867-5309 DANCE-Y!

It was a dark and stormy night, so - we had a dance party! Seriously, the Roses got MP3 players (NOT IPODs) last Christmas from their Guppy. Not being especially musically inclined, Guppy outsourced the job of putting music on the MP3 players to Uncle Candle. He included some very fine tunes, including "867-5309 Jenny." That's what we were singing and dancing to! Rose #1 was the lead singer (of course):

Besides being topless. Rose #2 was very soulful. She was thinking about Tommy Tutone's emotional distress about Jenny, clearly.

And Rose #3, after STOMPING on my bare foot with her high silver heels (dress up play clothes for her fourth birthday, people!) was twirling quite a bit.

Rose #1 approached me the other day and asked me very seriously if I had ever heard of a song called 867-5309. Oh, honey, have I ever. It was 1982. I was in junior high. Those were the (extremely nerdy, emotionally distraught, acne-ridden, Adam-Ant-Goody-Two-Shoes) days.

Chillin' In the Crazy Sprinkler!

Well, it was a hot night - so what can you do? You have to break out the juice bars (these are really yummy!) and the wiggly sprinkler and run through it. Except I'm telling you that the amount of time daddy spends setting up the sprinkler is inversely proportionate to the amount of time the Roses spend running around in it. Here's Rose #3, mere minutes after the sprinkler fun started, deciding she was "done" and starting on her juice bar:

Rose #2 loves water fun and she'll stay in until the bitter, shivering, purple-lipped end:

Rose #1 is very purposeful in her demeanor, don't you think? (With appropriate apologies to J.K. Rowling, I almost typed "dementor" instead of "demeanor".)

And here's the cast of sprinkler characters: two of our next door neighbors, Rose #1 and Rose #2. Rose #3 was thoroughly dry by this point, and wouldn't even venture in for a photo.

I read somewhere that since you only get 80 or so summers in your life, you have to make the most of them. 80 seems like a much smaller number now that approximately 40 have already happened...

Summer Ice Cream

So there's this really yummy ice cream place close to our house. It is kind of spendy, so we don't go often. Round about 2:30 p.m. I got a hankering for an ice cream cone - the cone itself, really (they put Whoppers at the bottom!) - so we made plans to go to GOC tonight.

Rose #1 is still having some problems with eating food prepared by other people (given her nut allergy issues), so she didn't actually order a cone. Don't worry, she had ice cream at home after we returned. Anyway, she was my assistant photographer tonight. She started with a fabulous self-portait:

I love the look on Rose #2's face as she is getting ready to eat a bite of Cotton Candy ice cream...

And Rose #3 is still at the age where I have to lick around her cone so it doesn't end up melting all over her hands. Darn.

Here we are together, me and Rose #3. And a random dude in a yellow polo shirt just behind me.

As we finished our ice cream, Rose #1 helpfully documented the current time:

And then it was time to come home. Rose #2 lost both her top front teeth about a week ago, within a span of two days. I have been meaning to get a photo so we have it preserved for posterity, and tonight after her shower I finally did that!

I am just bound and determined to have a good weekend. Started out fine, with my ice cream outing with my lovely family.

Fourth of July Weekend

This weekend the Roses' grandfather visited from Kirksville, MO. You might remember that we usually go to Kirksville - this year Kirksville came to us! We had a lot of interesting activities. One was the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota, where you can see a bald eagle up close. Another was the Arboretum, which I thought was magical.

At the entrance near the visitors' center, there is an amazing house made out of sticks and twigs. Really, it is just giant! Rose #1 quickly claimed the room nearest the entrance as "hers," and looked out the window with her cheerful perky eyes:
The rooms in the stick house are really quite spacious - here are Roses #2 and 3 and two of their cousins!

We set out on several walks (including a very ill fated bog walk, on which Rose #3 got a horsefly bite that swelled on her leg to the size of a golf ball) and ended up where we should have begun - in the formal gardens right out the back of the visitor center. In the perennial garden, there is an absolutely beautiful fountain, which teeny tadpoles swim. Beatrice, my niece, was completely obsessed with touching the tadpoles. Luckily, she didn't fall in (unlike other pools we have been to with Beatrice).
At the end of the perennial garden walk, we stopped for a quick picture with Sam and Roses #1 and #3.

Oh, we loved the Arboretum. I have to confess that we got a family membership, intending to return at least 3 more times before next July. Maybe we'll go to the maple syrup making workshops in the spring - that's something Guppy would have done.

Catching All Four Of You Up!

It's been a struggle to get motivated to post. Posting is like exercise sometimes - you are always happy after you've done it, but you are totally undermotivated to start.

Ahem. Self-justification over. A couple of weekends ago we were invited to a wedding reception at the new Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins! I am quite possibly the least baseball oriented person in the universe, but even I was impressed with the facility:
We got to go on a special tour of the stadium, including to the visitors' clubhouse. They have their very own indoor batting practice cubbyhole! Here's Rose #1 pretending to bat.

We had very strict instructions from the tour guide not to touch ANYTHING in the visitors locker room. Tour guide: "Don't even sit on the chairs." Well, here I am not sitting on any chairs:

The neatest part of the whole tour was how we got to go into the visitors dugout. Here's Poppy looking spiffy in turquoise blue, with the Roses and Sam and Maddie. Rose #2 looks so sweet to me in this picture, like she is just having a fun summer night with her family, hopefully without a care in her 6-year-old world:
And what would a wedding reception be without a dance? I am never too shy to dance. Here's Rose #3, her cousin Maddie, and me:
Target Field: Really neat place for wedding reception! Thanks K.B. for inviting us!