2009 Year in Pictures

Spent most of today in my jammies working on this. I learned a few things while reviewing these pictures.

1. We did a lot this year.
2. My kids are getting big.
3. I need to take more pictures.
4. I will take more pictures with our new camera.
5. We are extremely lucky and grateful for a wonderful year.

You can see the new camera show up in the Thanksgiving pics. Total improvement from the iPhone! Looking forward to next year with better quality shots!

The music is "Lullaby" by the Dixie Chicks. Seemed ever so appropriate.

Weekend Vacation

This past weekend we took all three kids up to Lutsen. You can see some pictures here. Pat and I decided a few weeks ago that we should do some sort of family vacation before school starts. We knew a long weekend was our best option because of work schedules, and we knew this would be a car trip. Once flight is ruled out, I'm pretty much set on the North Shore.

I have a theory that because I grew up in Duluth, next to Lake Superior, I don't feel comfortable unless I have a body of water nearby. When I first moved to Minneapolis I would make fun of these people and their so-called lakes. I mean, c'mon - they are really more pond-like. Our house in South Minneapolis was very close to two of those ponds, and my apartments before that were also within walking distance of some really nice trails. Our current house is near water, but it's not immediately accessible - or at least I haven't found the path yet. Maybe that's why the Shore was calling my name. I needed to refuel and get my water time in.

I only got 2 and a half days on the Shore of my favorite Great Lake, but it was fabulous. The weather was perfect - sunny but still comfortable with a sweatshirt. (Chilly weather makes me so happy!) The kids tried very hard to put all the shoreline rocks back in the late. They tried from at least 4 different locations. Don't worry - they didn't succeed. Still plenty for everyone. We ate fantastic pizza at Sven and Ole's in Grand Marais, and we even worked in a few hikes.

We got home late Sunday after dealing with the traffic, but I felt great. I felt like I had spent some time with an old friend and we were all caught up. The kids are already talking about going back. Jake says next week. I'm thinking it will be next summer, but we definitely need to go back and spend time with a real lake.

Schedules

I haven't been writing here a lot lately because I spend most of my time on Facebook and Twitter. As we've all heard, there are a lot of channels out there to keep updated. I do like the fact that on FB and Twitter I know who is reading, and they are more apt to reply/engage in conversation. I only have a vague idea of who reads this blog - I can see how many visits I get from where in the world, but that's about it. Turns out, however, that there are a few people who actually enjoy reading my randomness. One of them even told my mom she misses my posts (Hi, Marsha!) - isn't that just the nicest?

So to re-introduce myself to my blog, it seems appropriate that I write about what's been keeping me from writing. Simply put: over-scheduled days. More specifically, the schedule we maintain for the kids. July was an absolutely crazy month with TBall Mondays and Wednesdays and then swimming Tuesdays and Thursday. We were all completely exhausted by Friday. We chose this sort of schedule knowing it was for only a month. Pat and I wanted Abby to try TBall and we wanted both of them to try a new swim school. We figured we could trade a crazy July for a calmer August. It worked out fine - Abby loved TBall and they both made incredible improvements in their swimming. And the summer days always make me feel like I have more time. More so than in winter when I tend to be hibernating by 6pm every day.

Tonight Pat and I sat down to plan the fall schedules. Jake is now old enough to participate in group sports, so he'll have his intro to soccer on Sundays. Abby will be playing Mondays and Thursdays. And then we'll have swimming again on Tuesdays. I'm hesitant to schedule so much, but soccer is only for 6 weeks, so we won't be doubled up for long. It's a tough call parents have to make these days. We want to expose our kids to everything so that they can find something they really like. But with full days in daycare and mom & dad at work, it gets to be a lot.

This scheduling issue is something I think about often. I want my kids to try everything, and I want them to be active. I do wonder how things will change as they get older. I have noticed that there are options earlier in the day. Maybe better for them, but how do working parents handle it? Will we get to the point when we need help? If so, who will help? I'm not sure what we'll be doing in 3 years, but for now my approach is 2 activities max and we'll stop at any time if either kid seems overwhelmed. And we'll take it all a season at a time.

Too Many Channels to Keep Updated

I'm thinking I should just turn my blog into a Twitter/Facebook/Flickr mashup. I never seem to have anything to say here. Just way too many characters to deal with!

Fighting Sioux

There's been an ongoing controversy about the University of North Dakota's nickname - the Fighting Sioux. Yesterday, the North Dakota Board of Higher Education voted to set an Oct. 1 deadline to stop using the name. The president of the board said this issue has been a distraction for too long. Has it ever!

My older brother attended UND. I was only 13 or so when he graduated. I never thought much about the nickname. Growing up in Duluth, I was a huge UMD hockey fan - the Bulldogs. I really didn't like the Sioux during those years because they were better than the 'Dogs and usually had a winning record against them.

What I do remember specifically from those games was the fact that the crowd would change the last word of the national anthem to "Sioux." So... "land of the free, and the home of the Sioux." One might think that after 9/11 this tradition would be frowned upon, but they still do it at every game. (Even if they are the visiting team which just bothered me in a practical sense.) I consider myself patriotic, but not crazy about it. I learned how to properly fold a flag and I would never let it touch the ground. I hate seeing a torn flag waving in the breeze, but I don't freak out if someone uses flag burning in a demonstration. The fact that a lot of people who would want to ban flag burning are the same people yelling "Sioux" at the end of the anthem has always bothered me.

UND got a new hockey arena in 2001. It was a big deal. Hockey is a big deal in Grand Forks. Probably because the weather supports it 10 months out of the year, and there isn't much else to do. I went to the first game at the arena. My dad was on the board of the Hockey Hall of Fame then. It was a fundraiser for them. I think the Sioux played the Gophers, but I really can't remember. I hold a very vivid picture, however, of the arena itself. It reminded me of a mini Excel center. Same format for seating, same lighting around the inside ring. I didn't see the locker rooms, but apparently the "backstage" of the place was the most amazing.

The arena was built by Ralph Engelstad. He died a few years ago, but he was on the ice that opening night in an old shirt and dirty tennis shoes. Not particularly concerned with fashion, he was very passionate about UND. As I remember it, he tried to walk on as a goalie, but was never really successful. When he became wealthy in the casino business, he decided to give back to the school by financing this arena. He built it off-campus so that they could serve beer and so that a foundation could run it instead of the university itself. He also demanded that thousands of Sioux logos be built into every piece of the structure. The floor, the pillars, the bathroom walls - there are Sioux logos everywhere! Ralph didn't do this for aesthetics. He did it because the argument over the logo was hot even then & he wanted to make someone work really hard and pay a lot of money to remove that logo from his building should it ever come to that. His money paid for the arena so he could dictate every single one of those logos, but the feeling inside that space made me sick. Every logo carved into marble was put there out of spite. Ralph didn't think there was a reason to drop the logo - the Indian nations were over-reacting. And he was going to use the power of his cash to show them that.

My favorite argument for this has been, "Well, I'm Norwegian, should I be offended by the Vikings?" My answer is yes! Yes if you consider the Viking profile sacred and would truly be hurt by people walking across an image of it, then you should be mad as hell! But I suspect you aren't. I suspect you aren't mad because the Viking is really not a symbol of a sacred culture that has been stampeded, killed and abused for centuries (at least not by the dominant culture in this country). The comparison is not a valid one because there aren't Norwegians who truly feel racism in the logo of our pro football team. If there are, then they need to get organized and make themselves a little louder.

The Spirit Lake nation has decided to support the use of the Sioux logo. The Standing Rock tribe has said no, and says they won't change their position before the Oct. 1 deadline. I completely back both of these decisions because they were made by the people who are invested. Honestly, I hope the Standing Rock tribe doesn't back down. The fact that we've been having this conversation for more than 10 years proves that there's something to it. If there weren't, it would be another Vikings situation. But because there is something wrong with the image of the Sioux logo, the conversation has continued. There is a minority society that has made themselves heard and steadfastly protested the use of their image. We've heard them and ignored them. But, I'd like to think that in 2009 we could recognize how our treatment perpetuates hatred and racism. There's no place for the Ralph Engelstad attitude. We've come further than that and we are better than that.