The Big Move

The last year has been a long and hard one for my parents, and the culmination of it was the scheduled move that took place this past week. Between preparing their home in Colorado for sale, showings, cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning, they finally sold their house and began packing a couple of weeks ago.

A few words of wisdom from my Mom: "De-clutter now, Shana! It will make your life a whole lot easier when you decide to sell and move again!" Here's a picture of my Dad, nephew Antonio (a great little helper!), and Erik with the moving truck they drove to Cloquet. The truck was stuffed to the gills, thanks to Erik's master packing skills. The unpacking of the additional PODS will happen later this fall. (Hoorah!)

My Dad will be serving a parish as interim for a year or more. In the meantime, the builders have already started construction on their new home in Blaine. Here's a shot of Our Savior's in Cloquet.


Speaking of moving, Anja is keeping her pace. We purchased a walker for her, and she's taking to it quite well. Here she is moving her blocks this afternoon.

I can't resist posting another photo, so here she is in her little library. She's a great page turner!

Good Eatin'

Anja has really hit her stride when it comes to eating solid foods. She's also beginning to have some fun with dinner time! These pictures are from her second encounter with peas. Despite a few bitter faces, she really seems to like them. We have also discovered that she can be quite the picky eater. If the rice cereal or the oatmeal is just the slightest bit too cold, she won't touch it. She obviously gets this from her mother.

For those who know Shana, they'll recall her "bun,burger, bun" days. Yes, she literally ordered hamburgers this way for who knows how long. Erik, on the other hand, has been constantly reminded (at least by his mother) of his days as a nine month old in Greenland eating arctic fox turds. Obviously, the temperature of the turds was not an issue for dear ol' dad. In all fairness, Shana has moved up in the food world and has greatly expanded her palette.

Sneak preview of tomorrow's post: Ron and Linda are nearly settled in at their new place in Cloquet, Minn. Steve, Erik, Antonio and Ron loaded up a rental truck while the Shana, Linda, Nina and Anja readied the new place. Pics and details to come.

The Nature Valley Grand Prix

Every June, professional cycling comes to the Twin Cities. The original 3 day event has grown into a 5 day race with 6 stages. Check out the official web site. The final day is always capped with a criterium race in Stillwater, Minn. A criterium or "crit" is a race where riders complete a number of laps on a course that is around a mile in length. The crit in Stillwater is considered one of the toughest in the nation as it goes up Chillcoot hill. This hill has a 26% grade and needless to say, its brutal. We've been making it an annual event to go down and watch and this year was no exception. The steep hill also provides a similar atmosphere to the big mountain stages of the Tour de France. It also makes the race in Stillwater especially fun to watch! I've posted some photos and a short video clip as well. We also got to try out the Kelty Kids Pack, which Anja seemed to enjoy!

Girls High School Rugby State Championship

A few weeks ago (this is a very timely post) Hannah McMahon, a senior at Minneapolis South High School, helped her team to a 3rd place finish in the State Tournament. While 3rd place sounds great, it really wasn't what the team deserved. In fact, they played a perfect season and were undefeated, at least on the field. Their only loss came from a disqualification due to some substitute players. In the semifinals they would've had to play 3 players down the entire game so they recruited some extra players to fill their line-up. They still played with no substitutions and won fairly easily. The pictures, courtesy of David McMahon, are from that game. However, the subs ended up costing them the game as they had to forfeit. A disappointing way to end up in the 3rd place game.
My rugby knowledge is quite limited, but I believe Hannah plays half-back. She stays out of the scrum and does most of the kicking. Hannah is the one kicking in the photo.In either case, congats Hannah! She will be attending Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois this fall. We wish her the best of luck!Also, check out some of David's photography.

mcmahonphoto.blogspot.com
www.portfolios.com/mcmahonstudio

Congrats Nathan and Krista!

Yesterday afternoon marked the wedding of Nathan Gossai and Krista Johnson. Both Nathan and Krista were fellow Concordia grads and have become good friends of ours. After a stint in the Caribbean for their honeymoon, they will be heading to Virginia where Nathan will continue medical school at Georgetown and Krista will begin her dental practice. We wish them the best of luck! We realized, to our chagrin, that the picture below was the only one we took of the couple. While the light isn't great, here they are during their first dance as a married couple.The wedding was beautiful and Hemchand (Nathan's father) delivered a very memorable homily, definitely not of the canned variety. Interestingly enough, Hemchand along with Nathan's mother Maria, were both Concordia students when my parents were working at the college. Through a number of activities they got to know each other quite well and it was a surprise for both Nathan and me when we found out our parents knew each other. The "Hemchand Gossai Cricket Club" is something I'd still like to hear the full story about or I'd at least like to find the t-shirt. In another bizarre connection, Maria (Vold - we're not certain, but we think this is her maiden name) is from the world famous Watford City, ND, site of the upcoming Rolfsrud family reunion. This means she has also read "Gopher Tales for Papa" by the infamous (a member of the North Dakota hall of fame) Erling Nicolai Rolfsrud. Erling is Shana's late grandfather. What a very small world!

Our true colors as proud parents are really shining when we only had one picture of the bride and groom but numerous shots of Anja. Here she is all decked out for the wedding!


Thanks to Nathan and Krista for the coffee from Africa. I brewed some this morning and it was great!

Mark is now 85% Chinese

In a recent e-mail from China, Mark Gudmastad (one of Anja's Godparents) informed us that he is now 85% Chinese. While he wouldn't elaborate at this time, if this turns out to be true Anja's Godparents aren't just Scandinavian any more.

Mark also sent along these photos. He has been traveling around Chengdu in West-Central China. Here are some excerpts from his e-mail. "I've had a pretty exciting time here. I spent 10 days on a solo trip out to the Tibetan/Sichuan border. Three days on a highway listed as one of the highest, most dangerous in the world. Visiting lots of buddhist monasteries. . . . The mountain in the picture is Minya Kanka (Gangga Shan in Chinese) - "To behold it is worth ten years of meditation," according to an inscription at the base. Summited only 6 times with many failures. Two weeks before I was there an Australian man disappeared while trekking around the base of it - they think maybe avalanche. 7,590m; third highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas/Karakoram. Heading south to the Yunan province tomorrow, maybe. Will spend a couple weeks weeks backpacking around there."

We're definitely jealous of his trip and we're happy to hear he is having such a good time. We also can't wait to hear some crazy stories when he gets back!

In a subsequent e-mail we have also discovered that this blog is "one of the select sites blocked by the Chinese government." OK, so its probably all blogs. Nonetheless, sorry to all of our China based readers who cannot access this blog.

I'll Take the Stairs . . .

We've got a climber at our house! Two days ago, Anja decided it was time to conquer our stairs. One by one, she was determined to reach the top. The next day, she did both sets at once. She continues to amaze us with her strength!

It's fun to see her progress, but scary at times as well. Even after a few falls while maneuvering around furniture, she gets right back up for more. She's crawling almost entirely now, but still likes to fall back on her favorite army man crawl.

Having Erik around has been great for Anja so she gets more one on one time with him. It's also been nice to have another person to make a save every now and again!

Hail hits Norway Lake - A week ago

Last Sunday, June 10th, Shana and I were visiting the Hoffman's and Clementson's at their cabin on Norway Lake near New London, Minn. Erin and Ben Hoffman along with Mark Gudmastad are Anja's Godparents. We had a great time. Highlights included a long nap taken by Erik and Anja while Shana and Erin toured the lake via pontoon. That night we were hit by one heck of a storm. I posted a video we took on YouTube and have embedded it here.
I have never seen hail like that. Luckily it didn't appear to do any major damage. The photo below is one of the larger pieces of hail we found. They ranged from dime size to half-dollar size hail.

On the way back we visited my Grandparents, Anna and Gordon Halvorson. They were both doing really well and enjoyed seeing Anja. Shana and I are both very happy that Gordon's health continues to improve! From left to right in the photo below, Marilyn, Anja, Anna, & Gordon.

Shana runs marathon while Erik schmoozes with cute kid and humorist

On a warm and humid early spring morning in Duluth yesterday, Shana ran Grandma's marathon. She did an excellent job and while her time may not have been what she wanted it to be, she still finished in a very respectable 4 hours and 23 minutes. Ultimately, while it was 30 minutes off her personal best, she feels good about her race and is glad to be back on the road to her previous fitness level. I got to spend the morning with Anja who was in perfect form and received numerous ooohs and aahs. After a fellow spectator asked how old Anja was, she gasped in near disbelief, "and her mom is already running a marathon?!"

Also in attendance was humorist turned politician Al Franken. He was joined by a few of his campaign team members and they were cheering up a storm. Numerous marathon runners were lucky to get a high five and some very enthusiastic cheers from Al himself. As you can tell by the picture we go way back.


Stay tuned: The past few weeks have been busy ones. My classes are finally over for a few weeks and I'm looking forward to some downtime. This will also give me some more time to blog. Last weekend Hannah McMahon participated in the girls state high school rugby tournament. I'm hoping to get a game report from Hannah herself and will post a few pictures as well. Anja is the ever active child and is getting ahead of herself. Her new favorite thing to do is to pull herself up. However, her balance isn't quite there so she's keeping Shana and me on our toes to catch her falls. We'll have some pictures of her new found talent. Last but not least, I'm hoping to start posting some 'favorite's of the web' posts. For now, check out http://www.ted.com - the short speeches on this site tend to speak for themselves.

-Erik

Success!

Anja is finally into eating a little bit of solid food each day. We're happy to report that she actually kind of likes mushy rice cereal as well as oatmeal--enough to even help a bit. Yum!

She's also up for the stairs now . . . cruising over to them every chance she gets. She only gets to the second step, but that's enough to have her parents racing over to make the save every once in awhile!

Anja after bath time.
Good times for everyone!

It's Official!

After 31 years of teaching, today was Grandma Linda's last day of teaching. She is officially retired. We can't wait to have G'ma and G'pa here in Minneapolis with us for good! Congrats, Mom!