Funning in Trempeleau

We had a spectacular outing last weekend to "compete" in the Chase Trempeleau scavenger hunt. Chase is actually an acronym in this case for cycle, hike, and seek - all things that we enjoy! The organization Communities Off N' Funning puts on this event as well as a number of other events throughout the year. Their mission is to get kids to have fun outdoors. They know that to do this, they have to get adults to also have fun outdoors. In the end, they create an environment where kids are surrounded by healthy adult role models. Due to the competition rules, we have to play in the non-competitive segment of the event. However, we have the right equipment and skills to really be competitive. This year, with some knowledge of what we were doing and a much more capable "tail gunner", we rocked it! We accumulated 220 official points (we had calculated 240, but had at least one answer wrong and a photo fail). We rode a season record of 32 miles during the 3 hour race, and we had a ton of fun!

See if you can spot Noah with a face-wide grin running to the finish line in this album: https://offnfunning.shutterfly.com/pictureschasetremp/1498. Our team was called "big red bike" can you figure out why?

Let me explain this event a little better. You get a map with clues on it, a punch card, and the clock starts for a 3 hour race. You ride your bike all around town, with your team, to as many places on the map as you can get to collect points. The close-by, easy stops are worth 5 points, the far-flung or challenging spots are worth more, up to the highest point punch being worth 40. There are lots of 5 pointers, and only 1-40 point checkpoint. There are 38 or 40 total checkpoints and it would be impossible to complete them all. Sometimes, it's just a punch (they use Braille alphabet punches, I believe), other times it's a trivia question that is answered at the location somehow, other times, you have to take a picture to get the points. If you come back late, you lose points. Both years now, we cut it close and truly had to put on the gas to get ourselves through the finish line on time. Then, they feed you a fabulous pasta dinner (and cookies and brownies and lemonade) and give out prizes. 

Noah's favorite stop was the one where we had camera failure- take a picture of a member of your team roasting a lil smokie over the fire. I think he ate 3! Note to self, so that we don't take as a long at the roasting checkpoint, bring lots of good back pocket snacks to fuel the race. There are also a number of checkpoints that you have to hike to get to. If you're a big cross-trainer, these might suit you. We dislike the Mississippi jungle and bugs, so stuck mostly with the roadside checkpoints. Most checkpoints are un-manned, but a few have volunteers that might give further instructions. Ooh I almost forgot to mention that for one of the checkpoints, you had to hop into a canoe and paddle a little ways in the Mississippi backwater to get to the punch. How can you pack that much fun into a sunny morning anywhere else?! 

Anniversary River Ride

15 years, can you believe it?!

I don't feel old enough to be married that long.  

Here's our "happy couple" picture heading out onto the river.  That's how we get sunburned on good weather weekends in SE MN.

 We put in at Oxbow park for this outing.  There was just the right amount of water for the trip.  In a few places, there were cool cliff walls  - Brian was quick enough on the camera for this one. The river was moving pretty good in places and lazy in places.  Not nearly as swift and fun as last weekend, but it had a few more maneuvering challenges.

 In the final mile before Genoa, there was an extensive log-jam.  We had to pull up next to a huge tree, climb out of the canoe, balance carefully, and lift the canoe over. There was a lot of careful tree avoidance in this stretch.  We deemed it a poor choice for kayaks or beginners.  Good thing we have 15 years under our belts!

When we pulled out, we finished our lunch on the tailgate and I thought this was a lovely scene.  

The shuttle for this river ride was Brian's fat bike.  We were going to tandem, our anniversary custom, but the shuttle route involved a good amount of gravel. I soaked up the sunshine at a picnic table with a magazine while he drove to the end and biked back.  

We didn't see a single other boating party while on the route, though there were some people around Oxbow on the bridges.  There was an obnoxious lawnmower at one of the river-side estates that we had to listen to for about a mile. There was a huge, handsome bald eagle that we saw twice along the route.  There was an amazing number of ducks that kept trying to distract us away from the youngsters in their flock. And, black-winged, glittery green-bodied dragonflies were flittering about all the way along the river edges.

I'm just going to end this since I'm out of pictures and have added plenty of commentary.  If I don't, you'll get some sappy essay about how marriage is like a canoe trip down a river...

Gear review

We had a super hiking trip recently in the badlands. As we were preparing to go, we had to think a bit about our gear situation. We have generally kept a reasonably well supplied gear closet, but we haven't done this much since Noah. And, now we have to carry equipment for him as well as our own gear. Space and weight are a much bigger concern! Brian did a little shopping spree and was pretty excited about his bedding before and after:

I got a summer weight camping sleeping bag 10 years ago, but he kept his mid-weight one around and sweated it out when we've gone in summer. It was finally time for him to have an appropriate bag for the forecasted overnight temps. It worked very well, he was pleased with the result!

The following are the 5 sleeping mats that we were considering bringing (4 went). We learned about these super minimalist sleeping mats that pack to the size of a pop can, sweet. Well, sweet if you ar 5'10"-6' tall, male proportions, and sleep on your back. After trying the minimalist route for one night, I lugged the second largest mat shown into the wilderness with me (gotta love traveling by van, aka gear shed on wheels!)

Noah is a super hiker and we will definitely do more of this, so it's time to continue refining our gear so we can manage the load and sleep well too!

I should go download the pictures from the trip, so I can show you "Ram skull mountain" and other highlights!

Shelves, shelves, shelves

I never thought there was such a thing as too many shelves. It was one of the selling points of this house - all those great built-ins. Now, let me give you a sad tour of what they all look like 6 months later.  Warning, it's not pretty...

You've seen these shelves before. They tend to be pretty utilitarian.  And, a catch all for stuff that the boys don't otherwise know where to put. 

I will step back so you can see the bigger picture (excuse the low quality night shot).

We currently have it set up so that photo albums, framed pictures, and desk stuff are loaded up on the family room shelves.  

Then, we have the master bedroom built-in unit.

Here, it's segmented out to his and hers sides. Not sure that's working for us. My stuff spills over to his side and it's completely lop-sided.

These gems live in the corners of the dining room. I fully intend for them to be un-green-ified soon.  The hold up is deciding if those hot curves will be allowed to stay (that and bringing the paint equipment home from Superior Condo). 

I stuck a few random vases, baskets, and "pretty" kitchen stuff on them. They make me wish I had a collection of white ceramic pitchers, bowls, vases, and such. I'm thinking about dark gray for them. Might make baskets and wooden bowls pop out nicely?

And, here's our final set of shelves (on the main floor, anyway). The whole fireplace desperately needs a makeover. We are itching to eliminate the country blue from this room. It is looking a whole lot better now that it isn't toy central. Though, I think the shelves looked better with the few cute toy items, puzzles, and games. 

So, any ideas? Should I just leave the blue and green ones unstyled until we get them reprinted? That's Brian's vote, of course. I think I might go digging in every drawer and cupboard for anything else I can find that's pretty enough to display and work on establishing some shelf themes. It would be so nice to have them looking pretty and functional as well!

Have a great weekend!

Lake Superior Rockin' and Rollin'

From the ice encrusted shore, we enjoyed watching the waves pound.  We couldn't free any rocks from the frozen beach to throw into the water, so we just knocked down a few icicles and played "house" in a "cave".  I had to go back for the camera and get some wave pictures, they were spectacular, though I don't think it shows up quite so spectacular in the pictures.  Noah and I had to play outside a bit for certain parts of the construction process, so we took a walkie-talkie down and played on the shore.  All parties had a good time!

Snow-covered rock

Warm winter fun with a preschooler

Noah got new skis for Christmas.  We had to consider a few other things to keep him warm.  We got the universal binding skis for kids - that means he wears the winter boots that we already have for him.  I'm happy to not have to buy ski boots every winter.  His little white cotton socks inside the generic kids winter boots weren't quite doing it for us, though.  "Santa" got him a pair of costs-more-than-the-boots-did smartwool kids wintersport kneehigh socks.  That was enough to make his feet last as long as mine out in the cold anyway.

 From toe to head, here's how we layered him for playing out on the chilly days.  Kneehigh wool socks and winter boots.  His warmest pair of fleece sweatpants, topped by a pair of jeans, topped by snowpants. Long sleeve t-shirt, sweatshirt, winter coat.  On his hands, he wears a lightweight fleece mitten with his Menards mittens over top (for those who aren't familiar, Menards sells kids mittens with the high, snow blocking wrist, great for the daycare playground for $5... Awesome!).  Up top varies based upon the sweatshirt.  If he has a hood, then he wears his sweatshirt hood, jacket hood, and a scarf wrapped around his face.  If no hooded sweatshirt, then he puts his hat under his hood.  Extra head warmth is essential!  And, his jacket hood is a quite thick one, not like those little tuck-in-the-collar-in-case-it's-raining-or-windy hoods that so many adult jackets come with.

 So there you have it on clothing.  Another year of physical coordination improvement and appropriate length skis and he's getting to be quite the skier!
Not sure what happened with these pictures, so just turn your head, they were normal in my photo file and I've tried just about everything to get them righted.

 Noah has snowshoes too.  Actually, they're monster feet, according to Noah.  If we get tired of skiing, we can go for a stomp.  It's fun, and so good to get outside in winter!

After our afternoon out playing in the snow, one particular 5 year old fell asleep in the car for a good half hour.  Mission accomplished, we wore him out!

Fat Biking in the OC

No, not Orange County...  We live in a different OC, and sometimes struggle to find fun things to do.  Here's a fun afternoon we had a couple weeks ago (Christmas got in the way of me putting this one up... Excuses, excuses).  For those of you who only come here for the cool DIY projects, you can take a good look at the way the sled connects to the hot guy on the orange bike - we built that, engineer style last year.  We've actually re-built that pulk a few times since.  Continually improving our design ;)  

 There's a public area that skiers often use when the snow conditions are low, but it isn't groomed, so they can't keep the fat bikes off!  We saw a skier while we were out there and his comment was 'oh, good, you're grooming it for us!'

 This is the most fun we've had in the OC for quite some time!

 I ride the cheap blue fat bike, which is why you only see pictures of my boys and the fancy orange bike.  The snow was clearly glittering that afternoon, but I don't think you can see it very well in this picture.

Noah didn't last as long as the rest of us were having fun, which perpetuated a few additional Christmas gifts for him - more warm equipment.  I'll share about keeping your preschooler warm when playing outside on cold days next time!

Decluttering Challenges

As we packed for moving, we pulled out lots of "goodies" that had been "shelved" for a long time.  I had a young helper for most of this packing and guess what he thought of these goodies?  NEW TOYS!  I did manage to fill a few extra garbage bags and sell of a few things on craigslist, but we moved a bunch more things than we would have liked to because of this helper.
He found a few baby toys that he loves, loves, loves and NO, we can't pass it along.
He found some bike parts that he thought would be great fun.
He found some of my old toys - rollerblades, shoes, bike helmet that he wants to grow into (???).

Moral of the story, decluttering is best done when 4 year olds are in bed or otherwise occupied.

While we're on the topic of decluttering, I should mention that a smart phone is actually a brilliant assistant to this task.  You can take a picture of your item and post it directly to craigslist quite quickly.  I used to have to wait until I got my camera pictures downloaded to the computer, then get on the web and get it posted.  That could take me weeks depending upon my motivation.  As you can see from my blogging track record, I'm pretty inconsistent about getting pictures uploaded and documented. :)

Anyone else working on decluttering??  Is it time to give up old toys that haven't been used in years?  Are all preschoolers hoarders?

More New House - the exterior

She's not too much to look at, especially on the inside, but the exterior is one of the best features.  The yard is downright manicured.  It's flat and manageable.  And, the best part... it has a sprinkler system!  We didn't think the sprinkler system would work because of the fact that the inspector didn't test it in March, and the timing of the whole estate situation.  Had it been winterized last winter?  Had it even been brought out of winter mode this past summer?  Would it work?  Why yes, it does work!  Push a few buttons and the whole lawn will be watered.  Easy.  Now can we get a similar solution for mowing??!

The foundation planting was re-done by the estate before they put it for sale.  Check.  That's one nice thing to push the easy button on.

There is one really nice big tree on the property, but that's it.  After spending so much every year on tree trimming and removal, it's nice to only have one to manage.  The neighbors have some that are reasonably close to our property, so we can enjoy some shade that we don't have to keep trimmed.

There is a quirk on the outside that should be mentioned...  The house has frontage on 2 roads - out front and out back.  That means there really isn't a back yard for playing, gardening, or a patio.  So far, Noah's loving playing in the front yard - biking in the cul-de-sac, or making an obstacle course across the front yard.  If we play on the back side, we're much less likely to meet a neighbor or someone walking their dog, so the front is the preferred playing spot.

The siding and roof are in great shape, so they won't be worries for us for a long time to come.  Since we had to do the entire exterior at the last house, these are big selling points here.

So, there you have it, the outside story of the white cape cod house that we now call home.  We'll go inside again soon.

Sneak peek of the new place

We're calling the next house the Granny house in recognition of it's previous owner.  It's a cute white cape cod on the outside on a cul de sac with a very tidy, flat yard that's still walking distance to work for us and school for Noah.

It's nearly 60 years newer than the yellow downtown house (we need a name for that one!), so we're excited that it won't have so many of the super old house issues.  It had an addition of a great room in the 1980s, so parts of it are quite new.  It isn't all "done" on the inside, so we've got big plans for the place!

Looking into the kitchen from the great room.

Formal dining room, looking into the kitchen

I see a wall that's begging to come down!

Master bedroom

Gotta love pink carpet and peach walls!

Main floor/master bathroom plus laundry

Nothing like swapping out laundry while on the toilet!

While we have big plans for the place, we really intend to take it slow and live there for a while before we change anything.  We want to make a real plan and do things right the first time so we don't have to re-do our work.  I'm showing you here the top candidates for improvement :)

Off to continue packing!

Randomness - aka a list of excuses.

I haven't posted anything house related because we're in that limbo state between buying and selling where we aren't completely positively confident about what's happening until the ink is dry and the money is paid.  It's a totally frustrating and energy-draining place to be.  All fun projects end up taking a back seat to life.

I wanted to pop in here and welcome all those Better After folks who have stopped by!  It was so kind of Lindsey to feature our bathroom remodel.

We're working on a vacation condo remodel, but have that phased and scheduled to be a fall, winter, spring project because we like to play too much in the summer.  I probably won't have next steps and updates on that until November. 

We took a vacation and need to write up all of our fun from that.  We played in the Nebraska panhandle - most people think that's crazy - it's actually a beautiful place and low on crowds! 

Most of my Noah fun blog posts have been relocated to Instagram.  I don't usually have as much to say as a picture to share, so that works well for me.

Up next: we'll be packing and moving and starting over with an old house that needs some love :)
I have an orphan piece of furniture that I'm working on (how's that for a teaser).
I've been maintaining some sanity with knitting projects, but nothing is finished that isn't a gift for a blog reader, so I'm not spilling the beans on that either!

Hope you're all having a great summer! 

The Wishlist

 Let's get the things we're looking for in a house noted.  We've done a lot to make this house ours, but it still isn't meeting our needs.  Here are the things that are highest on our list of wants.

Entry way space and flow.  We get traffic jams in our entry way when there's just 2 of us coming through the door.  I want an entry with long runner rug drawing you to walk more than one step in the door.  We also have tiny, jam-packed coat closet spaces by our doors and don't care for separate garage and main entry ways.

After: entry way

Dining space. I don't think I need to elaborate on this one.  It would be nice to have a comfortable place to eat with more than 4 people.  I don't need more square feet here, I just need better flow.  Our current dining room is separated off from the rest of the house by a narrow passageway from the kitchen.  It's really nasty every year at Noah's birthday party and Christmas.  Makes me not want to celebrate and that's not fun.





After: dining room



Workshop.  Or larger utility room.  We do our projects in whichever space we're willing to "sacrifice" to the mess of the project at the time.  They become frustrating because you can't leave it out for long enough to finish it (if it's a main living area and a long-ish project).  Tripping over half finished projects isn't much fun, but doing "projects" is!  We need an area that's perfectly acceptable and properly situated to let the creative juices flow.

Project going on in "after" living room.

Flatter yard.  We love our skyline views and the uniqueness it lends to our house, but with a preschool boy going outside to play, it definitely adds to our stress level.  Hillside gardening is a special challenge as well, and getting up and down the driveway, especially in the winter or on a bike!  We think a flatter yard will make it easier to say howdy to the neighbors as well, and neighbors can add to quality of life.



Before house front, after installing the landscaping

 Bigger Garage.  Yes, we only have one car and an oversized one car garage plus shed which is about equivalent to a 2 car garage.  The trouble is we have so many toys, tools, and gear.  We don't use the shed much for anything we want access to because it's way down the hill, so far to haul stuff. 

Quieter.  We're less than a block away from 2 very busy city streets, with tons of buses running daily.  We have a few commercial grade heating and cooling systems within a block that hum like jets.  We are within 10 blocks of 2 helicopter pads that are relatively active.  Downtown just isn't a quite place to be.  Washing the car in the driveway on a quiet Sunday morning is anything but quiet, even though there are no buses or people around at that time.

Now, the question is, can we do all that without adding much for square feet (because that would be more to clean and maintain), keeping features that we have and love, and in a place that's managable for getting to/from work and an acceptable school for Noah??  I'll let you know if, when, what we find!

Catching up on photos

I've spent a little time going through the last couple years pictures. What a job! I need to remember to do this monthly at a minimum, so it doesn't become a huge black hole! Working with digital pictures is truly a blessing and a curse. I take a ton more pictures than I did back in the film days. Which means, I get some fun random photos of Noah, and tons of beautiful scenery pictures when we travel. The curse is that you have to spend more time at the computer to sort and select them. I placed a big Shutterfly order including a book about our vacation last summer. Ah, accomplishment! Can't wait to show it to Noah! They have a nifty little option at checkout that allows me to share it with you too!

Click here to view this photo book larger

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