Week in Review

Rachel was off all week and spent most of it with her mom and sister who visited from Iowa and Chicago. The three of them went up to Duluth for an overnight early in the week and did some shopping along the way. They hung out at our place as well spending some quality time with the boys.

I was the beneficiary of a cooking and freezing session on Thursday which made for some tasty homemade chili and some festive cupcakes. The frozen items should make for more grandiose evening meals throughout the coming weeks. My list of options will now be much more diverse when the afternoon gets away from me and I start wondering if corn dogs are going to fly as a dinner entree. I was also the recipient of a Texas Roadhouse steak dinner on Thursday night that left me feeling extra fluffy (thanks Nana!).

Friday I was given a daddy daycare holiday and actually left the house for 12 hours all by myself. I met up with my friend Scott and we shot some hoops and golfed 36 holes (o.k. that was on the PlayStation) before researching our afternoon and evening entertainment options. A “Decorate Your Own Sombrero” activity tied to some cultural events at the University of Minnesota caught our attention. We toured the entire campus corner to corner (quite literally) looking for the campus bowling alley to kill time before decorating our big hats. We ultimately came to the conclusion that all gopher students are grumpy except the international students partaking in the free bowling, soda and food that sent us scrambling for new options. Our plans were foiled by their group function and the time we would have had to fill before the sombrero action hit full tilt. We were very much looking forward to riding around the greater Minneapolis area in our sombreros.

By the end of the day, several other impromptu options were foiled including a late decision to eat ourselves silly at the Old Country Buffet. We arrived too close to the closing bell and decided we could not get our money’s worth in just 60 minutes. Incidentally we found that just because a hostesses’ name is Patience doesn’t mean she is (she was getting very edgy as we were coming to our conclusion that an hour was just not enough time to eat, sit, digest, repeat…repeat…and repeat). We did get to met Tanya, our waitress at a nearby restaurant, who claimed to have never been out of the state of Minnesota…and later told us about a trip to the Wisconsin Dells.

Yesterday we hit a kid oriented carnival/festival at General Mills a collected some crafts and goodies before assisting some friends in moving furniture. We headed home when our nap deprived duo got cranky and I ultimately celebrated the end of the day by heading for bed early allowing me to catch 12 hours of sleep.

Today the run from church to the car in the parking lot included dodging sleet and snow fall. We later watched a bit of the same from the warmth of our home. It looks like consistently colder weather is starting to take hold even though the long term forecast does show a 60+ day in it. We’ll see which fronts begin winning the majority of the daily battles. The rest of our day looks to be quiet and lazy providing a mostly normal and uneventful conclusion to our Sunday.