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| Having clear skies ought to be good for playing outside, but when sunset is at 4:30 pm, there's little time to romp around. |
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| She got the hang of walking really quickly, and Shadow was overjoyed to have someone to chase. |
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| Let's have a video of the two of them playing! |
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| The Tesla Works club at the University of Minnesota College of Science & Engineering puts on a holiday light and music show for a couple weekends between Thanksgiving and Winter Break. They do a 25-minute show where the lights are synchronized to music, and get a nice-sized crowd. The pleasant weather is a bonus - barely any snow left on the ground now; I could walk around campus with an unzipped jacket here on December 13th! |
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| We walked around the East Bank for a while afterwards - plenty of students and families looking around and enjoying the weather. Pity the restaurants at Coffman aren't open late on a Saturday night. |
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| The U has changed so much since Ann and I went there, buildings and walkways are in beautiful shape now - interesting and accessible. There's a train! There are so many more international students! The food is so much better! Whether Wynn attends the U or not, we're glad we can show her around campus and instill a respect and desire for higher education. |
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| Inspired by the Math & Science fair at the U of M last week, Wynn decided the theme for this year's tree would be TETRAHEDRONS. |
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| We picked up a couple bags of straws at IKEA, and I cut them down (the bendy part doesn't work well when making these). All three of us ran string through the straws and tied them together to make these triangles. |
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| I put the lights up tonight - we'll trim the rest later... |
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| It was a most excellent tree; still very fragrant and thirsty and held the ornaments beautifully. |
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| The plastic fork & spoon for arms was Wynn's idea ... all the better to eat you with! |
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| Squirrels love marshmallows and Kit Kat bars, apparently. |
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| We are thankful for everyone's good health this year, and the ability to share with the people and causes we care so much about. |
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| So let's get going with the presents, already! |
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| School pride! |
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| Wynn drew one-page comics for each of us - she's explaining the action in this one to Uncle Paul... |
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| A good day for Wynn, and good to know that we're donating an even bigger amount this season! |
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| Only European kids served in this cafe. Is Becky really going to eat all those hamburgers by herself? |
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| Santa's Castle looks like it's in Spain. |
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| We learned how to make six-sided snowflakes this month, and used different papers we had here at the house as well as bigger sheets from school! |
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| We got our tree again from the University of Minnesota's Forestry students - it was frozen up with all the branches together like a collapsed umbrella when we picked it out from the lot, so we felt lucky that the tree was so full and bushy when it thawed out! |
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| Ornaments that look like Wynn and Shadow! |
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| Visited her grandparents in Burnsville today; on the way back we stopped by the airport to watch airplanes for a while, and she got her picture taken at one of the holiday displays they have there. |
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| And we had lunch at Culver's in West St. Paul, next to Lowe's where we got paint to do our living room over Xmas break. She's showing off her Oreo ice cream cake she got as part of her kids' meal! (She needed a little help to finish it.) |
