Monday, August 29, 2011

Seeger at Camp Tecumseh

I've had these photos saved on my computer but didn't realize I hadn't posted about Seeger's week at Camp Tecumseh. To recap, Nicklas did one week of resident camp at Camp Tecumseh in early June. Seeger isn't old enough for resident camp so he spent the week with his cousins Ben and Anna and they all went to day camp in July. He had a great time - not only at camp but also with his favorite family members. (He told me he wants to live with Ben all the time and I can come visit him when I miss him.) When his grandma picked him up on Friday to drive him back home to Bloomington, he was crying because he didn't want to leave. It's good to know he had such a great time!

So the great thing about Camp Tecumseh is that they post photos of the campers every day. I love clicking on the folders and checking out what the campers are up to. It's great. Really it is. EXCEPT when you see pictures of everyone except your child. Then it's frustrating. I stalked the website every few hours and nothing. I saw lots of pictures of Ben and Anna but none of Seeger. Until Wednesday. I finally had plenty of proof that he actually was at camp that week.

Here he is, on the left with the blue freezer pop.


In this photo, he's right in front.


Ben is in the middle, drinking water. Seeger is on the right.


He's third from the left here, and to the right is Ben who is drinking again. Ben must have been a thirsty boy that day.






I'm not sure what game they're playing here - I'll have to ask Seeger about it.


There are a few photo's from Thursday. In this one, he's left of the boy in orange trunks.


He's in the middle with the grey IU shirt.


On Friday, their last day, they had a lot of fun.


Making friendship bracelets. Can you see the bug bite on his face? It swelled up pretty big.




He's the one with towel over his shoulder. I'm not sure what's going on this picture but I think it has something to do with the counselors dressing up as super heros and saving the camp from an evil guy.


Here's another shot from Thursday. I love the group shot. Seeger is in the middle, just right of the counselor.


Camp Tecumseh is a truly special place. I love spending weekends there for quilt camp and I know Nicklas and Seeger feel lucky to go to camp there once a week every summer.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Thursday Thoughts

1. It was move-in day on campus yesterday. Woo boy, did I have a hard time finding a parking spot after lunch. The building's parking lot was full and so were two parking garages. I've never seen a full parking garage on campus. I felt really bad for all the parents who received tickets for parking illegally.

2. My favorite words are noggin and paprika.

3. I bought a pair of earrings when we were on our cruise. I haven't worn earrings for years so it was an adjustment wearing them. Things were going good until I lost a back for one of them and now I'm back to not wearing earrings. No one noticed the addition to my wardrobe though so I guess it doesn't matter.

4. I watched an episode of the UK Office. I was surprised at the similar story lines. I didn't realize the American version outright stole from the original series.

5. Speaking of television, we now have satellite TV. I had hoped to just have cable but apparently we live in the middle of nowhere. So we now have a two year contract with Dish. I'm not convinced it's worth the money and I'm very worried about time and brain suckage. Especially for the little ones. Plus I'm already tired of the stupid commercials.

6. A friend recommended I try Bosnian food. She had some in Seattle and said it was delicious. I wonder how close I am to a Bosnian restaurant? Btown has Thai, Mediterranean, Indian, Pakistani, Tibetan, Ethiopian, Japanese, Burmese and many more. But no Bosnian.

7. I used to watch all my tv on Hulu.com. But you can only go a few episodes back before they want to charge for their plus service. And some series have no free episodes. It's super annoying and now Hulu wants you to connect with them on Facebook so your friends can see what you're watching. Uh, no thank you. I'm not going to help you advertise a service you CHARGE for, Hulu.

8. It's a beautiful day today! The sky is blue and gorgeous. I wish I was home planting flowers in my imaginary flower bed. Hopefully I'll be able to do some landscaping soon.

9. My professional and personal lives are getting in the way of my hobbies. I'm slowly getting behind on my One Flower Wednesday flowers, I never have time to read, and I haven't done any quilting lately. Not mention I still owe y'all some blog posts (vacation and Seeger at camp). This working and house organizing (which I really don't enjoy) is too distracting.

10. I'm all for regifting but only if it's not so obvious. Just sayin'.

11. The boys aren't doing cup scouts this year. It's getting to be too much work for the parents (does any boy really do all those requirements on their own?) and our lives are busy enough. If I'm paying $45 a week for the boys to take tae kwon do, you can bet I want them to go to as many classes as possible. Nicklas is also doing basketball and I've love for them to be in drama or music lessons.

12. This weekend, the Polack and I are going on our anniversary trip. It's his year to plan so I don't know where we're headed. It will be a quick but much needed trip.

13. The tractor my dad gave us is awesome. I remember when my parents bought it back in 1985. I loved driving that thing. I'm actually looking forward to cutting the grass. It's a John Deere and it's a little rusty but my dad put a new yellow seat on it. It's pretty spiffy. (I can't believe I said spiffy but that's the most accurate description of the seat, I promise!)

14. Do you ever hear of a colleague's job promotion and you think, wow, I wonder how that guy got that job? And then you realize you're selling yourself short.

15. Tonight will be busy - tae kwon do, Nicklas has to finish a project, we have his back to school meeting with the teacher, and we need to pack for the weekend. I'm just hoping to watch Project Runway. It would be great to watch it on tv, instead of my computer screen.

16. I asked Seeger if he thought I was the most awesome mom in the world. He said he'd have to think about it. He couldn't name another mom more awesome than me but he also wouldn't commit to giving me the number one spot.

17. I went out to lunch with a friend the other day and the restaurant was a converted from a single family home. We're sitting there talking when my friend looks up, above my head, speechless (which is a rarity). I look up and behind me, a few feet above my head, is a praying mantis. It was just hanging out at the window, probably sleeping. I think praying mantis's (manti?) are pretty cool so I tell my friend to chill out. (She couldn't though because she grew up in Samoa where she was surrounded by big furry spiders. So now she hates all kinds of bugs.) She tried but after several minutes, the praying mantis started watching us and paying more attention to what we were doing and all of a sudden I panicked because it looked like it was going to jump on my head and I even made a comment about it and my friend was like, dude, he's totally going to jump on your head. (We guessed it was he because he was green and brown and not completely green.) So we had to call our server over and he very politely and gentally rescued the praying mantis.

18. I just looked up the different between a male and female praying mantis. It has nothing to do with color. Males have 6 segments on its abdomen and females have 8. There you have it.

19. And the plural of praying mantis is praying manti.

Friday, August 19, 2011

First Day of School

The boys started school on Tuesday. Nicklas insisted on wearing his hockey jersey. I always worry about food or grass stains. But it was important to him so I agreed.

Seeger had a hard time waking up. As he was walking downstairs, he could see his shadow on the wall and he said, "Woah, I have crazy hair!!" Don't you agree?


Nicklas looks so grown up waiting for the bus!


He made fun of me for taking a picture of the bus coming.


Seeger wanted to wear his Mario shirt because it matches his Mario back pack. His hair a little more tame here.


I had to go to the school office so I went ahead and walked Seeger to his desk when he realized that his teacher has a gerbil. He's very excited about earning time to spend with the furball.


Here's my post from last year's first day of school.

And my post from 2009.

Here is Nick's first day of school from 2008.

Here is Seeger's first day of preschool in 2008.

I can't believe how much they've grown in three years.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Random Thought Thursday

1. How many, a-hem, weeks has it been since my last RTT? Too many.

2. Here's a story to make up for it... I was a coffeehouse today with a colleague (working of course!) when this guy comes up to our table. We were sitting outside so we didn't think much about it. He says "oh, hi" to us so we each think he knows the other person when suddenly the owner busts through the door toward us, yelling at the guy to leave. The guy says okay and walks back to his car. The owner stares him down for awhile and man finally gets in his car and drives off. Then the owner tells us that he's pretty tolerant and accepts most patrons, even if they're weird, but that guy is banned for life. Apparently, he likes to carry a hatchet and go up to the female customers and ask them if they know about the ax murderer that's haunting Bloomington. The owner assured us he was perfectly harmless, but he can't let the guy scare off his customers. It was a bizarre, yet entertaining experience.

3. I still have boxes to unpack in the house. I wonder if we'll ever be fully unpacked. I would have made more progress this week but we've played family Uno almost every night. It's the one game I can beat the Polack.

4. The boys started school two days ago. I think they're excited about it and especially to see their friends. I'm looking forward to the routine however keeping track of timing for everything has been challenging:
6:48 - the time Nick's bus driver says she'll be there to pick him up
7:04 - the time the transportation department says the bus will pick him up
7:28 - the time Nick's bus driver says she'll be picking him up on Wednesday's (the school day is shorter on Wednesday's)
7:40 - Nick's start time for school Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday
8:25 - Nick's start time on Wednesday
8:35 - Seeger's start time on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday
9:35 - Seeger's start time on Wednesday
2:55 - the time Nick's school day ends
3:36 - the time Nick's bus drops him off at home
3:50 - the time Seeger's school day ends

See what I mean? I'll have to refer to this blog post every day to make sure I know what starts and ends at what time.

5. My office is organizing the welcome back luncheon for faculty/staff and we're having a dunk tank. I'm all for fun but I think it's a bad idea. (It's not quite the image we want to portray, you know?) Two of the dunkees are notorious pains in the you-know-what so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

6. When we discussed the dunk tank at yesterday's staff meeting, it was confirmed that Mr. Cox's hose is long enough to fill the tank. No one kept a straight face for the rest of the meeting. (And yes, that's typical for our staff meetings where half are spent doing business and half are spent doing things like watching a Tosh.0 episode.)

7. We're headed up north this weekend. We're spending some time at the Lake because I'm going to a birthday party for my mom, plus we are picking up a tractor that my dad is giving us. Our grass mostly looks like this:


But is also looks like this:


8. I want to plant more grass but someone told me that you're only supposed to plant grass in months that have an R in them. I guess I'm supposed to wait until September? Does anyone know if this is true?

9. When Mia was here last weekend, we spent several hours on Kirkwood, looking through the clothing and vintage stores. The Polack found some kickass doc martins and I found a Mrs. Roper dress. I seriously thought about buying it for Halloween but I didn't and now I regret it. I might have to see if they still have it because it would be the perfect costume.

10. I'll leave you with this image:



Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Nick's Yellow Belt

Nicklas tested for his yellow belt on Friday. Of course easily passed.





It's fun to watch to the testing. Because it was he was the only white belt, he only had to do a small portion of the testing. As they progress, more kids sit out until finally it was just the brown belts who were testing. I always enjoy seeing the forms of the higher level belts.

Here is the group as they are getting to move up. Mia was with us during the test and she asked what happens if someone doesn't get to move up. I couldn't answer because it hasn't happened during Nick's or Seeger's test. The school does a good job of making sure the kids are prepared. (Though I do know it's happened before.)





Yay for the yellow belt! Now Nicklas doesn't have to call Seeger "Sir" anymore.


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Mia Was Here

For just four short days....



We all ate and shopped and played games and watched movies and she played lots of Wii with the boys. We miss her already.

Here we are our goodbye photos. Some good, some not so good. They include her friend Katie who came and picked her up from our house and took her to Lafayette for a few days before Mia's return to Norway.






Sunday, August 14, 2011

UNO



Seeger just schooled me in Uno. He won 7 of 9 rounds.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

School Goals

I know, I know, I owe a big long post of our vacation and Bahaman cruise. It's coming some day. Maybe.

We'll see.

This will be a short post but I wanted to let you all know how super proud I am of Nicklas. Out of the blue the other day, he announced to the family that when school starts, his two goals are to 1) keep his desk clean and 2) write down every assignment in his notebook. I swooned with joy that he came up with these goals without any prompting or discussion. He actually thought of them on his own. (And they're the two I would have picked for him!) They are lofty but the fact that he identified them is good enough regardless of the outcome.

Side note, Mia arrived to Indiana yesterday. She's with us through the weekend and then she's headed to Lafayette. The boys start school on Tuesday and also, I have a job interview. Eeks, I'm not sure what I think about that. To be continued...

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Best and Worst

Seeger's worst - leaving vacation
Mike's worst - ear infection
Natalie's worst - all the stuff she has to do to catch up at work and
at home
Mia's worst - having to get up at 5am to catch her flight and the
couple on the plane wouldn't let her sleep because they were talking
to her about a Norwegian ancestor
Nick's worst - the day is almost over
Seeger's best - back home + Mia
Mike's best - Mia's here
Natalie's best - Mia!
Mia's best - being back and feeling like she never left
Nick's best - movie day with Mia at home

Monday, August 1, 2011

Movie Time



The boys planned out which movies they wanted to watch and in what
order. When it was time for Wall-E, I traded places with Nicklas so
that I could watch it with Seeger.

Side note - We're driving through Tennessee right now and I'm trying
really, really, really hard not to scratch any of the 30 mosquito
bites I have on my ankles and feet. Apparently I missed that portion
of my body when I used bug spray while making Smores at the Lake on
Saturday.

At Huddle House




Seeger is very excited - and proud! - of his Golden Waffle Platter.

Still in Indiana




We left for Florida around 4:45 this morning but had to stop 30 miles
outside of Kentucky. Nicklas gets car sick and he wasn't feeling well.
Luckily Huddle House was open at 5:45. Nicklas had eggs and toast.
Hopefully this will help the sickness subside for a while.