Month: July 2012

Highland Fest

The “rides” at Highland Fest (all air-filled things) were poor this year compared to the last time we went, and probably just as expensive, so we didn’t do much there. But the girls got some souvenirs (stuffed snakes from the Hmong merchants) and we got to climb up the water tower which they liked once again.

 

Liam’s Last Summer of Rec Soccer

Luckily for us, Liam happened to be the same colour jersey this year and the old one fit, so I didn’t have as much laundry to do.

Ada and Helena were still good about going to the games – they didn’t always want to go, but the weather was almost always nice.

Although, like dad, Ada doesn’t always like the bright sun.


 

Trip Downtown to the River

The free parking spaces were gone, so I dropped the kids off by the Stone Arch Bridge and parked. When I got back, the kids hadn’t gotten far on their scooters. I guess they knew enough not to get to far along.

We were lucky and got to see a barge go through the lock, which is why all the people are seen looking over the bridge.

It was a very wet May, so the river was very high. It would pretty much be the last rain of the year.

Later, we parked our scooters in the Guthrie on the ground floor and then went upstairs to see the glass floor and to look around downtown.

Then I told my kids about The Old Spaghetti Factory, which is where the spaghetti that is eaten around the whole world is made. Well, not the entire world, but at least the Western Hemisphere. That sure got their attention.

So I put more quarters into the parking meter (well, the electronic one) after I helped someone else with it and then just narrowly averted getting killed in a car accident that happened as I was crossing the street. The kids were safely inside the factory taking photos.

Somebody really liked the meatballs. But Ada always likes meatballs.

Lemonade Stand

The number of customers was down quite a bit from last year, but the kids were happy to set up in the neighbors’ driveway so that they could supply the players and spectators at the Park and Rec baseball game across the street. They were particularly happy when the game was over and a girl in a van yelled out that it was great tasting lemonade.

And, no, the car is not going to run the kids over – that is just the reflection from the flash.

Fireworks

“On a hot, hot day in July…” the kids sang all day.

The fourth was terribly hot – it was still in the upper 90s when the fireworks began, but the kids were very, very good about trekking downtown and walking around on a very crowded Stone Arch Bridge to watch the fireworks. This was the first year that we watched from the Stone Arch Bridge, rather than the Hennepin Avenue Bridge.

The kids were happy with their slushies that we got on the way and their glow necklaces. Ada found out that one shouldn’t gnaw on the glowsticks

All the kids were excited for the fireworks, but once they began, Ada was scared. Helena thought that she’d be better if she sat, so they did, and then everything apparently was fine.

This was the moment that Ada had been talking about all day.

Bee Sting

Liam was playing keeper at the very end of the game tonight and when he does, I often go stand behind him. A bee was bothering me, and after swatting at it over and over, I began to walk away and it stung me on the ear. Five more minutes later, the game was over and Liam came over and told us that he was stung by a bee twice. He showed us two marks, one on the arm and one on the eye. There were little raised “white” marks.

Since so few kids came to play tonight on account of 100 degree weather and it was the day before the holiday, Liam played with three other teams in one game. And he was friends with a few of them, so another parent asked if Liam could go out for ice cream with them. I told her that he could, but Dalen has to give the parent her number in case something happened to Liam because this was his first bee sting.

I drove with Helena and Ada to Lunds to get a few things, then I drove down to Sebastian Joe’s to pick Liam up. His eye was huge at this point. So it was off to the emergency room after figuring out from Dalen where I was supposed to take him.

The emergency room just asked a few questions and prescribed a steroid to lessen the swelling. So off to Walgreens we went.

While waiting for the prescription, Ada spotted something for Liam .

Liam never cried about any of it. After he was stung, he still stayed in goal until the end of the game. Later that night, he had to eat something while the girls went to bed (we got home well after 11:00 pm) so that he could take his medication. He asked if in the morning he could read the literature about bee stings that was given to us. I told him that we could.

The next morning he came upstairs after I had just taken a shower and was visibly upset. He had read the literature and noticed that it talked about the bee’s poison, and asked if there was poison in him. After I showed him that he had none of the symptoms from being poisoned that were on the paper, he felt much better, but he must have some scary thoughts between reading about it and talking to me.

The next day his eye was a little puffy still, but by the third day, it was almost all gone. This was the afternoon after – not quite 24 hours later.