Archive for the ‘Family – Martin’ Category
July 16, 2011 – On the Water
One of the attractions of a week on the lake is the clean water.
Martin tests out a kayak.
Linda revels in the water – free to swim anywhere in the lake devoid of motorboats and jetskis.
Martin and I out for a beautiful canoe ride on a calm evening.
Emma and I out another evening soaking up the lake and forests.
July 15, 2011 – Dock Life
A large part of our life on vacation revolves around sitting on the dock.
Emma and Kate greet canoers on their journey.
It’s pretty much a law of the universe that the smallest person gets thrown off the dock.
Dock jumping hardly ever goes out of style.
Neighbors one cabin down fish near sunset.
Our travel compatriots relax on the dock – our cabin is straight up behind the dock.
A view of the dock facing out to the lake.
July 12, 2011 – Fishing Waters
One of the things I most look forward to is fishing in beautiful surroundings.
Here Martin shows off a baby northern pike he let go.
The nicest fish of a pretty lousy fishing week – the biggest of three smallmouth bass caught right together in some swift water – this one was 19 inches and was released.
Me in my natural habitat – on an island in a channel, baiting up.
The rapids entering into Lake One from Lake Two.
The head of the rapids from Lake One, heading to Confusion Lake. I could spend a lot of time wandering down this river to the next lake!
July 8, 2011 – Gothic Garlic
It was garlic pulling day at high hopes today.
Here’s the kid version of the American Gothic with some of the garlic we pulled today.
The parents and their gothic pose.
oe year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #216″
July 3, 2011 – Great New Insulation Cutter
I found this great new insulation cutter – named Martin!
xxx.
June 24, 2011 – Martin’s First Trout
As long as we had to drive to Decorah to pick up Emma from music camp, we thought we’d take in some trout fishing in the area (yes, I know to most of the world “Iowa Trout” is an oxymoron of the 1st degree). My brother met us with his camper, so we didn’t even have to sleep on the ground.
Martin had a bot of a struggle at the beginning learning a new kind of fishing that requires pinpoint accurary in casting, but he eventually got the hang of it.
And again…
I couldn’t resist this short video of a classic scene of young boy and flopping fish. We look forward to smoking the 20 trout we brought home!
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #214″
June 1, 2011 – Hayrides Never Go Out of Style
One of our neighbors was good enough to offer us as much of the loose straw in his loft that we care to haul away – coons and the like have destroyed most the strings. It’s a pain to get out and haul, but offers us great mulch and the chance for Martin to ride on a load of straw under a big sky, with the wind in his air, bouncing up and down on a load of straw.
He was able to ride the mile or so across the field on top of the load – something every kid should have a chance to do. Now, when the wind stops, I’ll spread it on the garden.
one year ago…”Summer Painting”
May 25, 2011 – Plugging Away on Getting Garden Planted
It’s been a slow start to the gardening season – mainly due to weather, but also due to Linda’s trip to DC and now her trip with Claire to the BWCA wilderness.
So Martin and Emma are enlisted to set some starts out in one of the beds.
one year ago…”Getting Tomatoes In”
May 18, 2011 – Jazzy Martin
This isn’t particularly of interest to everyone, but I thought family might appreciate a 3 minute clip from Martin’s first jazz band concert. The quality is poor, but you at least get to hear it (listen for Martin’s trombone solo). The band started practicing in February and consists of 5th and 6th graders.
They’ve made great progress since the 5th graders just picked up their instruments last fall.
one year ago…”Goats on the Ground”
April 13, 2011 – The Streak Continues – 4 Days in a Row
Our ewe Gabby gave birth today. We can officially blame Martin for the fact that she only dropped one lamb. The night before she became a mom, Martin asked if ewes ever only had one baby. We told him not very often and we’ve never had just one.
So Gabby made liars out of us. When she was labor, she REALLY wanted to be a mommy! I moved one of the ewes out of the mommy-baby pen in anticipation of Gabby and her babies needing the space. As soon as Gabby saw the other lambs from another ewe, she started licking and nursing them as her own while her own birthing process was beginning. I separated her quickly as to not get everybody mixed up on who’s who.
one year ago…”New York Farm Workers Bill”
April 9, 2011 – 27 Years Later, UMD Hockey Champs!
As a native Duluthian and an alum of UM-Duluth, and a season ticket holder from 1981-1984, I was pleased to witness the Bulldogs win their first NCAA hockey championship. In 1984, after the Bulldogs painful 5-4 loss in four overtimes in the NCAA championship game, if you would have told me that in 27 years I’d be taking my son to the see the championship game, visiting my oldest daughter in college, and married to Linda (who I knew then and wanted to know much better, but she was already with boyfriend), I would have been overjoyed.
There it is 3-2 UMD in overtime over Michigan.
Martin in his seat at the Xcel Energy center. I’m thinking the millions the power company spent on advertising was missed on Martin as he asked me “Dad, is this arena related to Microsoft?” I asked him why he thought it might be and he replied that the name of the arena was a spreadsheet.
The Xcel center is a great place to watch a hockey game – ESPN The Magazine has ranked the venue six years among the top three for “Best Stadium Experience” in all of professional sports. Xcel Energy Center was named “Best NHL Arena” by Sports Business Journal and recognized for the “Best Fan Experience” by Forbes magazine. Sports Illustrated named the arena its “top choice” among NHL buildings. But until today, I didn’t know what extremes the facility went to make the fan experience so great.
For example, after talking up the guy sitting next to me, he revealed that he was Gregg Moore, who played for UMD the same time I had season tickets. Not only did he play there, he had 206 career points, which makes him the 4th highest scoring player in UMD history! Needless to say, there was much happiness in our row. Gregg’s time ended in 1983, one year before the famous 4 OT championship game at Lake Placid, but he was there to watch it on a break from professional hockey in Europe.
Here’s the obligatory celebration following the sudden death victory. The game had a storybook ending as the player who scored the winning goal was voted the “most underrated” college hockey player just a few days ago. Kyle Schmidt, only one of four seniors on the team, directed in the winning goal in OT. He is a hometown boy, growing up a few miles from the campus. Also, all the team dyed their hair blonde, except for Kyle, whose fianace wasn’t keen on a badly dyed blonde husband in summer wedding photos!
Next year, when the Frozen Four is played in Tampa, there’ll be another banner hanging from the ceiling.
one year ago…”Claire’s College Search is Over”
March 23, 2011 – “Gracious Professionalism”
Today, Martin and one of his Lego League team members traveled to Ames to exhibit “gracious professionalism” – a core value of the First Lego League organization. They traveled to help the “flying monkeys” get ready for their trip to San Diego to compete in a national tournament.
The team was selected on the strength of their innovative solution project (a prosthetic device) and was needing some pointers on robot programming. Here Martin demonstrates some test programs, in this case, following a black line using a light sensor on a test pad.
Here they look over some programming hints and techniques to help make their robot work more efficiently.
one year ago…”The Sap Keeps a Boilin’”
March 20, 2011 – Proud Accordion Owners!
Martin is now the proud owner of an Italian-made Zon-Rio piano accordion! The friend who loaned us the red accordion to try found one on Craigslist while visiting Madison.
Martin enjoys playing it and has already mastered a few short songs.
Here it is. His great-grandfather would be proud!
March 18, 2011 – Ducks and Fish
I’ve been trying to be a bit more deliberate about getting out more. Truth is, I could work 120 hours a week on the farm and still not get everything done. The last few days we’ve been watching the migration at a local marsh, Hendrickson Marsh on the Story-Marshall county line. This was the first day the ice was out.
For this part of the world, it’s a pretty big marsh. It sets in about a mile square block and water probably takes up 1/4 of the square mile. It’s a magnet for ducks and geese.
The were thousands of ducks here today.
We thought we’d try to catch some garden fertilizer in the stream below the marsh. I’m going to try to make a fish emulsion. We didn’t get any big ones, but plenty of little ones and it was a great way to spend a Friday afternoon.
