NaNaNaNaNaNaNa- Bat Moon!

Sammy and I had our latest Canoe When The Moon is Full. It was the Bat Moon. I'm thinking it was a coincidence with the Dark Knight premiere, as we did not get any Joker swag.

Here's the pins that you get when you do the walk/canoe events:



This was Sammy's favorite CWTMIF event. It was very rustic - at the Baker Near Wilderness Settlement. The previous two were at more populated and public facilities (ie no snack bar - or lighted paths/parking lots here).

The last two canoeing events, were a more dusky affair - not exactly that dark. The naturalist/guide stalled waiting for more people to show and we heading out on a relatively long trek through the woods to get to the dock. We encountered hundreds of fireflies on our walk, which was amazing.

Like I said, this was rustic - we had to unlock our canoes and portage them along a path to the dock. Sammy was a champ and was able to hold up her end of the canoe with little difficulty. Our guide put a couple lanterns on the dock as a homing beacon, and Sammy and I were off in the twilight, Sammy sporting a blue glow necklace, which served both fashionable and functional purposes - so others could see us and not smash into us.

This canoe trip we enjoyed as we were off by ourselves. The lake has no public access, so we were the only 8 canoes on it. There was no wind, which makes canoeing easier, but the bugs were pretty rough and the sky was clear, unlike the last time we went - Firefly Moon, rechristened Lightning Bug Moon.

We were rewarded by seeing the huge moon rise over the lake. We also spied Jupiter brightly shining in the East.

As most of the canoes were spread out on the lake, we couldn't hear many other voices - a faint "Marco!" "Polo!" coming from a couple canoes from the distance.

I told Sammy to be quiet for a moment to see if we could hear any animals or bird sounds. Sammy was quiet for all of 15 seconds and then said, "I have to break wind." Then the squeakiest little fart emanated from her. Okay, so much for sounds of the wild.

We ending up being on the water until 10pm and got back to the lodge about 10:30. As there were no lights heading back to the lodge and the parking lot, we got in a little bit of stargazing too. Sooo pretty.

Sam and I are going to finish the canoeing events and are thinking about doing the Full Moon walks or snowshoeing in the winter.

Psych! You're Enjoying Art!

To get out of the house, we took the kids to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and let them run around. Well, it was more like Stella ran around and we all chased her.

In these pictures you can also see my new RED hair color.

Back Home

Well, Sammy's home from her camp - it was at the University of St. Thomas - Science and Technical Camp for girls. She had a good time, but had some homesickness early on. She made some new friends and did a lot of cool things like:

• Made a crystal radio.
• Created little discs in a plastics lab.
• Made and flew a RC airplane.

We went out to the TriValley Fly Field on Wednesday night to watch her fly her plane. She did very well. L took a video of it and I'll link it here.



It lost power halfway through and the plane "caught a thermal" updraft and kept on climbing higher. The RC club guys were impressed with Sammy's flying skilz and called her "Amelia Earhart." Sammy was impressed because she had just done a report on AE a couple months ago.

Sammy and Stella at the Fly Field

Sammy waiting to fly her plane...

Thursday we had a bad storm roll into MSP. It took out the power at work around 12:45 or so. The power wasn't restored until 8:30 that night. As we were released a little early from work, I took advantage of the extra time and rolled into St Paul to pick up Sammy with plenty o' time to spare. I hit Izzy's ice cream and had a cotton candy single scoop with a cream cheese Izzy on top. Oh, for yummy...

Next, as I was dying of a headache, I headed over to Eric and Annie's house and visited there. (Well, I kind of just died on the couch after Annie very very kindly gave me many headache relieving drugs and a coke, which helped tremendously.)

Annie came along to Sammy's graduation, which was a big surprise to Sammy. They had a very cute ceremony (with a lot of "whooo"s and screeches at a pitch that only middle schoolers can achieve.) Sammy was given the "Helping Hands" award as she was always pitching in.

So we got our baby back. She was so tired and overwhelmed from the week. She slept great in her own bed and I think she's getting back to normal. Yes, I think she's sick of us again.