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Hugo Consumption Days

Every year, Hugo Minnesota has it's annual "Consumption Days". Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. A big, silly stimulus package. It's also a hell of a lot of fun.

This year (while we were building the patio) Grandma was being honored as the grand marshal for the second time.

The whole family (sans Karen, Tara, and myself - who were working on the patio) came out to celebrate.


Dorothy on the Grand Marshall Escort Vehicle (an el Camino)


Paula was dressed as a flapper

Patio Project

"Hey honey, can we put a patio in this weekend".
"But honey, we have Odepalooza next weekend. This will be a disaster!"

Moments later...




The project took the whole weekend, Karen came over to help as well (which was a real blessing). Tara did a most of the work, but I got in and kicked some butt, too.

5 Days of Great Conferences

I had two conferences to attend back-to-back. They were both excellent, but for different reasons.

The first was the WCA Leadership Conference. This is an annual Christian event and the speakers are truly amazing: Tony Blair, Bono, Tim Keller (pastor of a thriving church in the heart of Manhattan), Carly Fiorina, Wess Stafford (CEO of Compassion International, and my favorite), the founder of Kiva.com (Tara’s favorite), and many more.

This year was primarily pointed at poverty and notable because there were several successful models presented:

• The President of Good African Coffee had a model that was very focused on capitalism (and a full throated capitalism at that).
• The Kiva.com president presented a capitalistic model where the money was given as an interest free loan from the western world.
• Wess Stafford gave a moving account of his time in Africa (where he grew up as the child of missionaries). God took some of the tremendous evil that was done to him and used it to transform him into a minister to millions of children worldwide. His book “Too Small to Ignore” was given away, and it is fascinating. Compassions model is a charitable ‘teach a man to fish’ model.

All in all, it was an important conference for me. Re-grounded myself in walk with Christ, reminded me of my purpose and opened my mind to a lot of injustice in the world.

Then there was the WoLF conference. WoLF (Women’s Leadership Forum) is a remarkable organization and I’ve had the good fortune to be involved as a leader in the group in Tampa for six months. Best Buy believes in it enough that it is the ONLY national conference this year… and they flew 5,000 people from every segment and level of the company to Vegas for it.

The highlight for me was a 6:30 a.m. breakout session about work-life balance… and it highlights how fast the company moves. During an executive breakout session a frankly very junior store employee let our most senior executives have it. Where most of the world’s corporate officers would have quietly collected her name and ended her career, our CEO and his team not only asked for more from her, but got the SVP of HR for North America to organize this 6:30 breakout. We had a very frank discussion and a lot of people really opened up. It was neat to see the respect and honor that was paid to our store employees by our highest ranking staff, and the stories they told were shocking and moving. Even in a great company like this, there is some nasty sexism and I’m proud of these ladies for sharing so openly.

Second highlight was a lunch with our CEO. My group in Florida won and award and we got to eat with him as reward. Brian is an amazing leader, very honest, passionate, very humble, very, very smart. No question was off limits and several people tested the limit.



My flight home was a red-eye and I got to walk around for a few and take some pics. Here’s a few of my favorites.


Glass on the Ceiling at the Bellagio Hotel


"Why lie, I need a beer"


More Bellagio Glass


These guys stand on the Strip and hand out business card for hookers. He suddenly got shy when I started to take his picture.

Tornado Warning!

We had a very bad storm come through on the 8th (Saturday) which sparked a few tornado warnings. Unfortunately, Tara's cell phone was broken and she was at Target.

I heard the siren go off shortly after I put the kids to bed (around 9 or so), and ripped the sleeping babies out of bed. They were SO good! Jake (who has been very nervous about tornadoes anyway) bolted downstairs, followed by Emma. The two of them played with Abby and didn't complain at all, which was amazing as I didn't have a bottle for Abby or any food.



Tara got a hold of a phone at Target and called to tell me that they had brought her to the back of the store. Most of our friends in the cities were on facebook talking about what they were doing with their families. All told, we were in the basement for about an hour.

The next day, I asked Jake what he was worried about and he said, "well, two things: tornadoes and cash-for-clunkers" (driven by his fear of us trading the car in - he hates change). Tara and I almost fell over.

Nice Day at the Trabin

We had a nice time at the Trabin again. The morning started off looking awful, but beach weather was in full force by the time we got there.



Grandma provided some floats for the kids and blew them up (which we were more than happy to let her do).







And the grown-ups hung out on the five square feet of beach that is Lake Sturgeon Beach.

More Lake Elmo Park Reserve

This week for Family Fun Night we went back to Lake Elmo Park Reserve - this time to the beach and to cook out. I got to use some of my homemade BBQ sauce that I've been bottling and Jake set the table while Emma, Tara, and Abby played at the beach.





The kids really love the beach. It was a real struggle to find a grill to use, but a nice family let us use theirs.





The park was crawling with people. We love the fact that there is a lifeguard there (not that we get more than a few feet away from the kids at this age).



Dinner really came out. I LOVE that BBQ sauce!! Next time we're going to need to bring more chicken.

Lake Elmo Park with the Small Group

Family Fun Night this week was at Lake Elmo Park Reserve with the Small Group.



Piper and Emma love to hang out together at Small Group events.

They’ve got great equipment and the kids really had a fun time. Nice to visit with everyone, and it was sort of (kind of) quiet enough to have a 2 minute conversation between bathroom trips and such.

I got some great pictures of Sam and Tiffany’s youngest at the water fountain (I love little kid at the water fountain pics).



In other news, we got some cute new PJs for Baby Abby who continues to amaze us with her walking and how interactive she is.

Weekend at the Trabin

I’m sitting in the trabin on Sunday watching baby Abby sleep and listening to Connie and Debbie read Grandma Brown’s journal on the porch.

There’s a fly that keeps landing on Abby and waking her up a little. I’ve been chasing it around with a fly swatter between reading a biography of Carly Fiorina (former HP CEO).

We’ve had a nice weekend. Tim was here till about 6 last night with Dorothy and then took off (timing the drive around the Twins game so he could listen to it on the way home). I got in an afternoon nap then we had a dinner of brats and hotdogs.




This is what Emma looks like when she is up TOO late!

The little bar here promised to save some bottle caps for Jake’s collection, but when we came back in the morning (per the agreement) they had been thrown out. A promise of getting some from Uncle Adam’s job at Acapulco and two choco-taco’s made everything better.

Tara and I got a run in down Pumpkins Seed road and enjoyed a nice time by the fire and S’Mores (a trabin favorite).

Sleeping arrangements are notable… Shelly slept where the table is, Karen took the couch (against my protests), Jake and Emma slept on fluffy blankets on the floor, Abby had the playpen, and Tara and I got the… BIG BED. We were woken up in the middle of the night by a white horse neighing really loudly right outside the window and Abby getting up several times.



Breakfast was sausage, pancakes and eggs cooked in the grease from the sausage.

It’s fun listening to the ladies read from Grandma Brown’s journal. Lot’s a family history mixed with world history. Notable was the comment about Clinton. Something to the effect that ‘he did have an affair with that Lewinsky woman… bad news for our country’.

Family Fun Night @ MarketFest

We had a nice Family Fun Night at MarketFest in White Bear Lake.



The kids couldn’t wait to get there and start spending their money on treats and rides. Tara sprung for some crazy yummy ice-cream sandwiches (they used hot cookies and some great ice cream)… amazing.





Emma wanted to do the bungee ride, which initially scared Jake. I was pretty impressed that Emma would try something like that at 4. Jake got over his fear pretty quickly, but had already missed a place in line.





While Emma was waiting in line (long, long time), Jake got to play some kind of ducky game, shoot water balloons, and run an obstacle course.





It was a ton of fun!

Sawyer Wedding

Jason and Erin got married this weekend at the American Legion in Somerset.

The wedding was beautiful. They asked me to take some picutures and got a bunch of practice with the camera.

The kids had a fun time playing.




The vows were Doctor Suess based. Here's a sample
Pastor: Will you love her when you're fit,
And also when you're feeling sick?

Jason: Yes, I'll love her when we're fit,
And when we're hurt, and when we're sick,
And I will love her when we're rich
And I will love her in a ditch
And I will love through good and bad,
And I will love when glad or sad,
And I will have, and I will hold
Ten years from now a thousandfold,
Yes, I will love for my whole life
This lovely woman as my wife!


The party went on into the night and the kids got to dance. I tried to talk Missy into a epic karioke version of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', but to no avail.

Tara is 33!!

We had a really fun day Monday, despite some disconcerting news from home about mom.

We took the day off and relaxed. In the morning I took the kids to Karen’s and let Tara sleep (she’s running at 4:45 am these days, so it doesn’t count as “sleeping in” per se). Afterward, we went to Best Buy to scope out Tara’s gift: a new camera lens with a higher aperture (for portrait shots).



Then it was off to brunch at one of our favorite restaurants: Victor’s 1959 Café, which is the only place in Minnesota to get good Cuban food. We sat at the table below which has a lovely portrait of the Terrorist Che Guevara.



Then we saw The Hangover at the Rosedale AMC. Very funny movie, if not way inappropriate.



Afterward, we played with the kids at Teddy Bear Park.







Then met up with Grandma, Papa, Shelly, Adam, Emily and Kelly at Acapulco’s in Stillwater. Karen took the kids overnight, freeing us up for a little date at another of our favorite spots: Ingredients.