The other day at breakfast Kai announced to me that “Me and grandpa are pretty much the same”. I said “oh?” Kai replied “yeah, we both have big teeth.” We have a collection of old family photos hanging in our living room and Kai was looking at the one of grandpa Art taken when he was in the 3rd grade. Clearly a lot of personality traits can be traced back to the size of your childhood front teeth.
At Grandma and Grandpa Wiemanns’
Memorial Day 2009
I was in the grocery store in Webster the other day with Kai. As we were checking out he announced to the woman ringing up our groceries “I don’t have just two Grandma-Grandpas, I have two Grandmas and two Grandpas.” How lucky we were that both the Wiemanns and the Jacobs were able to visit over the Memorial Day weekend. Aunt Lea Ann and Cousin Nina also came for several days and Uncle Paul and Bev were able to stop by as well. The weather could not have been better!
Happy New Year!
Crystal has a small point-and-shoot that I just downloaded the pictures off of. Some turned out quite well so I’m including a batch of them here and that will be it for the Christmas pictures. Hopefully by the next post I’ll have some pictures of our new house ready to go–we hope to start moving in the next couple of weeks.
Christmas at the Jebel
After the big meal in Arlington we headed up to Spooner for a dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Jacobs.
Christmas in Arlington
Christmas Eve we headed down to Arlington, Minnesota to spend some time with Crystal’s family. We did Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpa Wiemann’s where we had a great dinner with family. Kai and Nora tracked Santa on the NORAD site and then put out cookies and made some of our now traditional reindeer oatmeal. To make reindeer oatmeal you start with some oats but then anything can go in. Kai and Nora get to choose the spices and do all of the mixing. Christmas morning Kai was up early but Nora wouldn’t leave the bedroom unless she was holding my hand in case Santa was still there. It turns out Santa brought all the gifts to Lea Ann and Steven Post’s house so we headed over there still in our pajamas and opened presents from Santa.
Christmas at the Fort
The day after putting Crystal on the plane for her conference in DC we bundled up and headed over to Fort Folle Avoine for “Santa at the Fort.”  Grandma and Grandpa Jacobs met us there. We had a nice meal of wild rice soup, Kai and Nora did a little shopping in the elves shop and we listened to the story on the people-eating elk from the Ojibwe storyteller.  Of course a visit with Santa was on the list as well.
Leaving Danbury
We’ve been back in the Kingdom for about two weeks now so we are fully adjusted to the time zone but not yet the heat. We’ve actually had a good run of weather for the last week–it was plenty warm but dry and with a breeze. Starting yesterday the humidity rolled in though; the heat index hit the mid 140’s with an actual high of only about 104. Today the high is supposed to get to 111 and the humidity is still here as the windows are already raining ((When it gets very humid the water condenses on the cool windows of the house and completely fogs them over. When it gets really humid rivulets of water will actually be running off of them. Kai calls this “raining windows.”))
Today’s gallery contains a few pictures of our last couple of days in Danbury, Wisconsin. Enjoy!
The Washburn County Fair
While Ben was in Portland this summer Crystal and the kids visited Grandma and Grandpa Jacobs where they took in the Washburn County Fair. Tractors, farm animals, and hot dogs are high on Kai’s “cool” list so it was a great time. A few days later as we were at Underwater World at the Mall of America looking up through the glass window at sharks and other large fish he asked if we could leave and go look at chickens. Lucky for him we were on our way to Aunt Lea Ann’s who has a clutch.
A Trip to the Jebel
This was our second trip to Grandma and Grandpa Jacobs at the Jebel house. They have two new Dachshund puppies, Gretta and Gaby ((my apologies to Grandma and Grandpa for not being able to distinguish them by name in the photo captions)) who are full of energy and completly captured Kai’s affection. He couldn’t wait to get back to play with them and would make comments through the next day such as “We sure could use some puppies here.”
