A Great Weekend!

What a weekend! Of course, it went too fast, but it was pretty much fun, all the time.
Here is the play by play -

Friday Night -
Mike, Julie, and I went to New Prague High School for the 2009 Missota Festival Grand Finale Concert. It was a day off school for kids in PL, but Charlie and other band and choir members still had to be at the high school at 7am to ride the bus down to New Prague.

They spent the day practicing in different groups with kids from Holy Angels, Farmington, Hutchinson, New Prague, Northfield, Red Wing, and Shakopee. There were 2 different choir groups and 2 bands.

The mission of the festival "is to provide a collaborative educational setting that promotes an opportunity for students from the Missota Conference schools to share and perform repertoire under the direction of accomplished guest directors".

Charlie was in the Missota Massed Band, which had about 300 kids in it. This band was directed by Timothy Diem who is the Director of the U of M Marching Band. They played 3 songs, and they sounded great.

Here is a picture of the Massed Band with the Massed Choir in the background -



And here is Charlie and his trumpet -





It was a great concert...but the bleachers were packed! Like sardines, we were.
Ah, the things we do for our children!

Saturday Morning -

Woke up to an overcast day, and I thought - GREAT!

"Charlie - GET UP! Lets go take your Eagle Scout pictures while its cloudy outside!"
Eventually, Charlie got ready to go and we drove the 6 blocks to Lakefront Park.
And when we got there...the sun was out! It is so much easier to take pictures when it is overcast, but we got some good ones. Here is a sampling -







Saturday afternoon -

Charlie went over to his friends house to work on Spanish homework.
They had to prepare a recipe that was written in Spanish on video tape, speaking only in Spanish.

Follow this link on YouTube to see Charlie, Kowae and Jake! It is pretty funny...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6AEvby8gSY

Saturday night -

I went out with a couple of my teacher friends, Dorothy and Angie.
We started the evening out at Bumper's, a sports bar in Burnsville.
My uncle Roger usually hangs out at Bumper's, but we didn't see him there on Saturday.

Here we are enjoying a Colorado Bulldog -



Colorado Bulldog recipe

1 shot vodka
1 shot Kahlua - coffee liqueur
Cream
1 splash Coke

It is tasty!

Then we went over to the Burnsville High School for their presentation of

The Secret Garden



Dorothy took this nice shot of Angie and I while we waited for the play to start.
It was a great production, based on a classic children's book.

Sunday -

Scrapbooking at Patty's house!
We decided last time we worked on our scrapbooks that we should do this once a month. Patty hosted this month. Our friend Debbie couldn't come, so it was just Patty and I. Julie and her daughter Catie stopped by to visit and see what we were working on.

I was working on Boy Scout stuff - trying to get it done the the Eagle Court of Honor that is in 3 weeks, and Patty was working on a trip to the Grand Canyon.



Patty had some friends over for lunch yesterday, and she made Chicken Wild Rice Soup.
Now, that in itself is not that interesting, but she made it 2 ways -




The pan on the left is the "healthy" version, and the pan on the right is the normal recipe that Patty usually makes. At lunch yesterday they did a taste test to compare the healthy version to the normal version.

Healthy - Low sodium chicken broth, olive oil, skim milk, no bacon
Normal - Chicken broth, butter, half and half, bacon
All other ingredients were the same.

I got to do the taste test myself tonight.
The healthy version tasted like nothing. It had the same texture as the other, there was chewy chicken, and rice, and carrots, and celery, but there was NO taste. Everyone agreed. There just seemed to be no point in eating it.
I thought there would be a difference, but not that big of a difference.
Go ahead, try it yourself.

I'll even get the recipe from Patty and put it on the blog in the next couple of days.

The real stuff is totally delicious! But decide for yourself...
We also had these really great oatmeal chocolate chip cookies from the Great Harvest Bread Co.
Yum, Yum! A great day of scrapbooking - I got 20 pages done! And some really tasty food. Thanks Patty!

Now its time for bed so I can go back to work tomorrow to get some rest...

Charlie "Nadal" Beck, the New King of Centre Court

The title of this blog may be misleading. I don't think Charlie will be at Wimbledon this year, or probably any other year.

He decided last fall when school started that he was going to go out for tennis this spring. A few of his friends were going to do it, so he joined them. We bought a racquet at Target, and they all met and his the ball around a little bit up at Lakefront Park. Then winter came, and the tennis stopped.

Practice started a few weeks ago. Charlie is on the JV tennis team. Again, not going to Wimbledon anytime soon :)

Here a some pictures from his first Meet? Match? I'm not sure what we call them...

This is probably 1 or 2 hits into the first set. It is Prior Lake vs. Farminton.

He played against someone that was about the same level as he was. I guess the kid was a little bit better since he won, but they had fun playing.

They were very polite to each other and demonstrated good sportsmanship.

Lots of "nice shot" or "great serve" through our the 2 sets.

Here they are shaking hands at the end.

Last week they had more Meets (we'll call them Meets).

The JV played Minnetonka at home, on the PLHS courts this time. The Varsity team went to Minnetonka, so the courts were available. The first Meet was at the Twin Oaks Courts, which were the high school courts back in the old days when I went to school, in Twin Oaks was the high school back then.

Charlie was playing doubles with a fellow boy scout, Luke.

Here they are...

Charlie's friends, Jake and Kowae, were also playing doubles.

Here they are!

I really like my big zoom lens for things like this.
I can actually take some pretty decent shots of him, in motion sometimes!

I'm going to keep taking at many pictures as possible.

Charlie informed me the other day that next year he won't

be going out for tennis because he wants to be in the pit.

The Pit Band in the spring musical. Practices conflict, so you can't

do both. I think a lot of his friends are having a good time in
the pit this year working on the musical "State Fair".

So enjoy the tennis pictures while they are available.

Quantities are limited!



Next year we'll be seeing more of this.

Easter then, and now.

Easter has always been pretty fun at our house. Mike has always been way over the top with hiding the eggs. Charlie usually had to hunt for 150 or more plastic eggs filled with candy and cash. Not a bad gig for one Sunday morning a year.

Then: 2001

Charlie always arranged all my stuffed rabbits for me on the loveseat

The hunt has begun!

A large rabbit and a fancy Easter basket too!

Now: 2009

For the first time, no hidden eggs.

Just candy please!

That was all Charlie asked for.

He did get a lot of candy in his baskets, and some CD's too.

Charlie played the solo from In the Mood at the last Jazz Band concert so he wanted some Big Band music.


We went to Detroit Lakes for the weekend to see Mike's Mom and Dad.

Mike's cousin Tom came with us too.

After a lovely brunch with family friends the McConville's on Saturday morning, we took an afternoon drive up to the deer camp. Charlie had never been there before.

Here are all the boys - and Kinsey - in front of the cabin.

Inside views...

Every deer cabin has one!

And an outdoor view - is it leaning or is it just me?

The boys went for a walk in the woods while Kinsey and I headed back toward the van.

We found a little friend, that I took about 50 pictures of, here are a few of the best ones.

And some lovely north woods scenery!

They're back!

On the drive home we went through the Tamarac Wildlife Refuge.

Trumpeter Swans!

And some deer that could use some of that Gunflint corn!

An Easter photo on Sunday morning before the ride home.

Happy Easter 2009!

I got my Kindle!

My new Kindle has arrived!
Actually it is a Kindle 2, the new, improved version of the original Kindle, made by Amazon. It is basically an Electronic Book. There are over 265,000 books available for the Kindle, and they are available to download right to the Kindle itself, no computer is involved.

After I took it out of the box I had to plug it in the charge, and it popped up a cool author picture while it charged! Since I've been using it for a few days I now realize when you put it to sleep it pops up a random author picture each time. When it is totally shut off no picture is displayed.

Here I am with my fully charged Kindle 2, reading the instructions on how to use it, and trying to decide what my first book purchase will be. The books that you buy for the Kindle are cheaper than normal books, because, obviously, there is no cover, pages, etc.

I finally decided on one of my favorite Minnesota authors, Brian Freeman, who has a new book out called In The Dark. Brian was at the Gunflint Book weekend last year. He and his wife Marcia were very fun to be around. I had read his books before the Gunflint, since they are Minnesota Mysteries, which are pretty much my favorite thing to read. His main character is Joanathon Stride who is a cop, and most of the books are set in Duluth, although the second one is set in Vegas. Brian's website: http://www.brianfreeman.com/
In order these are the Jonathon Stride books:

Immoral (2005)
Stripped (2006)
Stalked (2007)
In the Dark (2009)

If you click on those book titles it will take you to Amazon where you can buy them.
I copied the titles over from one of my favorite websites:
www.stopyourekillingme.com
Where they list all sorts of mystery series. You can search by author or by main character, and they tell you the order in which the books were written, which is important when you start to read a new series.


Here is the Kindle telling me its downloading my first book, which cost me $9.99.

You are probably asking why do I need an Ebook? I hadn't really thought about it before Valentine's Day. I was doing a scrapbooking weekend in Alexandria with my friends. Maren, a friend from my old B. Dalton / Software Etc. days had a Kindle. She said her new husband bought it for her because he didn't want his house taken over by books. Hmmmm, my house is taken over by books. We were scrapping, talking about good books. I mention Water For Elephants, by Sara Gruen. One of my favorite books of all time. The next thing I know, Maren is reading it on her Kindle. She downloaded it in seconds.

Hmmmm, you don't even have to leave the house to get a book, you don't have to look for WiFi, you just do a couple of things and there it is.

One of the best things about it, to me, is traveling. I usually take 5-6 books with me on a trip. I try to pick books that I know I'm not going to want to keep so when I'm done with them I can leave them behind as a gift to whoever finds them. Think of the space I can save!

Here is an interesting article written about ebooks:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/may/11/news.newmedia

I'm about 1/2 way through In The Dark, and I am loving the Kindle. For some reason I think I read faster with it. I'm not sure why, and it certainly isn't a proven fact yet. I'll keep you posted on what my next book buy is, and how I'm liking the Kindle 2 as time goes on.

You may find yourself saying Hmmmmm, and then clicking on Amazon.com!