A quick trip to rochester

My parents came out for a very quick weekend to see us. It was great to see them. Penny hadn't seen Papa John for a year but she gave him a huge hug. He roughhoused with her all weekend long.

On Saturday we treated them to a "day in the life of the Rochester Strands"

First it was the farmer's market

Penny always has to carry the flag across the street.

It was cold, but you can never judge coldness by my mom's attire. We've taken photos of her in 55 degree weather with ear muffs.

 Then we headed to the library:

The library has added a bunch of interactive stations. This is the science station.

 And then onto swimming class...and it's only 11:00!

Penny enjoyed hamming it up for her audience. 

We then went out to lunch and came home for some games. Penny beat Papa John in princess yahtzee. He had no chance. He didn't even know the princesses names! Penny was in shock.

 I didn't get any other pictures from Saturday. It consisted of a 2 hour nap for Mommy and Penny and my mom made chimichangas. Earlier in the week Chris said "so I'm buying everything for your mom to make chimichangas She won't mind, right?" This is one meal my brother, sister and I love and always request when we visit. Chris loves it even more than I do. I find it a little ironic that our mom is the national health and PE teacher of the year for K-12 and our favorite meal that she makes is a deep-fried burrito. She does make some amazing non-fried vegetarian dishes too!

Then it was story time. Papa John is reading Penny her favorite story: When Pigasso Met Mootise. It is filled with puns that make you roll your eyes...and eye-rolling puns always makes me think of my dad.

On Sunday we were supposed to go to Mankato for the Mankato Ramble 26 mile bike ride. It was 35 degrees and windy so we opted out. We waited for it to warm up and headed to Lanesboro for the day. I don't think I posted about Lanesboro earlier this year. It is the "bed and breakfast capital" There's a 40 mile bike trail called Root River Trail that goes through a dozen small towns. Lanesboro is the biggest one with population of 760 and about halfway on the ride so there are tons of bed and breakfasts, 3 small community theaters and cute knick knack shops.

Penny requested a "piggy ride" right when we got there.

We rented a "surrey bike" notice again my mom as bundled up as possible and Penny not even wearing a jacket. It was in the 60s by this point.

Due to the wind most of the leaves had fallen but we saw some  pockets of color here and there

The surrey had no gears and those hills were rough!

The whole group on the trail

Eating at the little diner. 

 We then headed to the park.

After the park we drove 5 miles to Whalen (pop 60) for their world-famous pie. No joke, this little town's pie shop has been featured in national magazines including Travel and Leisure. I had gotten the blubarb pie last time so I convinced my dad to get it. The whole time he ate it he said to my mom "I wish I had seen that they had strawberry rhubarb  I should have gotten that" Then he had horrible really bad terrible food poisoning all night from the alleged pie. I do not believe my favorite pie at my favorite pie shop poisoned him, but I'm sure we'll hear for years that he should have gotten the strawberry rhubarb. I tried the sour cream raisin pie. It was good, but really different. I don't know if I'd get it again. Chris got the french silk and said he'd drive the hour to Whalen just to buy a whole pie of it.

And that was our weekend...well, actually my parents had one extra day. They did not tell me that they had changed their travel plans to stay all day Monday. Since they both work for the government neither realized that Chris and I work for the normal world that does NOT get off work for Columbus day (I mean we all now know he wasn't the first here, right? why would we get off work?) So my mom took Penny to an indoor bounce playground, lunch, and the playground and my dad slept on the couch to recover from the alleged pie food poisoning.

Summer knits

I knit a ton this summer but since they were all gifts I didn't post any photos. It's nice to empty my "finished" basket and send them on with handmade Penny cards. (I need to work on my knit photos. I should have looked at these before I gave everything away and couldn't retake the photos. Definitely need to do them in natural light without the flash.)

The first one I actually finished in February for my friend Jenny in Minneapolis. I finally remembered to give it to her when she babysat Penny in September.

Fingerless gloves make the best walk-the-dog gloves in the fall. These were for my sister:

Hat for Laura for her birthday. It is meant to be slouchy, but I don't know if I knit enough slouch into it.

And then the cowl for Jen. She asked me to make this herringbone cowl she saw on a blog. It was challenging so it has some mistakes (that's what makes it homemade with love, right?) I do love how it turned out though.

(I'm such a dork when I don't smile. My absolute favorite knitter Jane Richmond doesn't smile and her pictures are great. I think I need Tyra to help me smise and look fierce. click here to see Jane's photos. That's where I got the patter for Jenny and Laura's hat. She does amazing slouchy hats.)

A close up of the herringbone. The color isn't showing up right in either picture. Too red in the top one and too bright orange in the bottom one.

I'm working on a cowl now...not sure who I'm going to give it to or if I may keep it for myself. This is what it should look like when it is done.

Out of the mouth of Penny

I'm going to have to do these more often. So amusing to hear how she interprets the world.

After seeing a fire truck "Mommy, the fire men beat up the fires then they go to the trees to get the kitties"

A slight mispronunciation: "I really want a teat set for my birthday.  A teat set with princesses on it. My dolly and I can drink teat and eat cookies"

Wanting the impossible: "Mommy, I want to know everyone's name. Tell me everyone's name. Everyone in the world"

Rushing life a tad too quickly: "I want to get marry. Mommy and daddy, can you find me a boy and I can get marry? Maybe I can get marry tomorrow? can you pick me a dress?"

An interest in science: "Can I touch a star? Will it be hot or cold? do the stars go to china?"

The library "Can we go to the libary? I need more for my DVD covection" (I asked her to repeat this twice. I couldn't believe she was talking about her DVD collection, but then she showed me the drawer of DVDs and said she needed "lots and lots in my covection"

Watching the Julie Andrews version of Cinderella: "Mommy, Mary Poppins is 'tending to be Cinderella. She's so silly."

Speaking of silly Penny says everything is "so silly" or "so cuuuute." Also, when she is explaining something she lifts one lip and looks like Elvis. I've tried to get it on camera, but haven't been able to yet.

Follow-up post and Parties galore

Well, it's kind of hard to follow-up after the last blog post. Thank you for your comments. I do want to say that I later read it, and I felt like it made my current anxiety sound worse than it is. I finally got to a place where I could write a little bit about what I went through last year and everything I'm doing to keep things balanced so it doesn't happen again. Writing the post helped me evaluate and remember the techniques I worked on with the life coach. I think the reason I rarely ever share this part of my life is I've always felt guilty dealing with anxiety and depression. I look around at people who struggle with real problems...poverty, illness, abuse etc, and I wonder how I can be so upset when I have so much in my life. Always about taking a deep breath and keeping things in perspective...

And on that note, we had a weekend filled with fun and laughter where I put all the stress and worries aside.  Sometimes when we pack so much in a weekend it goes by in a flash, but this one seemed long, even though it was busy.

First on Saturday we had Penny's birthday party with her day care friends. I broke the rules and didn't invite Penny's whole class. She just switched classes 2 weeks ago so she doesn't even know some of the kids names and still talks a lot about the kids from her preschool class. We invited 10 kids and EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. RSVP'd YES! What?! Is that telling about the Rochester social scene? The preschool parties are the top Saturday activity. We planned a Dora party at the small zoo/park. I'm swearing off outdoor parties! Last year it rained. This year it was "unseasonably cool." The Weather Channel said due to the wind chill it would feel like 36 degrees at the start of the party. It was 75 just a couple days ago. Insane! And yet everyone showed up.

I came up with doing "Find the Animal" bingo and enlisted my brother and Jenn to make the game cards. They did an excellent job, especially since these are all local animals like fishers, porcupines, red tailed hawks. They threw in some elephants, penguins and lions so you actually had to work a little bit to get bingo. The kids loved it. They raced all around the zoo with parents chasing after them. The animals must wonder why they are the ones in the cages!

We had this great idea of giving the kids maps to walk to the picnic area but it was so darn cold the majority of the families drove. (Oh, did you notice Penny isn't wearing her coat? Yeah, she refused to put it on. What a Minnesotan! Two of the boys showed up in shorts and their mom said she couldn't convince them to put on pants. I think we are all in denial that the cold is here).

We did the pinata. Has anyone actually had kids break open the pinata? After 10 minutes we broke open the hatch and I threw the candy out to everyone.

I love Penny's reactions in these photos.

And the candy is on the ground.

 I didn't get any photos of lunch or Pin the Tail on the Swiper. It wasn't until the kids sat down for lunch that we heard any complaints about the cold. Only one parent was originally from Minnesota. Most of the parents had all moved to Rochester in the past few years as fellows or residents. We had families from Ireland, England, Colorado, the east coast. Due to the cold everyone started sharing their first Minnesota winter story, the benefit of snow tires, snow shovels. Good ice breaker! (sorry, I had to...the bad Henry puns are genetic).

Penny and her Dora cake. We never got all 4 candles lit at once due to the wind.

I did not get nearly as many pictures as I wanted, but that's how it goes for the host I guess. I wanted Penny to open presents at the party, but I thought that would be torture to make the kids sit in the cold to watch her. One of the dads did stop us at the end to say his son got up at 7 am to make his card for Penny. It is adorable. It has all these construction paper hearts and watercolor paper and says LOVE. I wish he had been able to see her reaction when she opened it because she said "this is so cuuute!" 4-year-olds are hilarious.

After opening the gifts at home, we got back in the car to head up to my friend Kelly's Oktoberfest party north of St. Paul. Penny got to see Libbi and I got to catch up with a ton of friends. Kelly set up a great scavenger hunt for the kids.

Adam looks like a little boy now!

I got to hand out some baby knits to my friends. They've been sitting here in Rochester for months. Now they can actually use them.

Baby Mara

remember that snowflake hat I started for Penny? I realized about halfway through it was going to be too small.  I gave it to Big Sister Gwen. It was even a bit small for her. Need to have the ears covered.

Smiley Henry seemed happy with his hat.

Penny and Libbi were sword fighting

Such fashionable mamas!

Kelly's dad did a German sing along. Penny said "that was a good show. Can he do it again?" Encore from a 4-year-old is high praise! 

Why don't we try to get our moms and girls photo at the beginning of the night instead of when we are leaving and they are cranky pants?  I don't know the name of the kid photo bombing, but at least he's smiling with his eyes open!

And today we went to breakfast, cleaned the house, enjoyed the school carnival on the next block, and went to the library. I feel refreshed to start another full week!

(I'm just sharing this photo because I love her outfit.  I remember in 2nd grade wanting a bubble skirt so bad! When Chris saw her come out of her room he said "laura, are you dressing her  in an outfit you want to wear?" I don't think I can pull off a bubble skirt with leggings, but I'd have to say yes, I'd like this outfit in an adult size :)