Colby's Idea of Heaven

Colby's favorite part of our yard is the rope swing. Don't try to convince him it's a toy for kids. If a child sits on it he will pull them out, away from the wall, and not let go! He knows that really it's there for him to conquer.


The rope is a fierce competitor ...


But it's no match for a determined poodle!


Don't let it get away ...


Hang on tight!


If it does get away, just start again ...

Happy Father's Day!

Steve, Ben & Ty pose in front of the new fire ring the boys gave to their dad today. We picked Steve up from his business trip to Miami and headed over to Uncle Dave's for dinner with the Peterson side of the family (We saw Grandpa Holt earlier in the day.) We had a great BBQ on Dave's patio and celebrated fatherhood. Then back home for Steve to be honored - we even had a small fire to make sure it worked!

Later, I was looking through old photo albums and found this photo of Steve & his Dad, John, from 1964 when Steve was just 8 months old. He's the oldest child so John was delighting in his new role of Daddy!

Self Portraits

Is this odd, to try and take a picture of myself? I never would have tried but noted how much I enjoyed seeing other people's attempts so ... here we are.

Something I read at lunchtime today

After I picked the boys up from camp this morning, we drove for a while before stopping for lunch. We ended up at the A-Pine Family Restaurant in Pequot Lakes, MN. A fine place to eat, if you are ever in the area.

We happened to arrive at the height of the lunch rush, so we ended up waiting quite a while for a server to take our order. So I found myself reading the menu from cover to cover. It's one of those family-run places that gives a little background on how they started. They had a story on the inside cover of the menu that I liked, so I googled to find it now that I am back home. The version I found online is slightly different from the menu story, but the message is the same:


A father, in order to test the geographical knowledge of his son, took a map of the world and cut it into many pieces. He then called his son and said to him, “Look, my son, I have cut up the map of the world and I would like you to put these pieces back together correctly.” The son took away all the pieces, and in a very short time brought them back, all put together correctly. He had taped them together and showed his father the intact map of the world. The father was taken aback. Even he himself could not have put those pieces together in such a short time. Very curious, he questioned his son as to how he had done it so quickly. The child replied, “Papa, on the back of the map is a picture of a man. I put him right and then, the world was right, too.” Yes, thought the father - if the man is right, the world is right.


It struck me as such a simple saying with such a profound meaning. If the man (or person, to be gender-neutral!) is right ... it will naturally follow that the world is right.

I really like that restaurant :-)

Wealth - it's all in how you measure it

On a friend's blog she recently wrote something and referred to herself as wealthy. The next day she wrote another note offering an explanation of why she wrote that, worried that some might misunderstand. She lives with her family in a suburb neighboring ours, and certainly would not be on Robin Leach's list to film for his show (neither would we!) But I agree with her - her family, and mine, are indeed wealthy.

A few years ago (ok, it was closer to a decade, wow time flies fast) another good friend was telling me the story of how her oldest came home from kindergarten (or maybe it was first grade) and asked if their family was rich. I have never forgotten the answer she gave him. She asked him what he thought it means to be poor. He responded with "you don't have food or toys or maybe even a house." She then asked him if he had all those things. He didn't hesitate before replying in the affirmative. She then said to him, "See, my son, we are rich. We have a home to keep us warm and dry. We have plenty of food to eat. We have toys to play with. We are rich, indeed."

When you look at the American popular definition of wealth, then no, we don't fit that mold. But when you compare our lifestyle with that of the majority of people in the world, we are so rich it's distressing. Why do we need so much when so many have so little? And why do we continue to want for so much more when we waste so many of the resources we have been given?

This morning I read an article about Brangelina (I admit to being terrifically curious about that whole situation) and it ended with a note that Angelina gives one-third of all her income to charity. ONE-THIRD. Can you even IMAGINE what the world would be like if everyone who is in her income bracket, the TRULY wealthy, followed suit?!?!?!? Heck, let them just give one-fourth.

Which reminds me, I wanted to write about Bill Gates' retirement and future plans. But it will have to wait as my boys are home from camp and want to share their experiences with me.

Can you see all the text?

OK, I have noticed that almost every time I visit my blog, some of the text doesn't appear. If I run the cursor over it and highlight it, the missing stuff shows up - or if I scroll up or down, so that the missing text goes off-screen momentarily, it will also appear. It usually happens to the titles of posts, and the last lines of paragraphs.

Is this happening when you visit the blog, too, or is it just my computer? I may have to consider using a different background template if everyone is having this problem!

Lego Alien Avenger

Ben displaying his first eBay purchase - the 1997 (no longer sold) Lego Alien Avenger UFO. Ben writes: This large dome-shaped spacecraft has four Lego people, two scouting vehicles, and, of course, the large UFO with a detachable top. My favorite part about it is the black colored alien in the top small dome. He's my new leader. I have created a base in my bedroom which is home to this UFO (is it really a UFO if I have identified it? I don't know!) It came completely put together but I had Ty take it all apart so that I could put it together myself (it was put together wrong so I corrected it.)

Big Feet!!!!

While we are on the topic of feet, we just bought Ben his first pair of shoes from the men's department. Waah! How did he grow so fast? I pulled out his baby shoes (which we had bronzed - I felt a bit foolish and over-indulgent when I did it, but boy am I glad now that I did!) just to compare. I remember his tiny toes and his baby steps. Now he wears a size 8 shoe, and his foot is almost the same size as his 18-year old cousin, shown here (OK, I don't know why all of a sudden I have so many foot pictures. It's not planned, really.)

Skin Color

In the summer, my skin looks like the underbelly of a dead fish. White. Whiter than white. The only time it's not white is when it's red ... and I will even admit there have been times in my life I have deliberatly tried to get a sunburn just to get get some color on my body.

So a few days ago when I was at Target, I noticed there are now a plethora of products created to give you a natural-looking sunless tan. I (perhaps naively) assumed that technology would have gotten us past the streaky, uneven, hard-to-apply-evenly products that turn skin a blotchy orange, and decided to give it a go.


Here's my feet now after using the L'Oreal product (hey, L'Oreal does a good job on my hair so I thought it would be safe...)

Yes, it looks like my feet were in a fight and got pretty bruised. Yes, it looks vaguely orange. Yes, I really did try to avoid the bony places ... you can see how successfully that worked.

Thankfully my legs are not so bad, and I will just have to wear shoes for a few days until it wears off.

Sigh. I really did have my hopes up. I really did think that just once I would not glow in the dark all summer long, being so white I was recognizable at night from 50 paces. Back to being scary in the lake (what are those glowing things down beneath you in the water???)

Those of you with a nice color (I don't want to be TAN, just not WHITE) ... count your blessings. And offer me pity as you put on your sunglasses to protect your eyes from the shine of the sun on my body.

What do YOU need?

In reading randomly online, I came across a "blog challenge" ... now, that's a new phrase for me, maybe you have heard it before ... anyway. This one challenged you to google your name and the word 'needs' and then list the top ten returns you get.

So I dutifully googled "karen needs" and here's my list, in the order Google presented them to me (Ok, I admit I did skip a few which just seemed too odd):

Karen needs to grow up!
Karen needs to be well-hydrated
Karen needs a new job
Karen needs prayers
Karen needs a man
Karen needs a room to rent
Karen needs a Jack
Karen is definitely in need of a friend
Karen needs money to buy roller skates
Karen needs to do some thinking here

So -- what do YOU need? Google and find out and share the best!

Helping a Cambodian Village

Last night, two friends of Ben & Ty's stayed at our house while their parents attended a wedding. The four kids had a great time playing games, and cooking hotdogs and s'mores over an open fire in the back yard. But the friends had come with a presentation to share with us, too.

After dinner we went to the computer and watched and listened as they told us about their upcoming trip to Cambodia - their mother's homeland, and their hopes of helping the village she lived in as a child. Their mother's family was torn apart by the war in the 1970s, and eventually the family members who survived made it to a refugee camp in Thailand. Some of them came to the United States, others went to France. And some stayed in Cambodia. This summer these two children (along with their parents) will travel back to the village which was their mother's final Cambodian home, and they plan to bring funds to dig a well for the village. Currently the village obtains water from the nearby river, which is filthy and diseased. Digging a well should do amazing things for the health of the village and should save many of the children, especially, from parasitic infections which can lead to severe diarrhea, leading all too often to an early death.

These children have spoken in a variety of places over the past few months and have raised nearly $1000 for their mission. I'm so proud to say that both of my boys chose to donate from their own money to help out, too. One of my biggest hopes for my children is that they choose, whenver possible, to help where they can, when they can, and however they can. We are so blessed in our suburban American lives - I don't want them to grow up taking that for granted, or to forget that with great blessings come great responsibilities.

After the trip to Cambodia I will get photos of the village and the new well. In the meantime here's the picture of the 4 children - Ben & Ty and their two friends who are working to improve their world.

All that strutting around worked!

A few weeks back, I posted photos of "our" wild turkeys when the males were strutting around trying to impress the ladies. Well, apparently at least one lady was impressed!



When Steve was outside this morning working on the yard, he startled Mama Turkey away from her nest - so we crept in to take some pictures. Now that we know where the nest is, we will watch carefully to try and get more photos as the babies hatch. I figure the mama is pretty cool with us since she made the nest so close to our house, and in an area where Colby likes to "do his business." Anyone know how long it takes turkey eggs to hatch?

We're Gonna Win, Twins!

On Friday, the boys' band played outside the Metrodome before the Twins Game. They mastered "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and the Twins' song, as well as a few other summertime favorites. We took the light rail train downtown so we didn't have to fuss with parking, and they set up outside Gate D to play. We could have gone to the game afterwards, but we instead chose to come home and go to our neighborhood pool party! It was the final concert of the year and really fun to watch.

Finished it. Loved it.

I just finished my first Jane Austen novel and it won't be my last. It took a long time to be able to read the words fluently and not be struck by the length of sentences and plethora of punctuation. But eventually the tale pulled me in and I became part of the Wentworth, Elliott and Musgrove family.

Thanks, Calandria, for introducing me!

Last night, before bed, I read the first two chapters of Persuasion, and I quickly noted that, unlike many authors, at least the majority of authors I have read, either as a child or as an adult, and especially not like other British female authors similar to her, though my expertise in this area is limited at best, Austen likes to use commas, in many places and ways, extending the length of her sentences, sometimes even into paragraphs, which may expound on the original topic or may be a delightful aside, such as a fashion or culinary note, which make reading her work challenging, but enjoyable at the same time.

I found myself visualizing a descent down a set of stairs, dark and somehow damp, fulfilling my stereotypes of a dank English manor, getting deeper and deeper into the thought or idea being presented, until Austen begins to bring the reader back up, as if on stairs opposite the descending set, until emersion into the sunlight of understanding occurs, once the reader has successfully navigated the way through the many levels of topics included in any one, however long and convoluted it may be, sentence.

I've begun to notice that at a subconscious level I am counting the commas!

Oh, and I am enjoying the book, too!

A Reading Challenge

A friend of mine, Calandria, is an English major, preferring British authors above most others. She & I recently read the same book and had totally opposite reactions to the book. I liked it, she didn't. In the discussion that followed, I ended up promising to read a book she loves to see if we continue to have opposing viewpoints.



So tonight I will start Jane Austen's Persuasion. I have never read an Austen novel (I don't think) though I have read The Jane Austen Book Club - or some such title, about a book club which only read Austen. Does that count for anything? I have wanted to and planned to read Austen for many years, it's actually kind of odd for me to realize I never have. So I am looking forward to it, and to discussing it with Calandria.

New Landscaping Coming Soon!

This is the front entrance to our house. Not too fancy! We added on to the house last year, so this summer we hope to finish up by getting a real walkway and a real step to the entry (although the plywood ramp certainly has had its moments!)

I wanted to post a "before" photo here so that as progress is made I can document what we are doing and share the results. We have a meeting with our landscape company on Thursday for (what I hope is) the final meeting before the project can begin. Of course they are scheduling projects about 6 weeks out so our work most likely won't begin until July 1, but it shouldn't take too long once it starts.

We are looking at a cobblestone-looking paver for the walkway, a small area for some chairs and small table, and a variety of shade-loving plants to dress it all up. A year ago we had a pro give us recommendations of what would work in that area since it is so sheltered and gets such little direct sunlight. I will be doing the planting myself (which ought to be fun, I'm really not much of a gardener) and hopefully it will all be beautiful when we are done! No matter what it will be better than what we have now.

Check back for updates!!

I love our house

Every time I do the dishes I find myself thinking about how much I love the house we live in now. I look out the window and see trees, birds, squirrels, sometimes deer, chipmunks, ravens, eagles, hawks ... and nary a sign of human life.

I remember my view from our last kitchen. The street and the neighbor across it. You could never forget you were in a suburban neighborhood. Where we are now, you can easily imagine you are in the mountains somewhere, far from your nearest neighbor, alone in the wild beauty of the earth.

It's like being on a retreat all the time. I love this house.

Here is my lovely niece

Here she is both as a wee baby girl, and now as a graduating senior! We're so proud of her. She is planning on studying biology and psychology with intentions of being pre-med. The family's first doctor!

Well, I know it has been a while since I posted here ... honestly there really just isn't that much happening in my life right now. I decided I would post a photo of my niece who is graduating from high school in a couple of weeks and wax poetic about how quickly the time has gone, how I remember pacing the hospital waiting area with my parents (trying to give my brother and his wife some privacy but not wanting to be too far away), how Steve - who was a fairly recent boyfriend at the time - brought us all pizza to celebrate (except Mary couldn't eat after her C-Section) ...

But when I went to look for the photo I meant to post, I found this compilation first, and just had to post it instead.

Two of the photos in it are not of men I particularly admire, two are ... but I just decided to post this regardless - because it makes me smile!

Life needs more things that just make you smile.