Filed under: St Paul
Here’s a short video from Lily’s Christmas pageant. She made me promise not to bring my laptop – but I was allowed to bring the FlipVideo.
Filed under: St Paul
On December 14, we all went to Kate’s recital with the Center for Irish Music. Kate started taking tin whistle this fall. I have to say if you have a kid thinking about an instrument – go with the tin whistle. They are cheap. We didn’t have to buy a book. It’s easy for her to carry her own instrument. And she can already play a couple of songs!
Aine was also invited to be in the recital as she took a singing class at the CIM too. So we have a video of both performers.
Patrick and Lily have decided that they are going to learn to play the bodhran after New Year. (The bodhran is the big round drum.)
Filed under: St Paul
On December 13 the girls and I went with Grandma to see the Best Christmas Pageant Ever at Stepping Stone. Stepping Stone is a theater where shows are done by and for kids.
The show was very cute. We had primo seats as we were early enough to be the first people in the theater. A first for us!
Filed under: St Paul
My best hour of December was getting a massage from Emmy Vadnais. Why don’t I do that more often?
Filed under: St Paul
On December 8 the girls and I went to the SPNN Open House. The fact that we went is a sign that I don’t drive enough and had completely forgotten about snowstorms. The weather was terrible. It’s about a 5 mile drive – tops. And it took 45 minutes.
But we got a fun tour of the studio and we won a tote bag. My hope is that the girls will take classes at SPNN at some point so that they can learn how to create a TV show. It’s not that I want to have a TYV show or anything. I just think it would be cool.
Filed under: Chicago
When I was a kid I loved the Museum of Science & Industry. It is great. We went the day after Thanksgiving. We were there when it opened – and we ran to the new toy department. So we had all of the great machines to ourselves. Everyone got a chance to drive the car or be the skier going down the slope.
As soon as it got busy we had to hightail it to the U Boat exhibit, which is what we came to see. Most of the adults have read The Shadow Divers, which is the best book ever even though it’s about submarines.
So we took the tour, which is very cool. The U-Boats were super powerful until the US figured out the code that the Germans were using to communicate with the U-boats. Then they became underwater death traps.
The tour of the U-boat walks you though it’s capture. Although the U-boat is huge, I think they said a city block long, it’s tiny inside. I think they said about 50 soldiers lived on the submarine – and all of them smoked. I can’t even imagine what it smelled like back them.
It was cool to kind of experience the capture. Once the U-boat was spotted it dove deeper into the water – kind of like a free fall and the men had to be silent since noise carries so much farther in the water. It was a cat and mouse chase until the Americans actually took over. Apparently they just stormed the U-boat and were then able to get the Enigma (decoder) machine and tomes of code notes. They didn’t admit to capturing the U-boat because they didn’t want the Germans to know that they had the cheat sheet to their codes. So the men on board were in a POW camp in America.
It was interesting to see the war propaganda. They didn’t just promote shopping as your patriotic duty back then – and that was good to see. They had an amazing visual that showed how many men were killed by U-boats over the years.
It’s also kind of amazing to see how they got the boat to Chicago, where it sat outside for decades and then into the Museum of Science and Industry.
We visited some other rooms in the Museum – like the Christmas trees and some Main Street setup – but the U-boat was the coolest part by far.
The Chicago museum is a little like the museum we visited in London. It’s very cool – but so busy that you can’t handle being there for very long.
Filed under: Chicago
Ok it’s been a month since I last posted. That’s terrible. I’m going to try to bring us to date quickly.
Thanksgiving… We went to Chicago for Thanksgiving. We had a convoy going. Kate made a really nice Thanksgiving dinner. It was warmer in Chicago than Minnesota so it seemed like a good break.
We have some pictures of everyone bagging up lunches to drop off to Katie’s church. They do a nice job there of coming up with projects that everyone can do to contribute to the community. Well, maybe not to the local community of Glenview – but the Greater Chicagoland anyways. Also you’re never too young to learn how to work on an assembly line!
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