After the [really loud] concert today, the kids wanted to have one of their own.  The afternoon looked like this:   they even swapped out instruments (think drums, foot drums, trumpets, banjos, cellos) and switched off with the "lead vocals".  It was quite an entertaining afternoon.  (Actually, it was the concert that wouldn't end… 🙂…

Zach got to play in a 2nd and 3rd grade tournament this weekend – 3 games of "real" baseball, including keeping score, dugouts, scoreboards, chalked fields, the whole 9 yards.  He was in heaven.  Or Iowa.  Or maybe just SE Minnesota.  Didn't matter… it was a dream come true for him.  My favorite parts of…

They are always magical!  We will sure miss them when we move next summer!  I guess we should stay up late more nights trying to catch them…

One of my absolute favorite things about summer here is the Harmony for Mayo concert series… every Monday there is a 50 minute concert at lunchtime in the Peace Plaza downtown, and we take our lunch and listen.  When we first started going years ago, it was in a big grassy area where the kids…

Who knew getting a new nozzle for the hose could be so much fun?  (Or so hard to share sometimes…)

Looks can be deceiving.  From the top, this looks like a regular (though dated) Little Tikes table.  Crawl underneath, however, and you will find yourself in "Venturer" – one of the space shuttles in NASA's fleet.  In its early years it took Zach into space more times than I could count.  Emma has also taken…

4 days of the hottest sustained weather Rochester has seen in a decade.  Outdoors at the coach's private pool, up theprivate lane (where you had to park at the bottom and then walk, and walk, and walk…)  And of course a 30 min. lesson, then a 30 min. wait, and another 30 min. lesson.  Carter deserved…

Garden then:                                                                       Meg then:  (2 months)                garden now:                                                                          meg now:  (almost 4 months!)                 If I didn't have the proof right in front of my eyes, it would be hard to believe that the time has gone so fast!

Carter has a little cold.  He occasionally coughs.  When it is bedtime and he coughs, even once or twice, then he says over and over and over and over, "I can't stop coughing!  I can't… stop… coughing!!"  (usually he never coughs at all during the tirade.)  I usually offer solutions:  Try a drink of water."…