New Playground

I took the kids to a playground in Hopkins which is right around the corner from a movie theatre. I was thinking about taking them to see How to Train Your Dragon afterward (again), but after plenty of time at the park, it was well past the beginning of the movie.A few nice days here. High was only about 70 degrees, but it was bright and sunny. The “rubber asphalt” got pretty hot, but the kids insist on taking their shoes off while at parks. After a month of “Sure, go ahead.”, they still think that it is a treat if I let them. Anyhow, instead of putting their sandals on, the kids instead played inside the slide using it as their clubhouse.

They were slow to warm to the park, but after awhile they had a blast. Much larger than the play areas of parks where we live, although the only bathroom was in a “warming house” with no lights. There were skylights, but only for the main room, so we had to pee with the bathroom doors open.

Liam Playing Soccer

Liam is now playing soccer for the summer with Minneapolis United.

Before this, he was playing at Lyndale Farmstead. After he scored eight goals (of his team’s 13), I asked him if it was even any fun since it wasn’t too challenging. Well, he thought it was great fun.

Last Day of School

Like my father did for Aaron and I for years, I had the kids find “clues” to end-of-year presents. I got Liam a Wii game – luckily one that he began to talk about after hearing from friends. Ada got candy, and I gave Helena a new Chubby Bear that I bought years ago in case anything happened to the real one. Luckily, that didn’t happen. But now Chubby has been reunited with his brother who, apparently, was lost in a snow storm. FOR EIGHT YEARS!

Despite being the same, see if you can spot the new one. Hint: it is NOT the one with the tag still on it.

Helena brought home her report card. I asked where Liam’s was and he said that he lost it. “I asked Ms. Delebo if she saw it, but she didn’t see it either”.

Children’s Festival

Helena was at a sleepover and couldn’t get up in time to make it, so just Liam, Ada, and myself went to the Flint Hills International Children’s Festival in St. Paul. We couldn’t stay for too long, but we did go see two plays, make some rattles, wrote with quill pens, and had their arms decorated with henna. They also liked eating at Mickey’s Diner.

Playing Catch

I took the kids over to Bryant Square Park tonight, and in between playing with Helena and Ada (and the neighbors’ kids) I was playing catch with Liam.

When we got home, I told Liam that he really improved his catching. At the beginning of the night, he could barely catch anything – the tennis ball that we were playing with was bouncing right out of his hands. By the end of the night, he could catch about half of them.

He must have been thinking about it for a long time. After getting into bed, where he usually falls asleep in ten seconds, he comes into my bedroom about five minutes later and says, “Daddy, did my throwing get better too?”