Our Summer Bucket List

Great parenting minds must be thinking alike -- note, that I will not be claiming to be one of them.  On the same day that my bloggy friend Darcie posted her own family's list of fun to-do's for the summer, R started building one for our own.  R's the stay-at-home half of our parenting team, and the girls and I are all the better for it.  As you will see below, he keeps them busy enough to be nice and tired at bedtime active, engaged and just plain having fun.

With full props to R, and without further adieu...the Just After Bedtime summer bucket list, 2010 edition.

Traditional Favorites

• Como Zoo
• Minnesota Zoo
• Children's Museum
• Intensive swim lessons at the Y
• Camp Snoopy (because we are bad at accepting change...)
• Saints baseball
• State Fair

Local Finds

• Watch the remote control airplanes at Lake Elmo Airport
• Kelley Farm in Elk River
• U of M Raptor Center
• Transportation Museum
• Excelsior streetcar ride
• Watch the airplanes at MSP
• Coffee shop and bookstore visits
• St. Paul and Woodbury farmer's markets
• Washington County Fair
• Back to the 50s car show
• Regular visits to the local library - for books and - with a little luck - Museum Adventure Passes!
• Bandana Square model railroad store/museum
• Local water parks
• Sunday night concerts in the park
• Light rail trip to DT Minneapolis
• Bus ride with Mom to work
• Heart of the Beast puppet theatre

Friends and Family / Out of Town

• Visit our friend Laura's horses
• Burley and bike rides to a picnic lunch
• Hopscotch on the patio
• Plant a vegetable garden
• Visit Grandma in St. Louis, visit the St. Louis Zoo (I may be biased, but STL's zoo blows our local ones out. of. the. water. 
• Wisconsin Dells
• Sleepover with neighbor friends
• Backyard campout
• Cooking practice/assistance

Just for the Parents

• A Father's Day surprise (sorry, no link, R reads the blog!)
• Date nights, date nights, date nights
• And, if the stars align, maybe an overnight without the little ones to celebrate our fifth anniversary?

Yes, it will be a busy summer around here but it's great to have a list in place to help us avoid the "What should we do's" that inevitably come up on the occasional unbusy weekend.  It's been great to read everyone else's lists too! 

Hoping you all enjoy the long weekend, the glorious weather, and whatever fun you can find!

Impersonating a Blogger?

So when I caught ShePost's tweet today about a "crazy woman pretending to be a blogger," for a moment I was worried they were referring to me.  After all, it's been a good long time since our last visit together and, having not been at this bloggy thing all that long, I still feel a bit strange saying "I have a blog" and even stranger saying it to my friends and family.  I did finally sort of "came out" to my Facebook friends & fam with my last post, but if they're reading, they are awfully quiet about it...comments, anyone?  ::crickets chirping::

But, as with any new endeavor, I know that with practice I'll blog better, and will eventually find my blog voice and feel less like that "crazy woman pretending to be a blogger."  Or at least the "pretending to be a blogger" part.  I'm learning from a lot of great folks, many of whom I'm looking forward to meeting, or seeing again, at the May 20 Minnesota Bloggers Event.  (A big ol' Just After Bedtime shoutout to Molly of The Snyder 5 for putting this together!)  Can't wait to pester the blogging vets with lots of questions...

And as for that real pretend-blogger?  Yiiiiiiikes.  It never ceases to amaze me that if people took their collective energy spent coming up with ways to get away with crap and devoted it instead to doing something good in this world, my, what a wonderful world it would be.  I can keep hoping, I suppose. 

So, how have YOU been?

Why Mom Needs a Night Out

So, like a lot of moms, I don't take a lot of opportunities to have a girls' night out. (And no, going to Noodles & Co. with my 2 & 3 year old daughters for dinner is not the kind of "girls' night" I'm referring to.)

So yesterday, I was happily getting ready for an evening out.  I'd already teed up my plans with A & C, letting them know that I'd be leaving after suppertime but home when they woke up in the morning.  There were the usual, half-protests (although I know that they equally enjoy R handling bedtime as well).  While R worked on supper, I was enjoying the quiet and solitude of a nice, hot shower.  Bathroom door closed, room warm and steamy, mental state relaxed.

Enter C, in her 2 1/2 year-old exuberance.

"Mommy!?!"

::sigh:: "Yes?"

"I want to sit in your LAP!!"

::sigh:: "Okay.  Can we take care of that in a few minutes?"

"Okay!"

Exit C.  Bathroom door open, steam and warmth departed, mental state re-mommified.

I love you, my energetic, loving, busy, amazing girls.  And after a fun night of laughter and fun with some great gals last night, I'm "reset" and ready to see how you make me laugh this week ahead.

(Semi-) Wordless Wednesday - A Shakespearean Masterpiece

The last stop on my girls' weekend was our old college haunt in Columbia, MO - Shakespeare's Pizza.  Best pizza in town and I'm pretty sure they were able to finance construction of the patio on what I spent on pizza, beer and pinball during my time at Mizzou.  A great end to a great weekend!

(Only in Columbia.  Seriously, there are stores that offer all three.)

Before (sort of)...

Almost there...

And after.

Then we ate the smiley face.

The end.

A 20-Year Road Trip

If you caught my tweets yesterday, you know that I'm enjoying a long weekend with some girlfriends this weekend.  (Mad props to R for doing single-parent duty for four days.) 

The occasion:  all four of us are hitting a birthday that ends in "0" this year.  I've known each of these ladies more than half my life, and it seems not so long ago that the milestone birthday we were hitting was "20" and not... well, you can take your guess based on the title of this post.  But it wasn't too far into our 20s that we all started to go our separate ways. Some moved, some married, some started families, and while we've kept in touch and gotten together from time to time, it's been less and less over the years. This will be the first time we've all been together since my wedding, nearly five years ago, and I can't wait.


One of the neat parts of this trip is that it took me through my college town, a place I don't get back to often and where I spent a lot of time with these gals during those "20" years.   I had the luxury of not having to be anywhere by any certain time today, so I took a little mini-tour back in time and around campus. 

Oh, those columns.  It's weird how six big chunks of stone can almost instantly bring me back to my college years.  There was nothing I looked forward to each spring more than that first warm day that I could stretch out on the fresh green grass of the quad, look at the blue sky and enjoy the moment.  But, like any other 20-year old, I couldn't have imagined that my life 20 years later wouldn't look exactly how I had it planned back then.  (Seriously, try telling that permed-haired, acid-washed-jeans-wearing smartass that over the course of the next 20 years she would become a lawyer and mom of two living in Minnesota...and watch her laugh, and laugh, and laugh...)

As I was driving through my college town, though, I really started to feel the past 20 years.  My old hangouts look somewhat more run-down or are gone altogether.  (The old cool basement alterna-techno-bar where everyone dressed in black, moped around and danced by themselves?  Yeah, it's an underground cafe/coffee shop now.  Sigh.)  When did traffic get so bad?  Why did all these darn kids take the good parking spots?  And how can these really, really young looking kids be in college? 


So we clearly aren't 20 anymore:  all four of us have said how much we're looking forward to nights of uninterrupted sleep during this getaway, and we're all bringing crafts to work on - not quite the "stay out until bar close" nights of our youth.    But none of us would trade the blessings, challenges, joys, struggles and ordinary moments of the past 20 years for anything.

What's your college nostalgia?  Or, what are your fun weekend plans?

'Tis the (Baseball) Season

We love us some Twins baseball in the Just After Bedtime household.  Witness:

1. The ratio of Twins caps to people in our home is about 3-to-1.
2. Our 3 year old cheers "Get a hit, Joe" when a game is on.  (Okay, so maybe she says it regardless of who is at bat, but its a valid point nonetheless.)
3. The Easter Bunny's biggest hit with the girls this year was their new Twins shirts.

There's just something beautiful about the game, and the season itself -- especially here in Minnesota.  Spring training kicks off just as the grey and cold of winter is really weighing us down and we're sure we'll never feel the sun again.  Opening day, just like the springtime with it, brings the fresh promise of a new year, rebirth and warm, fun days ahead.

I was raised to love the game.  When I was young, our hometown newspaper offered free or discounted passes to Cardinals games for good report cards.  The better the grades, the more games you got.  Now, it's a bit of an understatement to say my mom is a huge Cardinals fan.  HUGE.  And I like to joke with folks that the baseball tickets deal were the reason I did well in school, 'cause I sure didn't want to cost us any games by bringing home a less-than-stellar report card.

But the thing is...the first year I was old enough to earn tickets, it was just my mom, my brothers and me -- money was tight and baseball games were a rare treat, and to be able to help contribute to something so important to our family has stayed with me much longer than the curriculum I learned to earn the tickets in the first place.  (Pythagorean theorem?  World history?  The periodic table?  Yeah...I got nothin'.)

With that history, it wasn't even a question what to do when the Twins announced that their first games at their shiny new stadium would be against my hometown Cardinals.  It was an unexpected blessing, though, to have a connection at work who set me up with seats three rows behind the Cards' dugout for Saturday afternoon's game.  The sun was shining, the field was gorgeous and the Twins won.  But best of all, my mom was as giddy as a schoolgirl.

As R said that day, I'd earned the best report card ever for her.

Any baseball fans out there?  Share your favorite memories (though I'd appreciate none involving the Twins beating the Cards in the World Series...I was still a St. Louisan back then...)!

Wordless Wednesday - Can you find the Easter egg before A?