How to Make Grocery Shopping Last an Entire Afternoon

Give the kiddies a kiddie cart…

…and ask them to follow you through the grocery store as you gather your 40-item list.

I made this blissful discovery last week at Cub.  It was such a thrill that we had to cut our list short to pick up Caleb from preschool on time.

SuperTarget almost lost all our business…except that after about 15 minutes of tamely pushing Cub kiddie carts, the sisters figured out they could race recklessly down the aisles and grab any merchandise that struck their fancy.  We only made it to the check out after colliding into several innocent bystanders plus hoarding many extra cartons of colored sprinkles and tubs of ice cream in our kiddie carts.  :) In the future we will be reserving this activity as an alternative to the library on a rainy day…and only when the list is short.

Another Graduate

These kids keep outgrowing the things that used to fit them so well…

Preschool, for instance…

Caleb is our second preschool graduate.

And here is his smirk…

I only wiped away a couple tears at his end-of-the-year program…

and maybe a couple more when we took this home from his classroom wall…

Of course he had a fan club…

a pretty proud bunch…

We are thankful for his year of growth and encouragement from his preschool.

And now the time is near for yet another baby to venture off to kindergarten.  But we’re not going to think about that too much yet when we have the whole summer before us…

Sley Fiesta

Team Sley was reunited at our house for Mother’s Day weekend.

We had a whole week with Cita…

Pappy flew in later…

and Auntie Mary too…

and she made us all her famous smoothies…

and Uncle David drove up with Shiloh the poodle for the occasion…

We hit up Como Zoo…

      

 and the close park…

plus Uncle David and Caleb tore up the Lego station…

(in their jammies…)

Bjorn even planted his tomatoes…

the pool got pumped once again…

 and most significantantly, Cita completed six decades…

so we had no choice but to throw a fiesta…

And now we miss everyone dearly…and having our space all to ourselves is not nearly as much fun.

Mother’s Day Gifts

The Mother’s Day gifts that went straight to my heart came completely unprompted from my little Lego men.  They call them “Lego Gardens” and they are made especially for me.

I set them on my nightstand for my viewing pleasure.

Gabriel’s Lego Garden has a pickett fence and pinwheel flowers.

Upon presentation, Caleb informed me that in his Lego Garden, he is watering the flowers for me with the hose (from the firetruck), and I…

am taking pictures of the flowers…

(fully equipped with bazooka-machine-gun-camera, apparently…)

I guess I must lose myself in our garden flowers…

…often enough for Caleb to create my caricature.

Easier still is losing myself in these faces…

of my most precious gifts…

from the Father of Lights

for which I am infinitely and forever grateful.

Half-Marathon, Full Victory

This past Mother’s Day weekend began Saturday morning, 7:30 a.m. at the Maple Grove High School stadium.  David, Mary, and I, partners in the irrational.  No we had never achieved such ridiculousness before, except for David once.  He warned I can’t downplay it.  So I won’t.  We did it.  13.1 miles.  The human body is not meant to perform such treachery.  David could have pulled ahead and cut many minutes off his time, but he stayed with his sisters and held our hands and dragged us along in our weakest moments.  Slow and steady does not win first place, but it is how we finish the race.

Bjorn, kids, and my mom met us just after mile 8, shortly after we lost track of Tom.  For the first 8 miles we stayed with pacer person, Tom, who we are pretty sure was battery-powered.  As we ran along at our easy pace, he revealed he had run 100 marathons in Minnesota, and this was only his first event of the day.  He knew our pace, and he kept it steady.  He led the way running backwards up the hills to motivate the rest of his group that we indeed could make it up the hills.  Two people needed medical attention along the way, and Tom sprinted ahead to the next water station to alert the paramedics, sprinted back, and then non-challantly resumed his “easy” pace with our 2hr. 30 min. group.  We eventually lost pace with Tom, when nurse Mary stopped to help a lady close to passing out.  Extra help came for the lady, but we never were able to catch up to Robot Tom in the last 5 miles.

To look at the photo my mom took of us with only the sky above us…

…and our armpits dazzling below us…you might think we were olympic champions.  (Thanks, Mom.) Team Sley is always a bit dramatic.  Nevermind that shortly after we crossed the finish line, the loud speakers boomed: “…and that about wraps up the half-marathon folks…just a few more stragglers comin’ in now.” The nerve, the audacity of the announcer guy.

But I promised I would not downplay our victory.  We ached and winced for days after, but we will always remember crossing the finish line together.  And sharing electrolyte starburst chews, stuffed against our sweaty waists.  And showing off our cool finisher shirts…

Our fan club should have won their own medals for their support and excitement.

Bjorn gets his own French Silk Pie for all the weekend mornings he had the kids all to himself so his wife could hold a candle in her race.

Our marathon was half; our victory was full.  God’s grace is enough.  Our strength comes from Him.

Gabriel was only slightly disappointed we were not first, but he is relieved that at least we won medals.  (Maybe it’s just for finishing.) He has been asking how old he needs to be to run a race and win first place.  We’re still figuring out these most important things in life…

The Adventures of Lego Batman and His Helmet

This weekend after saving many many weeks of allowance, Gabriel brought his money pouch to Target, stacked quarters in stacks of 4, 13 times for the very patient cashier, and purchased himself…a Lego Batman and Cat Woman on motorcycle.

All Sunday evening Gabriel and Caleb played legos in the basement.  To little boys, I am learning that lego guys are their doll babies.  They make up stories with them, make them talk, talk TO them, etc.  Such was the case with Lego Batman…until calamity struck.

As Gabriel retells the woeful incident, Lego Batman was flying around the basement cabinet when he decided to rest in one of the corner mouse holes.

And when his rest was over and it was time to resume his mission, alas, when pulling him out of the mouse hole, his helmet got seperated and tragically fell back into the deep dark abyss behind the wall.

It was enough to make even a confident six-and-a-half-year-old cry.  He pleaded with Daddy to find Batman’s helmet.  But cutting a hole in the wall was just not a project Daddy had planned on tackling Sunday night.  Gabriel put on his jammies that night with a very vague promise that someday, somehow, hopefully Batman would be reunited with his helmet.  The biggest consolation was that Cat Woman’s helmet also looked pretty good on Batman.  Because and ONLY because of this discovery, Gabriel was able to calm himself enough to get in his bed.  He also left Daddy a reminder on the fridge marker board…

We assured Gabriel things were looking up.  However, after the covers were tucked around him, many more tears still were shed for Batman’s helmet.

As he came downstairs the next morning, Gabriel noticed a message left to him from Daddy, who had already left early for work…

It was a great promise that carried Gabriel through the day.  Yesterday afternoon, Daddy crossed the threshold of our front door and was immediately DRAGGED to the basement still in his teacher clothes.  There was no stopping Gabriel.  Daddy grabbed his power saw and his drill.

Before he had time to decide if this really was a good idea or not, Gabriel plugged in the extension chord.

After a few minutes of ear-splitting clamor…

a piece of the cabinet wall fell down.

Daddy groped through the opening.  First he pulled out dilapidated sheetrock scraps.  Mommy was too afraid to look for fear of mouse remnants.  Each of our hearts pounded.  Daddy continued blindly scraping behind the wall with his fingers. Then suddenly, covered in sawdust, he pulled up something small and blue.  Jubilant shrieks filled our basement.  One overjoyed little boy showed off his dimple.

We are thankful there is a happy ending to this story for Gabriel…but we have no idea when or how we will fix the mess.

Sometimes helping Batman keep his image means sawing holes in your wall.

I’m pretty sure we all agree who is the real superhero in this story.

Important Dates

Something Bjorn and I will probably never feel we can do enough of is taking each of our kids on special dates with just one of us…regularly.  In fact, this was our 2012 New Year’s Resolution.  Because we really do think this is important.  It just doesn’t always happen so naturally.  Back in March we reminded each other of this resolution and started making plans.

Even just planning these dates seems counter-intuitive.  Why would I ONLY take Caleb to LegoLand when Gabriel would love to go too?  We are so used to muli-tasking, double-dutying, dividing and conquering, that sometimes we forget the necessity of individual quality time.  So far this spring, we have completed one round.

Date #1 was Caleb and me.  We ventured out to LegoLand at the Mall of America, perhaps one of the most incredible and awe-inspiring places on earth to this little boy…

We had not been since he was a baby.  Somehow driving 30 minutes to the MOA just isn’t Bjorn’s and my normal idea of fun.  But we are trying to overcome our distaste for malls for the very unique experience of Legoland.

Although Caleb quickly became overwhelmed with the vast spectrum of construction ideas in every cranny he looked, he finally settled down at a building station where we pieced together some original contraptions.  Next we walked around looking at the many lego window boxes for ideas to take home to our own lego station…

and the beautifully color-sorted drawers of every size and shape of lego piece on the planet…

oh the choices we must make…

and the build-your-own-legoman station…(where there is perhaps a face for every single human emotion…)

and the gargantuan lego masterpieces…

This guy was 20 feet tall…made from the smallest lego pieces fastened together with the utmost precision that only a Lego Master could accomplish.

To Caleb, beholding these works of art was a combination of ecstatic joy and pure bewilderment.  It was my joy and privilege to accompany him during this breath-taking experience.

Before we left, I asked a Legoland employee how long it took to build these gigantic gems.  He said it took a whole team of Lego Master Builders six months working in shifts 24/7.  (Bjorn and I are now wondering what it takes to earn the title of “Lego Master Builder”.   If you need your masters in Lego Construction, shouldn’t we be getting our boys started with the undergrad lego program pretty soon? And at what age could they start receiving paychecks from Legoland?? We are just wondering…)

Caleb came home with a full love-tank that day.

Date #2 was Bjorn and Kristiana.  They first hit Cafe Latte, where they reported sharing an enormous slice of double chocolate cake, and then to The Red Balloon Bookstore…

where to her delight, she was given a real red balloon.  When I asked her if she had a fun date with Daddy, Kristiana said, “And puppy!”  Puppy came too.

Apparently that was important.

Date #3 was Bjorn and Gabriel.

Because Caleb had talked it up so much, they tried out LegoLand, where they lasted about 1o minutes.  I enjoyed hearing Bjorn explain how he realized he was on a special date with Gabriel Bjorn, his outdoor-loving mini-me…and somehow they had gotten suckered into THE MALL OF AMERICA!!!  What where they doing at THE MALL??? Bjorn says they got out of there as fast as they could and drove to Lake Johanna where they threw rocks at the ice together for a long time in recovery from their overwhelming mall excursion.

Date #4 was executed with Mommy and MaryKate not too long ago.

We sat in the children’s book section of Barnes and Noble and picked out fun books to read.  MaryKate also brought me many stuffed animals from a display that we pet and exclaimed over.  The joys of being two.  And the icing on her cake was looking through the glass at Starbucks and picking out a “big HUGE cookie”.

Such precedent we are setting.  So now that it’s May we have completed one round of our New Year’s Resolution, and now all we need is to muster up the energy for another round.  We also hope to seize opportunities more frequently for less formal dates around our house in the midst of our normal routines: Who want’s to help Daddy sort the recycling??  Who wants to come to Target with Mommy??

But the hanging out all-together dates are pretty great too…