You Really Must Get One: The Cardboard Box House Part 1

Here's the house that Timmy built:

well he didn't build it alone ...he had some serious help from the neighbors....ok, he seriously helped the neighbors!

The thing about cardboard houses is.....

...they are really remarkably cozy...this big blue and white striped thing is my leg....I'm goin' in! And you're comin' with me!

The Entrance.... with Ariel to greet us as we belly crawl in the front door...

The manor goes on and on....Lily beckons us further....

"Come on in....keep coming....you'll fit!"

It's hard to see, but this is the two story sunroof, covered in Saran Wrap, and Katie is that giant Godzilla woman from my childhood nightmares!... Sorry, that's my neurosis, not yours...

The estate comes complete with a defense arsenal. Silly String. Never leave home (to live in a cardboard box) without it! You should trust me on this.

Light is a must, of course, hence the state of the art lighting system, straight from someone's (not mine) camping box....

and Timmy demonstrates the....

VENTILATION SYSTEM! I'm sorry, but this is over the top...

hey, why is there a hole in my laundry room floor????

Windows, of course, again covered in plastic wrap...mosquitos are the enemy, you know.

All in all, it's rather pleasant and roomy, as long as you don't mind hanging out laying on your side...and aren't claustrophobic....or allergic to cardboard dust....or adverse to ants....

actually the ants come later in this tale...with the dampness....and the tears...

Tune in tomorrow for the Cardboard Box House Part II!

And the Winner Is....WAS.....

You read the story....you voted....you even voted a slight margin for the underdog (Alyse)....

but the winner was....

ANDREW the MAN LINDQUIST seen here drinking the ridiculously expensive Muscle Milk which got him where he is today....the throne of victory!

In response to some inquiries about what sort of athlete my sister Alyse is, she does a little of everything, from boxing to softball and basketball...she has her degree in athletic training and is currently student teaching in PE., and she helps coach something...don't remember what right now....

She is also a lovely young lady who is a great spiritual mentor for my kids.... I know they tell her stuff they won't tell me....I don't know what...but I know that they do. And I'm ok with that.

Summer: Good to the Last Drop

It was the day before school began. The last TRUE day of summer vacation. Did we spend it at Valley Fair? Did we brave the Boundary Waters of Canada? Did we bake at the pool?

NAH.

We hung out in our own yard.

Lily, who I'll admit is a little too attached to "Max and Ruby," (a cartoon with a big sister bunny and a little brother bunny and the sister bunny bosses the brother...well never mind), decided, as she'd seen on television, that we MUST, ab-so-lutely MUST have a picnic with lemonade, a blanket, books and lemon slices decorating our glasses of lemonade which also had to have straws. The lemon slices and straws, apparantly are non-negotiables in this scenario. I know. I tried.




And here is persistance winning. Because persistance always wins. Persistance would make an excellent middle name...Lily Persistance Lindquist... kinda has a ring to it...

...and the lucky duck along for the ride...or the good sport....or the sweet brother who doesn't mind being bossed around by a short blonde...

Here are the books....

add in the tree and the sunshine....

...sparkly toes glittering in the sunshine....

DELIGHTFUL!

INEVITABLE!

Retrieval of the ice and lemon slice that must be present...

...and quiet summertime bliss before the crazy beat of the Fall drums begins....

The sugar rush from that BIG glass of lemonade (strawberry of course) begins to take effect...

....it peaks.....

...and the crash..... one down....

....and then two.......

....oh yeah.....

Goodbye summertime. You were lovely.

We miss you already.

Lily's Most Amazing Trick

Lily: "LOOK! LOOK Dad, look at me! Look and I'll show you my most AMAZING TRICK !"



Tim: (while working on his youth lesson for Wed. night): "OK...yeah. Show me."



Lily: "WELL! It's a CARTWHEEL. It's my BEST trick."



Tim: "Yep. OK. Go."



pause



Lily: "Dad, I have to learn it before I can do it!"

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This is more than just a Lily story. This is also the story of MY life....always just a little step ahead of myself. In 1993 a certain Dr. Wagner said, "Congratulations, it's a boy!" Then she told the nurse to lay him in his mother's arms. And my thought was pretty much the same: "Wait! I have to learn to do this before I can be this!" Much to our amazement, they sent that baby home with us anyway. We are still learning on him.



Postnote: After about a half an hour of practicing and driving ME personally crazy, believe it or not, Lily learned to turn a cartwheel. I think it says more for her determination and stubborness than her gymnastic ability....but who knows?

The Next Great Thing, I Tell You!

I have come up with a groundbreaking, stunning, sure to be a winner idea. From the moment I post it on this public site, I'll have exactly one year to patent it before it becomes public domain, so I'd better find myself a good patent attorney. I'll take care of that tonight.

What it is is this:

Wait! I need to set this up so you get the full effect. Remember back when we were in high school and the girls (you could call them girls then) who took the upper levels of Home Ec. (you could call it Home Ec. then too...now it's FST or FTS or something I can never remember what it stands for...sigh) anyway the young women had to walk around school all day carrying a bag of flour, or sometimes an egg or some other easily broken thing and had to pretend it was a baby and protect it and feed it and all that.? And they got graded? And stared at funny? Well do you? Well they did.

Anyway, my idea is an offshoot of that....well not an offshoot because to be patentable it has to be new, original and not obvious. I know this stuff.

My idea is.....drumroll in your head please.......A VIRTUAL PRACTICE KID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Parents out there! Don't you wish you had a practice kid?....one who you could make all your mistakes on, try out your strategies on....one upon whom you could commit all the classic and universal blunders that we parents are prone to and it wouldn't matter??? You know the situations where you could either react this way or that way, but you have no idea which is the way to go? Well here you are!

It would work like this. Your virtual kid would be a robot...expensive I know, but worth it because kinetics are everything. Both parents would answer all sorts of questions into a computer program imbedded in the robot about their beliefs, personalities, goals...the whole enchilada...like a comprehensive personality test. Then you'd have each child answer a lot of questions aimed at getting a basic scan of his or her personality. Then anytime you were stuck sitting at the kitchen table with your spouse asking "What should we do? What should we do? "you'd go and input which child the robot should be, and then you'd just try it out. You could try idea after idea for getting the "kid" to remember to wash the toothpaste residue down the sink and see which one works! This is bigger than those robot vacuums, I'm sure of it!

What do you think? I'm on to something aren't I??????

No more helpless feelings!

Anybody know anything about robots?

A Good Old Fashioned Arm Wrestle

This is our kitchen table.

Very interesting things occur at this table.

This would be one of them.



I have an athletic husband.

I have athletic sons.

I have athletic friends.

I EVEN have an athletic sister (blue and white shirt).


So it was bound to happen...happens all the time in fact....

physical competition at the dinner table...

because we can't just eat ALL the time.



So we decided to have arm wrestling matches. Mike (orange shirt- you've seen him here before) seemed to be an expert on the rules...so we pretty much followed his command. We really matched it up evenly (wink):





STOP! Before you pity my sister Alyse, you should know that she is an athlete by profession, trains daily, is very strong and TOUGH AS NAILS (that would be as compared to ....um.. me.)

Here they go! Notice the crowd in the background. Good entertainment. And cheap!

Start thinking about who YOU think is going to win!

Look at her face! See the determination, the strength, the cords popping out on her neck! THIS girl's not gonna go down easily! But then look at her opponent....

Hmmmm...looks like he's laughing. Still, you can see the veins at his temples...the thought throbbing through his head that he better win this or be forever branded with the loathesome curse of being BEATEN in ARM WRESTLING by a GIRL!....after a summer of lifting weights!

The crowd roars! The end is near!!!......

OOOPS! I missed the finish with the camera!

Sorry about that!

BUT, it makes for an interesting question....WHO DO YOU THINK WON?

Study the faces in the background and vote on my poll question at the top of the blog. We'll see who's right!

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While we would have liked to put Zach right in the hot seat to arm wrestle Alyse again, it didn't seem fair so....

..... Zach got the lucky straw of getting to arm wrestle MIKE!

They are taking this very seriously.

And it was very quick. No sweat!

This post was brought to you today by Royal Dried Mangoes...sure to give you serious problems if you eat too many at one time! Take it from the experts.

A Birthday Party Lindquist Style

Labor Day weekend was our last time up to the cabin for the summer. Unless we have guests up (which we did not this year), it's usually pretty sad because we mostly take things down and put things away.

If we do have guests we don't mind so much because we make them take things down and put things away too.

We are not shy that way.

But THIS YEAR was happier, because right in the middle of all the "shut down," we took a couple of hours to honor Tim's mom Linda and celebrate her birthday cabin style, and for a little while we forgot that summer is over and the long winter of work and schedules (and bone freezing Minnesota cold) is just around the corner.

So if these pictures look a little giddy, you'll have to excuse us. We were all grabbing hold of the fun with both hands! Happy Birthday Nana!


...not sure what Jake was doing in this picture. There is my mother-in-law, the birthday girl, enjoying the spectacle we were making on the deck of their cabin. At least I think she was enjoying it....maybe she was wondering what she had wrought!....



NOTE: We were doing the wave...but looking at the pictures...I don't think we were very good.
SECONDARY NOTE: Would you get a load of Timmy (green t-shirt)...I didn't realize this until I uploaded the pictures and viewed them on the computer, but he's stuffing his face! Shamelessly!
We hadn't even prayed yet! "TIMMY!!!!........"


He's never far from the food when it's time to eat. In fact, he is always the first in line, a result of careful positioning beforehand. I don't know why he does this. Survival technique, I guess.




YUM! Makes you want to make sloppy joes for dinner, admit it! The filling was from scratch (made by Linda), and it was delicious.

Here's the rest of the spread. Summer fare the whole way!

This is my beautiful neice...she's lovely on the inside as well as the outside, let me tell you. I owe my first experience of being an aunt to her, and she's as sweet as they come.

Timmy....back for seconds...still chewing!...

Lily had unusually bad hair that day...just for the record.

...AND the mouth is still full....maybe he's storing it up for winter......

...trying to scavenge what Timmy left behind.....

Then it was out to the dock for a present opening ceremony. And Timmy is STILL eating!!!! For those of you who are aware of Lily's swimsuit obsession, you might think that that she's giving the swimsuit one last whirl...but you'd be wrong...she's still wearing them two weeks later....we have a problem....

Singing Happy Birthday!

Tim was being funny and trying to get in all my pictures. I'm posting this one just to punish him.

Does Timmy's cheek look funny in this picture (above)? He's been complaining of a toothache on that side lately...maybe he IS hoarding food....I am wondering about this just as I'm typing this!

Sigh....food intake exhaustion. Notice Waller's Market on the t-shirt....when I think of this summer, I'm going to think of Timmy and that green shirt. They are inseparable.

Her dad cracks her up. He makes me laugh too.

She insisted I take her picture. So cute!

If you want a young child's attention....put something in a bag and "OPEN GIFTS." They can't resist! They have to be in front...even if they know it's something like flashlight batteries...they just can't resist somebody opening presents!... They scoot closer and closer until they are breathing the same air as the present opener!

It's an interesting phenomenon!

These are the sorts of things that interest me.

They outgrow this compulsion, however....as you can see...

These are the sorts of gifts we give here in Minnesota...even in the summer...because did I mention that summer is over?????and that winter is coming?????and we are all going to freeze?????

And there she is....breathing Nana's air, I tell you. Lily picked the necklace and earrings out for Nana, and she was SO excited (can you tell?)! Since then, Nana has worn them to church (she's a good egg), and Lily came up in the hall and excitedly told me, "Mom! I think Nana REALLY loves her 'julery'!!!"

Thank you Nana, for the lovely afternoon at the cabin. We enjoyed celebrating you and all you mean to us!