Family
- Pancake breakfast. Mazie and Tyler both love pancakes.
- Trip to Minnesota Zoo. Tyler digs the zoo.
- Swimming at the Edina Pool. Mazie’s new favorite place.
- Mazie’s favorite dinner, Cheeseburger Pie.
- Tammy and Mazie to Mr. Popper’s Penguins.
- Mazie and I went the Minneapolis fireworks. Awesome!
First Snow of 2011
First snow of the year just started falling. Really big flakes slowly floating down. First snow is always special. I hope it is still on the ground for Mazie in the morning.
Dolphin Tale
Tammy, Mazie and I went to see Dolphin Tale tonight.
Tammy and I both agreed that this movie was about the most family friendly movie you could make. It was nice, heartwarming, had a dolphin in it. What more could you do really? Check out See Winter for more information on Winter the Dolphin.
Plus, we tried Tyler staying with one of the sitters before going to sleep. We hadn’t done that before and it worked great.
Before the movie we had dinner at Big Bowl where I had the best vegan meal I’ve enjoyed during our vegan challenge — Kung Pao Tofu with Spinach, substitute brown rice for the noodles and add heat. Plant power!
Tyler Double Doodling
Tyler has been having a great time playing with the Magna Doodles lately. He will not just play with one. He has to have both. And he mostly enjoys carrying them all over the house. Occasionally he will stop to scribble on them. But only for a moment and then more carrying.
Soccer with Puddles
Mazie had a soccer game on Saturday. The field had a few puddles on it. The kids had no issues playing through.
Keep Out
Mazie and her friend Gigi were playing today and decided to add some ad hoc signage to the playhouse. So awesome. I love the spelling.
Tyler and I played outside a bit tonight after dinner. He spent some time playing with the lock box. I think given enough time, he might get it. 😀
32 Plants Planted
The landscapers were here this week and got the yard looking a lot better. We decided to do the planting ourselves though and took advantage of 50% off sales in September at Wagners. We left with 32 plants and got them all in today. I did most of the digging and Tammy and Mazie put them in the ground. It looks great and the plants should have plenty of good weather to get established before winter.
Tyler's Tractor
Shortly after Tyler was born my Mom got him a pedal tractor. At my Grandparents farm there was always a metal pedal tractor that my cousins and I use to ride all the time. In comparison to new toys, it was ridiculously heavy and hard to get moving. But we had a great time with it. It was a John Deere, just like Grandpa drove.
I’ve kept the tractor in the box since Tyler was just too small, but I decided to put it together today so he can start playing with it. He is still far too small to make it go, but he thought it was pretty cool to sit on!
I had to do one of these hip retro photos too.
Mazie had to give it a try to!
Mazie's 2011
Today was the 2011 So Long Summer show! Our neighbors the Miller’s host this every year for five years running now. It’s the last Sunday before school and a ton of kids in the neighborhood do performances. It’s awesome on so many levels.
This year Mazie sang a song from her now favorite movie, Annie. She sang “It’s a Hard Knock” life and knocked it out of the park!
I was so proud of her — great job! The crappy focusing is my poor performance on my camera.
Add video.
Playhouse for the Kids
Tammy had noted that Mazie and Tyler really like to play in playhouses when we visit people. Our yard is a standard city lot, so we don’t have much space but she figured out a good spot in the yard and a playhouse that would work there.
The playhouse didn’t have a floor so we made a trip to Home Depot and got the stuff to build a simple deck that would sit on the ground with cedar deck boards. Mazie helped me build the platform and Tammy prepared the ground and got the playhouse ready to assemble. It was a fun afternoon of building and assembling and the kids like the end result.
Impromptu S'mores
Our neighbors down the street, the Conley’s, hosted an unplanned S’mores evening last night. Mazie loved staying up to 11:30 pm! 🔥🍫
Gypsie
Tonight we put Gypsie to sleep. Tammy took her to the vet a couple of months ago because we noticed that she didn’t seem to be urinating right. There were puddles of water in her litter box. She had also lost over half of her body weight, leaving just four pounds of mostly fur and bones. The vet did some tests and concluded quickly that her kidneys had failed. A terminal situation regardless of treatments, just a matter of time.
Gypsie sitting on a chair in my old apartment in 2001.
Gypsie got her name because she was a bit of a Gypsy originally. I got her when I moved into an apartment in college and the previous people where moving out and couldn’t take a cat with them. They had gotten her the same way, and had named her Gypsie. She ended up being my cat from then on. I never really knew exactly how old she was. We figure that she was 22 years old now, but that could be off a year. Needless to say she lived a long cat life.
Gypsie was my cat for years of college living with roommates and then a decade of living on my own. She was always a good cat and fine even when I was traveling for work a ton. She had incredibly soft calico fur. Her favorite thing was to sit on my lap or on my desk while I was relaxing or working on the computer. One of the odd things about her was she couldn’t really meow. I have no idea why, but she could just make a “kak” kind of sound. No meowing. She was also had an understated purr.
Gypsie sitting on my desk at the apartment in 2001.
Gypsie ended up being one of those challenging things from your life before being married and kids. She never liked Tammy’s cat Logan. She never really like Tammy. She was downright mad when we got a dog, and then another dog. She was mostly stoic about all of that though, and it wasn’t until our last move that her health really started to deteriorate.
Mazie and Gypsie just shortly before the vet visited.
The end for her was incredibly peaceful. She had a shot to put her to sleep, and then another shot that euthanized her. I held her while she fell asleep and it was all harder than I expected. While she had gotten progressively out of sync with the rest of the family happenings, she was after all my cat for nearly 20 years. I can’t help but feel that I could have been a better cat owner for the last year with the new house, a new son and an uncountable number of other things. But I also know that all the kids liked playing with her and she liked playing with them. She wasn’t the friendliest cat in her youth, but in the last year she was very nice to everyone.
Her kidneys had failed and she was very frail. When she fell asleep after the first shot tonight she seemed about as small as a little kitten. She faded away very calmly. Mazie was there and involved in the process. Tammy answered her questions about what was going on. It was hard, but I know it was the right thing to do.
See ya Gyps…
Tyler got a new background to his landing page website. tylerthing.com Gave me an excuse to use the text-shadow CSS attribute.
Tyler Playing with Shoes
Tammy put up a blog post about how much Tyler loves to play with shoes. This was one of the pictures that I thought was just great.
Car Seat Toy
I brought Tyler’s car seat into the house so it could be put back in the van. He then decided to spend a half-hour getting in and out of it. Great fun!
Car Seat Does Fit in Mini
Tyler got to ride in my Mini Cooper for the first time today. His infant seat definitely would not fit, and the car seat wouldn’t fit rear facing (and how would we get him in if it did?). Now he is facing forward and while it isn’t spacious, it can be done.
Concrete Trucks
Today was a big day for our project. This morning a bunch of guys showed up between 6:45 and 7:00am. Two big, blue concrete trucks showed up and parked right out front. One truck had the concrete mixing, and then it was pouring it into the pumping truck.
The concrete pumped through this hose and poured into the basement for the new floor.
Tyler was digging the big trucks. I would have stood there and watched too but I had to get to work!
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Last night Mazie and I finished reading Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I really enjoyed reading each and every poem to Mazie, and she thought they were funny, goofy and good.
I distinctly remember reading Where the Sidewalk Ends when I was a kid. They were likely the first poems I read. I even remembered some of them. Mostly I remembered having the book and the cover of it.
We were reading the 30th Anniversary edition so I was at the youngest 9 when I read it. It was a real treat to read it to my daughter and hope that she has the same recollection when she reads it 30 years from now.
Tyler the Monkey
Tyler loves to climb on things, and he doesn’t give up easily. This morning I had the Tour de France streaming on one of the computers and left the room for a moment. I thought Tyler was being pretty quiet and was wondering why he wasn’t running around as usual. I came back to find him pretty excited to have climbed up in the chair and running the computer himself. The kids a climber!
Epic Fourth of July!
Today was the best Independence Day in memory. The day started early.
To top that off we even had an impromptu visit from Grandma Rosalin that involved coloring.
Mazie said everything today was her favorite thing. 😀