Here's a nice video clip (thanks to Shelly) of the girls at last weekend's little dance recital/student appreciation picnic for their dance studio:

Overall, it was a good weekend...

On Saturday morning, my friend D* picked me up at 8am to head off to the 2nd annual Surly Open (disc) Golf tournament. It was held out at the Hyland Hills disc golf course. Hyland Hills also double as a ball golf driving range during the summers and as a ski and snowboard area during the winters. The Minneapolis Ski Club's ski jumping facility is located close-by, too.

It was a very non-competitive event. But what do you expect when you're gathering to celebrate a mighty awesome local brewer with awesome tap prices? We met up with my friend J* (a good friend of Surly owner Omar) and signed up to start at the 14th hole. It basically runs straight up a ski slope. After finishing holes 14 through 18, on our way to the 1st tee, we stopped in to get our first Surly of the day ($1 taps!). I had my first taste of Coffee Bender. It was very good. We chatted a bit with Omar before we headed back out. Since the three of us managed to finish our first beers before we headed back out, we each grabbed another Coffee Bender ($1 taps!!!) and headed out for the first tee. I should mention that my breakfast consisted of a PB & J sandwich and a couple cups of coffee that morning. I'm not exactly a heavyweight drinker either. So, after two Coffee Benders (all before 11am), what was left of my round of golf got pretty loose.

We managed to finish our round by 11am. Hung out while they got lunch set up, ate lunch (which included my first taste of Surly's "Cynic Ale"), hung out for the raffle for the morning participants (I won a Surly t-shirt), and then headed home.

Did I mention that they had Surly on tap for $1? They did!

Here's what my disc golf bag looks like



That was before the addition of my complimentary commemorative disc (a 174g Discraft Force ESP with a 2.0 stability rating). I don't have too many discs in my bag these days which is a reflection on often I play (or don't).

I got home around 2 and was wiped out. Mostly due to drinking beer before lunch. But, managed to keep it together sufficiently enough to survive the afternoon. Shelly had plans to see the "Sex and the City" movie that night with some friends so I took the girls over to J*'s house for some grilling and hanging out. I also got to finally meet D*'s second son, Mikko. Cute little thing at 3 months. The kids played very well together (at least they did after their initial shyness wore off). Sophie really liked petting Bo-Ghee (the dog).

We're getting rid of the living room furniture that Shelly's had since even before I'd met her. And the futon in our living room that acts as our sofa is moving to the basement. We'd been taking our time doing this. Trying to get rid of the old stuff before getting the new, but a forgotten visit by a cousin this week sped up the schedule a little bit. So, at the last minute, we decided to head out to Ikea on Sunday afternoon to buy that new couch we'd talked about. We got an Ektorp sofa with a tan cover. We'd already bought two of the Ektorp Jennylund chairs with the "Kareby multicolor" covers.

As is usual for a visit to Ikea, we dropped Julie off at "Småland" (the kid's area at Ikea). Julie loves playing in the ball pit or watching whatever they're showing on the TV. Sophie is (a) too small and (b) not potty trained so she's not able to join Julie yet. So, Sophie comes with Shelly and I as we shop. Here's Sophie and I hanging out while we waited for Shelly to track down an Ikea employee to get our sofa stuff...



Which reminds me... I had assumed that the sofa wasn't in the self-service warehouse but that the cover for it was. It turned out to be the exact opposite. The sofa was in the self-service warehouse and we had to wait at the furniture pick-up area for the cover. Too bad that between waiting for it to come out, loading the furniture into the minivan and picking up Julie, we completely forgot that we never got our sofa cover! Shelly is going back for it today.

So, I spent last night

• Putting the middle row seats and car seats back in the van.


• Disassembling the futon in the basement and hauling it out to the garage.


• Vacuuming the area of the basement where the futon sat.


• Disassembling the futon in the living room and hauling it down to the basement (with Shelly's help)


• Assembling an Ektorp Bromma ottoman (beige). It required more effort than I thought putting the cover on.


• Assembling the sofa.


• Assembling one of the Jennylund chairs.

We had already hauled out the other living room furniture into the garage earlier that afternoon.

It didn't take as long as it could have because Shelly helped out by breaking down all of the cardboard and hauling the living room futon down to the basement. Yet, it still took me a good three hours just to do that much. Plus, it meant my ironing got neglected for another night.

Hopefully, we'll get the other Jennylund chair assembled and the cover on the sofa.Then we'll see if it looks OK or if we need to look at a different color for the sofa. Maybe I'll even get some ironing done tonight...

BTW, if you want to see some cute pictures of Julie along with a cute story about her special day at school, you can check that out here at Shelly's blog. There are also some very cute YT videos of Julie and Sophie during Julie's dance class, too.

Also, in reference to those videos... That first one was apparently a "good day" for Julie at dance class. She actually managed to follow along for the most part to what her instructor wanted her to do and was willing to do it. When Shelly showed me that for the first time, my comment was, "It's a good thing you're the one who takes her to class because if it were me, we'd be leaving early every week due to her inability to follow along well enough to what the teacher wants."

I have a very low threshold when it comes to the kids and listening to directions. Patience is something I have in very short supply. It usually takes everything I can muster to let a lot of things slide. Yes, they are four and two. Still... It's something I try to be conscious of regularly.

I spent last Thurs. and Friday home from work. I wasn't sick or anything. I was just needed around the house.

By my own account, last Thurs. was a bad day. I know I spent too much of my time yelling at the girls. After the girls went to bed, as I reflected on how the day went, I realized that I needed to loosen up a bit or else neither I nor the girls were going to survive the weekend. I resolved to not be so uptight the remainder of the weekend. It worked for the most part.

Friday, I took the girls out to the Minnesota Zoo for what was left of the morning and early afternoon. We'd just gotten to the zoo and were headed towards Discovery Bay when I thought I spied someone I knew out of the corner of my eye. I did a double-take and there was my cousin's daughter! A very unexpected coincidence. I assumed she was there with her preschool/daycare program. I said hello to her and so did the girls. We went off to explore Discovery Bay. Unfortunately, the dolphin show was on temporary hiatus due to the introduction of two new dolphins to the existing pair. I felt bad for the girls because they LOVE the dolphin show.

Then we headed over to the Tropics Trail. The girls had fun wandering through there. Though, I kind of freaked as two male gibbons proceeded to tussle with each over territory and dominance which happened to include dry humping each other along with slap fighting and chasing. Thankfully, the girls didn't ask about the dry humping because I have no f'in clue how I would have answered that question.

After the Tropics Trail, we headed to the food court for lunch. We had just sat down for lunch when I saw my cousin. That explained why her daughter was at the zoo. So, we had lunch together (with her friend and her friend's kids). It was a very nice coincidence. Completely unexpected.

We spent a little bit of time playing in a room where the kids can dress up in animal costumes and whatnot. While we were in there, two zoo volunteers came in with a rabbit that the girls got to pet and stuff. Then we went home.

Saturday was pretty mellow. Shelly had a class to teach so I took the girls to Chipotle (surprise! Not!) for lunch. When we got back, Sophie took a nice long nap and I let Julie try out the "Moon Sand" castle playset that we bought for the girls. Though, again, I think I was too tough on her about getting sand out of the inflatable sandbox and onto the floor. Might explain why she said she was done much earlier than I expected.

Sunday was kind of a gloomy day. We spent it mostly indoors. I got a brief break from home in the afternoon and went over to St. Paul to check out Familia Skateshop. I've been getting their email newsletter for awhile now and finally got around to checking out the store itself. Nice little shop. I managed to avoid buying another pair of shoes. (Those Adidas Stan Smith Skates in navy, "running white", and "sun" were so tempting!) I guess they're also one of the shops (or maybe the only shop) in the area to get US-bound limited edition Nike SB stuff, too. Not sure if it's good that I know that or not.

We also had another Skype video chat with my brother and his fiancee. That was nice too. They got to see the girls a little bit (even if the girls were total goof balls).

One thing about the past few days. Since Shelly was taking it easy, it meant we ate out more often than we usually do. Mostly because I wasn't going to do much cooking. I think the girls liked that.

I think we should be back to "normal" around the house now. Hopefully, that also means I get back to playing more video games, too.

Happy birthday, Sophie!



It was two years ago today that Shelly and I wandered off to the hospital to bring the above person into this world. Scary to think it's already been two years.

Unfortunately, she is apparently spending her birthday morning throwing up. Sounds like maybe she got whatever she had a couple weeks ago. I wonder if she got it again after Julie had it last weekend. Shelly's going to take Sophie in to the doc's office to make sure it's not anything worse.

We put Julie's old bunny rabbit Halloween costume on Sophie to check the size.

Here's Julie (age 1) in the suit:



And, thanks to the modern Interwebs, here's a clip of Sophie in the same suit:



You'll also get a nice "gift" from me at the end of that clip (SFW).

Shelly has put up another blog post chock full of cute pictures of the girls.

Enjoy...

We spent last week up at Camp UniStar. It's located on Star Island in Cass Lake. It's approximately 20+ miles east of Bemidji, MN.



( You know you want to read more )

So, Sophie is now at an age and level of ability where she can climb off our bed when she feels like it. And, much like Julie before her, I'll be in the bathroom in the morning getting ready for work (brushing my teeth, getting ready to climb in to the shower) when I'll see the bathroom door open and there in the doorway is Sophie with a "goodmorningdaddywhatareyoudoing?" look on her face and then a big grin when I acknowledge her presence.

It's all very cute. But, I miss those days of having privacy. I mean, I've gotten completely used to having an audience when I'm on the can and all (sad but true). But I look forward to the day when this gets a bit too embarrassing for all parties involved.

The 13th was a Sunday.

It was finally time to head home. Most of us got up around 7:30 or so. Here's Sophie keeping me entertained so I don't cause trouble



Most of us were up, one person slept in a bit



We met up with my parents, my brother and his fiancée for breakfast. We had dduk guk. It was actually very tasty breakfast! Here's my brother showing off his eating style



Here's Julie countering with hers



After breakfast, my parents piled into our rental car. They were on the same return flight as us. That was nice because it meant we would have extra help in getting everyone and everything through the airport.

Unfortunately, at the airport, we found out that our flight was delayed by an hour and a half or so. I later found out that the plane that was supposed to fly into LAX from MSP had mechanical problems. Otherwise, the flight home was uneventful.

It was supremely nice to get back home!

Saturday, the 12th, was the big day. My parents had flown in the night before, so we (my parents, my brother, his fiancée, and us) met up for breakfast at the hotel where they were staying. We don't see my parents often enough (even though they live in the same town as us), but when we do, they dote on the girls...



Here's my brother with Sophie



We didn't have much free time before we had to be at the church because we left breakfast so late in the morning. I put in a call to Griffith Park hoping that things were opening back up. It was close enough that if we could do a little bit of sightseeing there, we'd be able to kill some time that didn't involve just sitting in the hotel room staring at each other. Luckily, Travel Town Museum at Griffith Park was open!

We got there and started walking around. We found a very expansive model train layout. I'm not sure what scale it is, I think it might be an N-scale layout.



Unfortunately, it wasn't really running. The people in the room looked like they were getting things up and running again. I'm guessing that they packed up and hauled what they could out of there due to the recent fires. So, while some of the model trains were running, they would stop them frequently as they tested out portions of the track. I'd love to see this when it's fully operational. It must be a pretty impressive sight to behold.

We also took Julie on a ride on the miniature train that circles the perimeter of the park. Julie was pretty psyched about that



All aboard!



On to lunch. If there's one reason my parents will come to LA, it's for the Korean food. This time around, they had to have naeng myun. So, we went back to Il Mi and had it for lunch.



Sophie seemed to like it just fine



Back to the hotel to get cleaned up and changed for the wedding. Here's a picture of Julie in her flower girl dress with my cousin, the bride



Here we all are dressed up



Here's Julie with my other cousin, JK (the bride's sister)



The wedding was just fine and Julie did a superb job as flower girl. There was a stretch of time between the wedding and dinner at the reception. Our kids were getting hungry and apparently some of the other little kids at the wedding were too



That container of snacks was empty in about 15 minutes. Scary. I'm glad I still have my fingers.

Here's my mom keeping Sophie entertained during the long wait for dinner



It was late when dinner came. Julie was completely loopy as was Sophie. Once we got through dinner and dessert, it was much too late for the girls (9pm). We left the reception early, headed up to the room, and we all crashed.

It was a long day.

(Sorry, it's gotten busy. Rest of our trip to follow...)

The 11th was a Friday. In the morning, we packed up our belongings, loaded them into our rental, and checked out of the Econo Lodge. The place was fine enough for the price, though, I was bothered by the spots of mold on the ceiling over the shower. Ewww.

No matter, we would be checking in elsewhere later in the day.

After a 4th consecutive breakfast at IHOP in Glendale:



we headed off for Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Pier. We wanted to take the girls to the beach even though it might be too cold for them to go swimming.

Here we are at the pier



We let the girls ride one of the coin operated rides by the arcade:



And then we decided to let Julie ride a few more because we had time to kill



until Julie got sick of it



We took the girls down to the beach and ate a lunch that Shelly had packed. Then I took Julie down to the water to test it out



while Sophie looked on



It was pretty windy that day on the beach. The water was cold! And yet, there were people swimming! Crazy, I tells ya!

We hung out for a bit, waiting for my brother and his fiancée to arrive. Well, it got later and later and we started to leave because we had to check in at our new hotel and get the girls cleaned up for the wedding rehearsal that evening. Of course, that's when my brother and his fiancée show up! So, we left the beach and got back on the freeway to go to the Hilton Garden Inn.

We got to the hotel, checked in, and got up to our room. Shelly said that the person at the desk mentioned a "mountain view". This is what we got



Not bad.

Here are the girls dressed and at the wedding rehearsal



The rehearsal ended but it was getting way too late for the girls. We weren't going to make the rehearsal dinner. So, back to the hotel room. We ordered room service. Always a fun little perk when travelling.





Not sure if you can tell in that picture, but Julie is very tired.

After dinner was over, it was off to bed!

The best thing about the Hilton over the Econo Lodge, no noisy in-room AC unit making it harder for me to sleep!

Sweet, sweet sleep!

Thursday was a bit of a free-for-all day mainly because we had to scrap any plans we had to go to the attractions in Griffith Park. They were still closed due to the fire. Today would be a day of frustrations, long car rides, a cool discovery, and a yummy dinner.

So, I frantically paged through our LA guide books the night before to find things we could do that would be entertaining to Julie. We chose two: a trip to Allied Model Trains (a model train store) followed by a trip to Storyopolis.

We figured that we could do these two things and then head on over to Sawtelle Blvd. so we could make a brief shopping trip to the Giant Robot stores before we met up with Giant Robot magazine co-editor Martin Wong for dinner at gr/eats.

We set off for Allied and, due to a missed exit on the 405, we got lost temporarily. We righted ourselves and got to the store to find that they were in the midst of a giant sale because they were moving to a new location. Pretty much everything was gone. There was only one big model train display that was still setup and working. I think, had the store been in its normal business state, Julie would have loved seeing the model railroad setups. Plus, the store appeared to have had a sizeable Department 56 display that was dismantled and gone by the time we got there.

Lessons learned: Call ahead to make sure there isn't anything "out of the norm" going on and get directions from store staff.

Because we got lost, I decided to bite the bullet and pay the $3 fee to use Verizon Wireless's GPS navigation program on my enV for a limited time. I think it was for two weeks. This was the "cool discovery". I have never used a GPS navigation device before. The VZW one was very good. It turned out to be just what we needed.

Luckily, while we were lost, we passed by a park with a playground that wasn't too far from the store. So, we decided to take the girls there and let them run around for awhile. They played for awhile and then we had a nice picnic lunch.

After lunch, we loaded the girls back into the car for the trip to Storyopolis. We consulted our guide book for the address, plugged it into the navigation program and were off. The nav. program got confused between North and South Robertson over by the 10. I had to basically make a guess as to the general direction before it sorted itself out. We got to Beverly Hills, parked, and were headed to Storyopolis ... which we soon found out had MOVED.

Lesson learned: Our guide books were OLD!

Thank god we both had web-enabled mobile phones. A quick search on Google and a brief phone call, we were headed to Storyopolis in Studio City. Julie was already at the end of her car-riding rope. But, she put up with our poor planning valiantly. After a nice drive through Laurel Canyon, we got to Storyopolis. As an apology for the excessive car riding, we bought Julie an autographed copy of an "Angelina Ballerina" book and a stuffed animal (she chose a rabbit).

I managed to buy something at Storyopolis too:



Yippee!

After this stop, it was definitely time to head over to Sawtelle and GR. We met up with Martin at GR1. I bought a GR baseball cap. Shelly bought some cute stickers and other little things. We bought Sophie a little Big Toe Uglydoll. Here's Sophie later on that night with her new pal:



Martin took us over to GR2 where a really cool Deth P. Sun exhibit was up. it's over now. Shelly bought a new Yoshitomo Nara tee to replace the "Harmless Kitty" one that I'd given her years ago. She bought the "Pup King Sleeping Dog" one



Then it was on to dinner at gr/eats. The food was yummy. It was nice to see Martin again. He was great with Julie. I was bummed that Eric wasn't able to make it but they were under deadline and Martin explained that he was off working on a story. Eric's mom was super nice, too!

Pictures from gr/eats:

Martin doing/showing something to Julie


A nice picture of Shelly and a very cool Ai Yamaguchi piece


Julie and Sophie liked the food, too


Mayan Chicken (after)


Excellent food at gr/eats.

Here's a pic of Martin and I



Like I said, it was at turns a frustrating and fun day. We survived it though. Plus, it was our last night at the Econo Lodge. The next day we were moving into fancier digs at a Hilton for the wedding weekend.

Wednesday was our first full day in the L.A. area. We had decided beforehand that we would take the girls to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. We don't have a proper natural history museum in the MSP area so I thought Julie would get a kick out of it.

We drove out to the museum which is located across the street from the USC campus in an area called Exposition Park. The park contains not only the museum, but also the California Science Center and Imax theater, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (aka the 1984 Summer Olympics' stadium), and several other attractions. It's nice that so much is located in close proximity to each other. The only downside was that they were in the middle of constructing a new wing for the science museum so some roads were closed and there was dust flying everywhere.

We passed by the Pavilion of Wings on the way in. Tickets were for visits on the half-hour so we bought a ticket for 1pm and headed into the main museum building.

Julie is still really into dinosaurs so she loved all of the fossil collections



I thought she would enjoy the other dioramas of animal habitat but she seemed less interested in that. Maybe she's still a bit too young for some of the stuff there.

Sophie decided she was ready to push the stroller and not be a passenger



We made it through the first floor's exhibits and then headed downstairs for lunch. While eating lunch, I spotted someone who looked familiar. It was Gary Takeuchi (Curatorial Assistant). The reason I recognized him was because of this piece he was featured in for the PBS program Dragonfly TV. We asked him if he was who we thought he was. He answered in the affirmative. Unfortunately, he was in the middle of the phone conversation, so that was the most we were able to do.

By the time lunch was done, it was time to head over to the Pavilion of Wings. But first, we stopped in at the Discovery Center and Insect Zoo. Julie was more interested in digging for fossils



than anything else in the room. Though, I must admit, the insect zoo was pretty cool even if some of those bugs gave me a serious case of "the creep".

So, on to the "Pavilion of Wings". Julie really likes butterflies. Probably goes back to that visit to the butterfly house at the MN State Fair last summer. Unfortunately for her, this one doesn't allow you to touch the butterflies. But, Julie did well nevertheless to keep her fingers away from the butterflies.

Here's Julie being good about keeping her fingers away and checking out the butterfly doing its thing



And here she is putting up with me taking a picture of her



Here's a couple pictures of butterflies that I took with my LG enV:



We were all pretty wiped out after that, probably because of the heat and the sun. I don't quite recall what we did that afternoon. Though, I think we tried to use the hotel's pool (too cold). We ended up eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant that was directly across the street from our hotel. Good food. Pretty inexpensive.