Category Archives: Kids

2026, Art, Food, Kids, Stories, Uncategorized

Julia!

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Last Thursday night, YA and I headed over to the Minnesota Historical Center to see the Julia Child exhibit.  It’s been there for a bit but we just got around to it… plus the free Thursday aren’t EVERY Thursday, so it does require a little pre-planning.

I’ve seen Julia Child’s actual kitchen at the Smithsonian, but this traveling exhibit if much more extensive, covering details of her childhood, how she met her husband Paul, their life in France and, of course, her culinary journey.  There are quite a few fun bits in the exhibit:

Pots w/ smells.  There were a few pots next to copies of her most famous recipes.  When you lifted the lid, that recipe’s aroma wafted out of the pot.  Ingenious.  There was a mock-tv studio and if you stood in certain parts of the room, your image was filmed and showed up on three different screens.  Another fabulous part of the exhibit was a 12-foot high copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking; the inside of the book was projected from two different screens and every minute or so, the “page” would turn, taking your to another recipe in the book.  What a marvelous idea. 

I guess I know more about Julia Child than I thought (couple of biographies); the exhibit didn’t have anything that was a surprise about her life but it was enjoyable nonetheless.   

I had been surprised that YA had wanted to come along but she seemed to enjoy it.  We then went on to see a couple of the other exhibits that are showing right now but she didn’t want to stay for the free concert that was going on that night.  Oh well, I take what I can get!

What’s the last museum you’ve visited?  Any good biographies lately?

2026, books, home, Kids, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Rocks & Hammers

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Not quite sure where I got the idea to read And Then We Hit a Rock by Greg Buenzli – it had a catchy title – sometimes that’s all it takes.  Greg and his family bought a catamaran and sailed around on it for a year and a half.  Four stars. It would have been five stars if the good stuff / bad stuff had been more balanced.  It was about 90% the bad weather, the things that broke (legend!) and other things that went wrong; only about 10% (most of it in the last 10 pages) of why it was a good experience.  An OK read, just not as good as it could have been. 

The reason I’m telling you this is a warning.  Do not attempt any home improvements projects right after finishing this book.  It’s cursed.

Now that YA has finished painting all the hallways, she’s been at me to re-hang all the pictures.  I was ready; I had purchased some new picture hangers, I’d sorted through the photos and stacked them by where they should go, I’d dusted everything off.  No worries – I’ve certainly hung pictures before.

It was a nightmare.  If it could go wrong, it did.  Hallway is just dark enough that everything I dropped (repeated little nails, anchors) needed the flashlight to find it.  I only dropped the hammer once – the only luck of the day was that it didn’t land on any of my toes.  Two photos had to be re-hung because I just did a bad job the first time.  The wire on the back of one photo ripped off after it had been on the wall about 15 minutes. The box with the various tools was right underneath it at that point or the glass would probably have shattered. Also the number of tools kept expanding as I went along. Level, hammer, pliers, painters tape, scissors, flashlight, ruler. And have I mentioned my poor fingers?  Mashed, crushed, banged, pounded, beaten, whacked, smashed, bashed, battered…. I’ll stop now.  Suffice it to say I hung 17 pictures and bashed a thumb or finger at least 20 times.  I did try using a little pliers to hold the nails, but it wasn’t very effective.

I couldn’t bring myself to do the destination photos that go down the stairway after getting the upstairs done; hopefully I’ll have the nerve tomorrow.  Maybe 24 hours between me and the cursed book will make it not so painful!

Ever read a cursed book before? Bashed a finger recently?

2026, Business, Food, Kids, Mysteries

Derby Delights

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YA and I actually have a lot in common.  I probably mention the ways we are different more often than not – makes for better stories sometimes. 

Anyway, we both really like the Derby cookies that they make at Great Harvest Bakery.  Chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, pecans (plus all the other good cookie ingredients).  And they are huge – really too big to eat one a day, but yummy enough.

Great Harvest doesn’t make the derby cookie very often.  They make four or five cookies a month but for some reason they only make the derby a couple of months during the year.  At the beginning of every month, both YA and I scour the bakery’s monthly newsletter to see the monthly cookie listing.  I was expecting that we wouldn’t see our favorite until May.  I don’t know much about the Kentucky Derby but I do know that it’s in May.  YA was the first to see the newsletter this month and when I asked her how many I should get (the packages of six are a much better deal), she responded, two now and then maybe two the end of next week and two more at the end of the month.  She figured we can freeze any “overage”.  Like the two of us can’t eat 36 cookies in a month.  Snort.

Anyway, I obediently went up to Great Harvest today… ended getting three packages because once you purchase a certain amount at the bakery, you get a discount.  Did the math quickly in my head (and had the math confirmed by the bakery clerk) that buying one extra package of cookies actually made the price go down a bit.  Win/win.  I put one of the packages in the freezer for now. 

The capper to this story is that when I bought all these cookies and bemoaned the fact that the bakery doesn’t make them very often, the clerk concurred and also said that since the base of the derby cookie is the same as the base of a couple other cookies, we can special order our favorite on any month those others are made.  Which is most months.  Wish I had known this any time during the last several years!

Will you watch the Derby this year?  Will you wear a fancy hat?

2026, Food, Kids

Full Cart

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YA and I cannot be trusted at Trader Joes. 

As I mentioned in the past, I do not have the shopping gene; YA has double.  She has resigned herself to this and does all her window shopping and browsing on her own or with my good friend Brenda, who also has double of the shopping gene.  (Once they went off shopping at about 10 in the morning and came home at around 5.  When I asked what she had gotten, YA said “nothing but I did look at a sweater that I almost got”.)

My shopping Achilles heel is Trader Joe’s.  It’s big enough that any shopping excursion doesn’t take that long and all the stuff in there is edible, which makes it easier for me to plunk down money.  YA has discovered this and every couple of months says “I think we should go to Trader Joe’s” — she usually has a date/time in mind as well.

Last Friday, we headed off with only one thing on our list – salt.  We have plenty of rock salt for the grinder but were out plain old table salt.  Truly all we did was walk around and put things in the cart.  Three bags and a lot of money later, we headed home.  At that point YA wanted to stop at Taco Bell (yes, after just buying 3 bags of groceries) and I suggested that since I had ponied up all the money at Trader Joe’s, she should cough up for lunch.

This triggered a feisty discussion about who had put more in the cart.  For every item of mine that she mentioned, I countered with one of hers.  This did lead eventually to us going through the receipt and adding it all up.  Surprisingly, we were very very close.  I had put more things in the cart, but her items were more expensive.  We did agree to not count the ginger beer since we had both wanted it. 

The brioche waffles were the last thing to go into the cart.  They’re pretty good but I won’t rush out to buy anymore before they are discontinued – to be replaced by some other goodie that will tempt us.

In a surprising turn of events, Trader Joe’s doesn’t stock plain old table salt (except for one pitifully small bottle)!

Any establishments in which you can’t control yourself?

2026, Family, Kids, Uncategorized

Family Resemblances

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It has been nice since moving to our new town to run into people I remember from growing up here. One comment I hear from many people is “You sure look like your mother!” That sits ok with me, although I hope their memories of her are from decades before she died at age 91. I know the move has taken its toll, but I hope I don’t look ancient.

A photo of me at age one year shows me looking a lot like my dad. As I aged, my face grew less round and more elongated. Now I look like my mother’s side of the family, especially my Hamburg great grandmother’s family. The women were tall. My mother’s mother was 6 feet tall. My dad was several inches shorter than my mom, and I hit the mean in between their heights.

Our children look like my side of the family, but with Husband’s curly hair. Flat feet run in both my and Husband’s families. Both our children inherited that. Both are tall (Daughter is 6’1”, and Son is 6’4″). Our grandchildren resemble their East Indian mother, although both are going to be quite tall. Son lamented that he looks like the 16th century Dutch guys in the paintings in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Sometimes you can’t escape your genetics.

Who do you look like? What traits have you inherited?

2026, Baboon Achievers, home, Kids

Painting Heroics

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YA is my hero.

Backstory.  Two years ago, when we had the bathroom done, when it was time for our contractor to plaster in a few places, I convinced him to plaster a few spots in the upstairs hallway and the steps.  YA and I agreed on the new color we wanted and then did… nothing.  I look at this every day and hate it but not enough to actually do anything about it.  We talk about it every couple of months, but no changes.  And I certainly am not going to nag her about it when I’m not willing to put on my painting clothes.  I’ve even thought about hiring a painter.

Last week she decided she was ready.  We went to Home Depot and got a gallon of paint and a paintbrush and a roller and then she got to it.  Did a little sanding, wiped down all the walls, tape and more tape and even more tape.  She used up all the paint and sent me back to HD to get more.  No problem.   She asked me once if I wanted to paint.  I declined.

We talked about it further; while she is working on this project, I’ve stepped up in other areas.  Bringing up her laundry, doing all the dishes she leaves in the sink, not asking her to take out the recycling/trash.  It’s a good allocation of chores, because I suck at painting. I’m too impatient and I’m genetically unable to paint without making a mess.  YA has painted the whole hallway and halfway down the steps with her first gallon of paint.  There is NO paint on the floor anywhere.  And there has been NO paint on YA or her clothing.  I’m not sure how she manages this.  (I did a couple of cards using a stencil the day she was painting and I got blue ink on every single one of my finger tips.) 

She says she is going to finish tomorrow since she has the day off.  How did I get so lucky?

How do you allocate chores/work? 

2026, animals, Food, Kids, Mysteries

Scrambled?

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It was YAs birthday in the middle of the month.  She was out of town for work so she requested a birthday brunch this past weekend.  She had the jalapeno hash with a wide of pancakes; I had the blueberry pancakes with a side of scrambled eggs.  

I used to always order fried eggs, over medium.  No waitperson ever blinked an eye over this, but apparently chefs and fry cooks weren’t up to the task.  Either the yolks were rock solid or the whites oozed out.  After several years of this, I finally decided to switch to scrambled.  Easy peasy, right?  Nope.  It was right about this time that “soft” scrambled eggs started to trend upwards.  I remember seeing chefs online and on tv raving about them.  I always just thought of them as “wet” and certainly not appetizing.  These days when I order scrambled eggs, I specify that I want them “dry”.  Again, no waitperson ever questions this description and I always get the eggs the way I like them.

On Saturday however, YA informed me that I’m ordering wrong.  I’m supposed to say “hard” instead of “dry”.  Since she chose that outing to also inform me of several other things that I do wrong, I didn’t think about it too much.

Then I read Ben’s blog and when I was looking at the chicken pictures, it made me wonder if on the egg point YA was correct.  I can’t imagine what the internet thinks of me based on some of my searches but now it has to add “ways to scramble” eggs to my weird list.  Turns out that most folks do say “hard” although there are enough that use “dry” to make me feel like I’m not completely on my own.  I also discovered that the culinary world also refers to this method as “American Method”.  Hmmm.  I found a lot of videos about how to scramble eggs but nobody seems to know why hard/dry is American.  I did also find that there are “diner” scrambled; the eggs are cooked flat on a grill and folded up. 

When I do eggs at home, my preferred method is fried.  Over medium of course.

Anyway, thanks to Ben and YA for my latest rabbit hole – egg research.  I have frittata and shakshuka on the menu for the next week!

Poached, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, scrambled, over-easy, sunny-side up?

2026, Food, Games, Kids, Seasons

Slippery Summer Fun

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Slippery Summer Fun

Today’s post comes to us from Krista.

I think I’ve mentioned growing up on Cannon Lake and spending most of my free time swimming. I loved swimming, loved everything about the lake.

I don’t know where Mom got the idea, but one hot summer day, she took a large watermelon and spread Vaseline all over it. Then she tossed it in the lake and told us we had to bring it in so that we could have it for a snack later.

We spent most of the afternoon trying to “catch” that thing. It slipped away with every touch. There is nothing on a watermelon to grab hold of, and a greased one in the lake is a slippery challenge! No one was injured in this game, and everyone was exhausted. I don’t remember who, but someone was finally able to get hold of it.

When we got out of the lake, we were slick with petroleum product and water. We all had to shower before supper.

What unique games did you play as a child? What fun challenges did you give your own kids?

2026, Automotive, Kids, Technology

When They Roamed

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My car (Honda Insight) is 12 years old.  She has held up remarkably well but I wasn’t overly surprised when a couple of weeks ago, I had to push my key fob repeatedly to open the car.  But it only happened twice, so then I forgot about it.

Then three days ago, the key fob quit locking.  It would unlock but not lock.  I tried the old key fob – that one was deader than dead.  A quick trip to the hardware store and two new batteries didn’t fix the problem; the internet search listed about 10 possible causes, only one of which was something I could fix on my own.  And that fix didn’t work.  *&#^^%@$.

With YA coming home Sunday night, I was worried that if I messed around too much, locking the car the old fashioned way, that I might not then be able to open it.  Since I needed the car to pick up YA and also needed the car to take a friend downtown yesterday morning, I didn’t want an issue.

Then I made my big mistake; I texted YA about the situation.  What I really wanted to know was where her keys were, in case I needed to use her car to pick her up.

What I got was:

  • Directions on how to change to batteries in the fob. (Thanks, did that on my own already)
  • You know you have the old fob in the drawer? (Yep, been there, done that)
  • Why don’t you leave it until I get home. (Really, you don’t trust me to drive your car to the airport and back?)
  • You know, you can lock the car with your key. There’s a key hole on the door.  (I am not making this up).

Fortunately, the fob is now working intermittently so the short-term issue is on hold although I’m sure I’m going to have to deal with this in the coming month.  Not sure how to let YA know that back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the ONLY way to lock a car was with the key in the door!

Did you know how to drive a stick-shift?  Did you learn on it or teach yourself later?

2025, books, Family, holidays, Kids, Uncategorized, Weather

Forts

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DIL texted me on Sunday to report they had arrived safely in Brookings from Mankato the evening before and were spending the blustery day playing board games and reading books.

She said that 7 year old Grandson was reading his favorite DogMan books in a blanket fort made up of sofa pillows and his infant sister’s bouncy chair. Any fort in a storm!

I loved blanket forts as a child. The sofa cushions made great walls. My farming cousins and I tried to erect forts in trees in the groves, in the granary, anywhere we could find. It sure kept us busy. Perhaps this explains the allure of tents.

I was always so happy when we had snow days from school, as that was the only time my mom made waffles. We still call them Blizzard Waffles. Husband says he has sourdough discard and we can have waffles on New Year’s Day!

What were your favorite ways of making forts? How do you spend stormy days at home?