Towne Family Blog

Google Earth (earth.google.com) is a program that has satellite images of much of the Earth. Here is an image of Southwest High School, where I teach from a height of 4150 feet.


And because my car is such an ugly bright green, it is the only one that can be made out after zooming in a bit.

since Dalen last posted anything here. The whole point of the blog is so that she'll help posting...c'mon Dalen, you can do it!

Our mathematics department went to get our photo taken today. I sent a few people one of the photos and their responses were "I am....PETRIFIED", "Oh boy", "So wrong", and "Too funny!". The last one was from a former math teacher, so she understands.

1. No
2. Uh-oh
3. Me
4. Daddy
5. Mommy
6. Go
7. Geh go for wilco

I think that is it for the words he uses often.

He can point to his head, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, belly button, and feet with about 90% accuracy. I think he knows them all 100%, but he gets distracted when we get to the belly button part.

You go girl!


Helena loved the horses.


Dad needed a little help

Liam discovering with water


Liam discovering girls

Making light of the situation or future First Avenue soundboard woman

Making dad a plastic dinner


Not quite ready for Metro Transit


Playing with the band


The museum let the kids have their own parade. Here is Helena dressed up


And this is how happy she was to be part of it...much moreso than the other kids, apparently.


Don't jump!


Finally, Dalen doesn't get the whole "let the kids discover on their own" theme of the museum. A very dangerous slide, as you can see.

Last weekend we headed up to the Rumppe's cabin in Outing, MN for a couple of nights. The kids had a great time playing on the docks and throwing rocks into the lake. They also liked the train set that was set up inside.

The bad part of the trip was that Helena was Chubbyless for the first time. She didn't do so well the first night, but the second night she was a bit better.

Bill bought a cheap digital camera so that Helena can take some shots. Here is what she came up with on her first adventure...to Chipotle.

See how many of the images you can recognize!

Got my shades on for Adirondack Animal Land.

Liam feeding some animals

Have these animals had anything to eat at all?


It's a small world, after all.









Riding horses


Getting ready to race down the slides.


Helena takes off before the whistle....


....apparently, much to Libby's amazement...


...as you can tell by this closeup...

And the winner is.....

Dalen gives Libby and Liam a sympathy cheer


Liam becoming a little more at ease with the wild things.


Bill feeds the animals as well.



Bill has called it a day



My, how my little girl has grown.

Liam found some cookies on the table at my father's house on a visit last week.

He knows that his mother will take them away, so he grabs more off the plate before he finishes the one in his hand.

Content (and messy)

Grab yourself a glass of milk, little boy.

Another one of Liam when he awakes. Not as nice as the other one, but here it is.

So Liam likes to carry around a children's chair to reach things that he shouldn't. Sometimes he decides that he would like to play with the buttons and knobs on the stereo. Usually, this isn't a problem. For one, most times it isn't on. But sometimes we have to turn it back on when he turns it off, or switches from radio to CD or something similar.

But this time, when the radio was going, he decided to turn a knob....the volume knob. Luckily he only turned it halfway up, but it is a pretty loud stereo, so we all got quite a jolt....especially the guy who was the culprit:


So he comes over to me, and I tried to get a good shot of his face, but he was a bit too close to get it focused. Besides, I had to pick the kid up and go over and turn the stereo down. He hasn't touched it since, though!

Somebody is really proud of herself.She's been working at it off and on all summer, but the pedals are bit difficult to turn since the bike is so small. Now she'll have to work on going uphill (OK, it is about a 2 degree climb from the garage back to the porch, but it is still a bit more difficult)

Dad (calling from the racetrack): "Only a few of us here today, but we've been hear all week. Earlier the whole gang was here"

Me: "Sounds like you guys should have your own tent"

Dad: "We have one!"