What Do You Do When An Eleven Year Old Loses A Tooth?

You load toothpaste on a mousetrap and try to catch the Tooth Fairy. The note reads:

Dear Claire:
Your dad tried to catch me with a mousetrap. He snapped glitter off my dress, but I got away. Thanks for being such a good girl and taking care of your teeth. Tell your dad to watch his back!
The Tooth Fairy

It's like leaving milk and cookies for Santa mixed with snipe hunting.

47 Sunny Degrees and a Ski with the Kids

Single digit highs with below zero wind chills last week gave way to a memorable day of warmth and sun. The kids and I skied at The Ravine in Cottage Grove. The picture are on the trail, a break with oranges and the obligatory monkey mouths.

The videos are action shots of me trailing the kids on down hills. Harris was almost flattened after he crashed in front of me. Reckless parenting almost caught on film.

Less Busy Now

The last several weeks have been a blur; I'm ready for a less frenetic pace. In addition to my regular work and family commitments, my high school ski team, Minnesota Youth Ski League Team and basement projects have kept me occupied. Not complaining; all are rewarding and largely a blast. Here are a few pictures showing what I've been up to lately.I don't have a before, but here is a during and after picture of my basement project. I tore out a room move lots of stuff prior to tearing up the floor. I hired a plumber, carpenter and electrician, but spent lots of time coordinating their work, , insulating, getting materials, hauling stuff to the dump, tapping drywall and painting.


Here's part of my Minnesota Youth Ski League group. I started this program last year for Claire and Harris and as a feeder program for my high school team. The snowmobile the kids are sitting on was another project in itself. We purchased it new in Dec. to keep the trails groomed for both ski groups. Fund-raising and grooming our ski-course came along with getting the sled.

I started working with my high school team in Nov. We'll finish up with our awards banquet next Tuesday. Groomed trails helped the kids improve and have fun.


Ling-Hui did, however, just fly off to Taiwan for the next two weeks. I wouldn't have made it as a single parent, albeit temporary, a month ago.

新年愉快

It's all good, but this is my life for the next week or so

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My School on Good Morning America?

H2O for Life is scheduled to be featured on Good Morning America this Thursday, Jan. 27th in the morning. This picture is from an H2O For Life posting on Facebook. It's great to see students from my school shown from a walk we organized last Spring.

H2O for Life is an organization that raises money and awareness about issues of clean accessible water around the Earth. Students get pledges and walk carrying water for 6km, or the distance many families need to go to gather water each day. Please support H20 for Life if you get a chance.

view the story here at a later time.

New Addition to our Family

I've got labor pains; tapping Sheet-Rock tonight, finish tomorrow, paint Wed, plumber Thurs, electrician Fri. we're having a bathroom!

Porch Bike Haiku

Cold Long Haul Trucker
stem deep in hibernation
dreams tulip petals

Winter Commuter
Salty, gritty companion
misses my cold ass

My Kids Made Me Eat a Bug!

It's true they forced me to eat a bug, pupa more accurately.

Here's how. We are a mixed Chinese/American household that has lived in both Minnesota and Taiwan. As a way of having my children receptive to both cultures, I encouraged them to eat with an open mind. Duck brain, fish eyes and fish eggs are not uncommon at our table. Similarly, the kids are open to lutefisk, pickled herring, caviar and other cultural foods from my side. I've pridefully blogged about them eating snails, cat-tails, and Somali-goat. The kids watch Andrew Zimmern on Bizarre Foods and love to say "we've had that."

About a month ago we were at a Korean restaurant enjoying kim-chee, spicy squid and the likes. After our meal we browsed through the attached grocery store where my son excitedly ask if we could buy a can of the silkworms he found.

Let me digress to provide some background here. Rationally I support insect protein as a healthy, cheap, sustainable way of feeding the planet. I've tried meal worms, ants and grasshoppers before. But I just can't get past the texture of their exoskeletons and mushy middles. Eating bugs sends the irrational part of my brain into gagging, hissy fits.

Knowing this irrational thinking contradicts my prideful preaching about being open to new foods, I took the wise cowards way and try to put him off buying the can. Not seeing a price I say, "It might be expensive. We can get it another time." No luck, as the boy takes the can to the counter to discover that it's less than two bucks. Worse still, an older well dressed Korean man looks pridefully at my son and tells him about how much he enjoyed eating silkworms as a child. He says he is glad to see that children still like it today. This kind old ass actually made it so I had to buy them.

The kids made several requests to open this can of worms. Each time I managed to escape by reminding them that it's late, or that they already brushed their teeth and so on.

Tonight we're watching Bizarre Foods shoot an episode in Thailand, and damned if Zimmern doesn't go to a rural village to eat silkworms. The kids demanded we open our can. They even called me out on being a chicken. To save my pride and hide my hypocrisy, I quickly dipped my fingers in the nightmarish broth and popped one of the pupae in my mouth. If I would have been smart enough to just swallow it whole, I would have been ok, but I chewed. It squirted buggy, musty, nutty ooze into my mouth causing me to wretch, run and hurl in the utility sink.

Here's the cool part. After watching me eat and barf both kids still willingly tried a bug too. The boy told the girl to just imagine they're shrimp. I'm very proud of them both.

Winter Commuter Rolls Again

I haven't biked to work for almost a month. A million reasons why, some legitimate. Anyway my mind and body miss it. Bike's loaded sans excuses.

Roots

This is the Farm of my Great-Grand Parents Albert and Frieda Wilkins. It is near Goodridge Minnesota.

Great Grandma Frieda in 1974. She lived with my family until I was 4. My memories of her involve soft orange candy peanuts.

Winter Camping

No skis. Snowshoes for this trip. Wed. night we went out for four miles across the lake with headlamps. Thursday we headed out and camped just shy of two miles out on the lake. We missed our intended camping area because of the poor visibility. We did find a sheltered area on a point near the entrance to Pikes Bay.
.Here's my pack full of warm goodness. I use almost everything I brought and was quite comfortable in some challenging conditions. The videos below show the windy trek across the lake. Some of the blizzard conditions in camp and the calm camp the morning after. There was brilliant sunshine. The foggy look is condensation on my lens. Thirty mile per hour wind and temps of minus single digits made for some cozy tent time. Ipod and phone kept me company.

Solstice Has Arrived

The winter and summer solstices are two of my favorite days of the year; they're like going over the top of the roller coaster. Equinoxes are boring; they're where we wait to get on and off.

This painting is the work of Bryce Herrington.

Basment's Soon Set

I hauled down 1,600 lbs of Quikrete to fill in my basement floor. About the same mass of material went up too. Studs are up, plumbing rough-in is about done, floors filled in.

Still need to get the electrician in, have my guys put up the drywall, have the plumber finish up; then I'll put linoleum down, finish the dry wall and paint. After that it will just be some trim jobs.

A lot of work, but, so far, we're under budget. I've also made sure that I have a good place to sit and watch the Vikes play at the Gopher's stadium.

부븸밥 bi bim bop

The family was invited to a bi bim bop dinner tonight. Bi bim translates to mixed-up and bop translates to rice. Meat, spinach, eggs, cucumbers and rice were all tossed together at the table and served with gochujang chili paste.

Bi bim bop is quintessential Korean cuisine; eating it is more than a meal. It seems putting down a bowl of this is like raising the Korean flag and pledging allegiance to ones heritage. It's like lutefisk, haggis, or menudo without the scary bits.

Korean gochujang chili paste (고추장)
Sweet chili and sesame paste sauce. A new favorite condiment

Number One Song The Day I Was Born.

Find the top song from any date here.

Something to Remember on a Hot July Day.

Issued by The National Weather Service
Minneapolis, MN
4:13 pm CST, Sat., Dec. 11, 2010

... BLIZZARD WARNING NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM CST SUNDAY...

THE BLIZZARD WARNING IS NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM CST SUNDAY.

* TIMING... LIGHT TO MODERATE SNOW WILL DIMINISH THIS EVENING... BUT SIGNIFICANT BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW WILL CREATE NEAR WHITEOUT CONDITIONS.

* MAIN IMPACT... 9 TO 18 INCHES OF SNOW... SIGNIFICANT BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW AND REDUCED VISIBILITIES.

* OTHER IMPACTS... BLIZZARD CONDITIONS... ESPECIALLY IN OPEN COUNTRY. WIND CHILLS WILL PLUMMET TO AROUND 30 BELOW ZERO OVERNIGHT. WIDESPREAD BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW WILL RESULT IN VISIBILITIES TO NEAR ZERO AT TIMES.

====================================================\\-]o

I like my skier :)

Bath Project Moving Along

Minnesota Kind of Weekend

I've been working for the last several years to come up with trail grooming equipment for my middle school and high school ski team. Last year I procured the groomer, and Friday worked a deal to take delivery of a hold-over 2010 new Ski-doo Skandic Tundra like the one pictured above. Lots of wrangling, but I hope to be making corduroy tomorrow out of our new fallen snow. Got a great price from a local buisness wanting to help the students out.

My other ski team, Minnesota Youth Ski League Program, jumped from 11 people to about 30. We had our first meeting Sat where we issued 16 sets of skis, boots and poles to kids ranging in age from 4-13. Should be a blast.

Sunday the family and I drove to the Hampton Tree farm and cut our holiday tree. The conifers were layered with snow and the deciduous trees were coated in hoar frost making for a seasonally splendid setting. Kids and I managed to set down a few ski tracks in the park behind the house too. In the evening we set our tree up and added twinkling snow flakes and blue icicle lights to the front of the house.

Winter's fun and it starts getting lighter again in just over 2 weeks.