a full first Easter in the new house. Although we had opportunities to spend the day with the extended family, we had some things we needed to get done, like find some of the good hiding places for eggs in our new yard and the like.

We took plenty of photos but in brief:

• All dressed up for church -- similar to what we wore to Amelia's second birthday party the day before but different enough that it deserved another photo.
• Easter egg hunt in the backyard. Cate and I banished the kids to the basement for a little while while we put the eggs out in various levels of difficult hiding places.
• Cate crocheted Easter baskets for each of the kids. You can see them in the photos. Elizabeth just said, "I really like my basket, Mom!"
  
• After the kids all found their eggs, they hid eggs for me and Cate to find. One got lost in the shuffle and another accidentally went over the fence for our neighbors to have.
• Pork shoulder has been marinating since yesterday afternoon and has been roasting in the oven since 11 a.m. today. Ready to pull it momentarily, which is why I'm being brief.
• Visited Pa, and there's a photo of him with the kids in the photos link above.
• Lots of chocolate was consumed.
• Hello to all we missed today!
  

And then some other items from today:

After Colleen got dressed this morning, she looked at the mirror in the living room and said, "Ooh, I look good!" And she did. She was twirling -- the dress is definitely made for twirling.

If you get a chance to look really closely at the photos from Amelia's second birthday (also on Facebook) and compare them to the photos from today, you'll see that Robert is missing a tooth. Cate pulled it yesterday afternoon. It had already been knocked looser in a Monopoly accident on Friday afternoon (Robert hit his own face maniacally shaking his dice) and Cate finished it off.

The kids gave a name to each of the 24 or so plastic eggs we got for hiding. So sorry that Jose didn't get to fulfill his Easter destiny of being hidden and then found. The kids were playing with him in the basement and he never got out.

Elizabeth: "We ate awesome cake that Mom made yesterday. There!"

Some of the eggs in today's hunt didn't have rewards, but challenges. I think Elizabeth was a little confused when she opened an egg that said, "Hop on one foot for a minute." She was not allowed to continue egg hunting until the minute was up. Colleen found one that said, "Do five jumping jacks," and another that said "Go kiss Daddy." I was surprised when she came tearing around the house and grabbed me around the leg and kissed me. Elizabeth also found one that said, simply, "This is a plastic egg."

We got a chance to test out just a few of the great hiding places in our yard. Elizabeth's egg was hidden on the roof of the garage, for example. Robert's was hidden out of his reach in a tree. I buried one halfway in a planter box and another underneath the chin of a decorative rabbit in the front yard. Each of the kids had one with his or her name on it and a special treat, then they were competing for the rest of the eggs.

The forsythia are in full bloom at Nonna and Da's, as well as the pussy willows.

An Easter Story

At the breakfast table, Colleen tells a story to Amelia ---

Once upon a time in a galaxy far away, Jesus was coming to town and everybody was there saying "Yay! Yay! You rock!" and Jesus was tired so they gave him a donkey. He was riding the donkey and there were kids there and they said "Hoshana!" And Jesus said "I'm the King of Peace!" Then they had dinner and Jesus got in trouble with the police and they arrested him and threw him in jail. And they lived happily ever after - except then he died. But that's okay because he came back on Easter morning. But then he went away again. It's all very confusing. The End.

Amelia clapped and said "Yay! Yay!"

Speaking of hats... Aunt Jeannie made these for Christmas

Colleen's turn

"Mom, why is my hair so large and can you shrink it for me please?"

I usually try to accommodate anything said with a please. So today I'll be blow drying Colleen's hair straight(ish).

In this picture Colleen's "joyous" hair is restrained by a hat I crocheted. I can't remember what she was looking at but this is one happy little girl.

Elizabeth's turn

The setting: Elizabeth is reading in the upper bunk. I'm reading to Colleen who is in the lower bunk. Colleen has a whole pile of books she wants me to read. I'm exhausted and decide that one story is all I can do. She's obviously disappointed. I have a great idea and say, "Maybe Elizabeth can read you some of her book."

The comeback from Elizabeth: "MOM! Are you insane?!? This is the Klingon Dictionary!!"

I'm sure it's pretty easy to imagine the pre-teen inflection associated with the italics and CAPS in that quote.

Robert's turn

Robert got all dressed up for Picture Day on Wednesday. With his fresh hair cut, church clothes that Nanny got him for Christmas and a clip-on tie, he was ready for his close-up.

When I picked him up from school he said, "Mom, I think I attracted 10 girls today. I looked really good."

Not expecting such a sentence from my seven year old son, I sputtered, "What?!" He confidently replied, "Girls like when guys dress up. You always say I look cute."

True.

When she sings

We have a daughter who doesn't like to sing for her dad. That dad smiles intensely and gets all warm inside when he hears said daughter sing. Usually that happens when she sings along to songs on the radio or on the CD player in the car. It's all he can do to say nothing and just enjoy the moment.

And that's fine.

But she can definitely sing.

The mysterious missing box

Shortly before leaving Virginia, I put all of the important paperwork for my corporation, the one which runs the D3sports.com network of Web sites, into a cardboard box. It was in the kitchen in the spring as I was working on the taxes, and sat there afterward, as we got packed up and headed out.

Move to Minneapolis. I had kind of thought we had the box among the stuff that we left out of storage and drove out with us. But no dice -- we searched through our unpacked belongings many times, for months, checking and rechecking every cardboard box. It contained the rest of the business checks, paperwork dating back years, receipts, the whole nine yards. I looked through our storage containers as much as I could for this mysterious missing cardboard box without luck.

Buy a house, move to Bloomington, unpack the storage containers and get everything out of mom and dad's house. Still nothing. If we have this box, we officially have no idea where. In the meanwhile, we've closed down and opened a new corporation and checking account, so business can continue.

Well, Neil and Alicia are getting ready to sell their place and are looking or some temporary storage, so they came over to help us organize our garage and set aside some space for them. In the process, a bunch of things came inside. In looking through them in my office this morning, I opened a plastic storage container with a lid that had a bunch of files in it.

Bingo.

A year and a half later, mystery solved. Guess we changed the box it was stored in, throwing off the entire search.

A little knowledge ...

Colleen and I were in the grocery store today, with a coupon for tortilla chips. We were trying to decide which ones to get, when Colleen read the labels and said: "Get that one, mommy. It has zero trains in it!"

Presenting the two-time champ

Cate has done it again. The defending St. Thomas the Apostle jello creation champion pulled off the repeat.

Last year, granted, the title was as much a result of Robert's charm as anything else. It was a wedding cake that fell apart and got rebranded as a volcano. This year, we made one entry, and made it work. You can see at left here, Robert defending the Colemans' jello entry from the grazers.

These are not Dots. These are jello dots -- several different colors of jello molded in tiny ice cube trays. In the end, a fairly simple result, but clever and time-consuming, including the precision with which the molds were poured.

Watching Cate pour a lot of work into this (and a lot of jello) this afternoon, and stress out over it, I was ecstatic to find out that "we" had won.

Wednesday night is church night for us, starting with Robert's children's choir practice at 5:30, followed by a community meal, a prayer service and religious ed classes. While the kids and Cate (who assists the kindergarten class) are in class, I'm in church choir rehearsal. When Cate and the kids came into the church to wait for us to finish, I motioned for Robert to come up and sit next to me so I could ask him who won.

It was a close vote, apparently. But not in my mind. Best dish, hands down.

Cate also prepared her grandmother's seafoam salad, which is a green jello whipped with cream cheese and pears, layered. Surely not doing the concept justice. (And Cate wasn't blown away by the imprecision of the family recipe card handed down, either!)

The other part of jello night is playing Bingo, and the parish has these vintage cards from the 1950s. This year, Colleen put her reading skills to the test for a while, playing one card. For most of the two-digit numbers, one of us would have to translate, but she enjoyed it enough to keep playing for three or four rounds before losing interest.

The movies of our childhood

Elizabeth is coming of age, a little bit, and we've slowly allowed/encouraged her to read more mature books and watch more mature movies.

Shortly after we moved into our new house -- which seems somehow to have become a blog-free zone, for which we apologize -- Cate and I brainstormed a list of the quintessential movies of our childhood. For example, when I was Elizabeth's age, I remember Pa taking me to see War Games in the theater. I remember specifically because I got up to go to the bathroom while he was asleep and got in trouble because he woke up and I was gone!

Many of these movies fly past us on DirecTV, and we try to capture them on the DVR. Elizabeth has already watched War Games and Ghostbusters, which is a Cate personal favorite. She's also seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. Here are the other movies she and I identified:

2001: A Space Odyssey
Back to the Future
The Birds
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
E.T.
Field of Dreams
Hoosiers
The Hunt for Red October
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Jaws
Space Camp
Star Trek (original cast, movies 2, 3, 4 and 6)
Star Wars

For Star Wars, that's the original trilogy -- it's funny to hear Elizabeth and Robert refer to the movie we all know as simply Star Wars by calling it Star Wars: A New Hope.

These are primarily movies of the late '70s and '80s, but I would say almost anything is up for discussion. What would you add?