Family
Heartfelt updates about family milestones and everyday moments. From taking Mazie to college and annual visits to the Renaissance Festival to Swedish‑pancake breakfasts and VR outings with the kids, this category celebrates togetherness.
- Italian Opera
- Love ❤️
- Tyler picked one of the six starting numbers, 3!
- Jamie got to be part of the mentalist section, selecting three items at random from the audience: REI Member card, Tyler’s retainer box, and back scratcher. Watkins got them all!
- Tyler got to shake the dice in the shot glass. Rolled a 6!
- Mazie got to pick the order of the cards that went up his sleeve and into his pocket.
- Tyler identified one of the 10 cards, 10 of ♠️.
The two most important ingredients when making lasagna are:
Mazie and I made this pan with plenty of love, and the Three Tenors accompanying us!
We all volunteered at Free Bikes 4 Kidz today. Tammy, Mazie, and Tyler did cleaning of donated bikes. I tried my hand at the mechanic station working on derailers, brakes, truing wheels and a lot of other stuff I didn’t know how to do. 😊
We stopped in at SI Hobby in downtown Faribault for their grand opening today! Tyler got a few Pokémon card packs. We arrived about 10 minutes after they opened the doors and there was already a good crowd of people there. 👍
Our first year with the garden was a good success. We learned a lot and had successes and misses. Tammy and Mazie reset everything so we are ready to plant in the spring. We are giving one box just to strawberries.
Tyler and I had an awesome time at the Dude Perfect 2021 Tour! We got tickets two years ago but it was moved due to COVID-19. The show was great. Funny skits, great tricks. Awesome Father-Son time! Shake Shack for dinner before. 🤩
Creativity on Shoes with Kicasso
On our final evening in Indianapolis we did a completely new thing — we painted shoes! Kicasso is a one of a kind experience where you take a plain, white pair of sneakers and express your creativity with them. We had a blast and it was a great experience for us all.
We all took very different paths. I made what may go down as the geekiest shoes ever commemorating the 200th issue of the Weekly Thing. Tammy hit on her favorite color, green, and kept it simple and awesome. Mazie tends to take a lot of time, she likes to be a perfectionist. She created a great multi-color pair with light touches of color and glitter. Tyler went all over with the color and was the only one that decided to paint the whitewall of the soles as well, which he sort of wanted to undo but its paint! 🎨
Overall it was a fabulous 2.5 hours and we had a great time expressing our creativity with our shoes! The folks behind Kicasso aren’t aware of anyone else doing this, so if you are in Indianapolis this should be on your must do list!
Mazie and Tyler both love Home Run Inn frozen pizza. We made a point to try it “in real life” in Chicago, skipping the freezer aisle for the first time. Everyone loved it and thought the frozen option was amazingly close to the “real thing”.
Another amazing night of magic with Dennis Watkins at The Magic Parlour! My third time and it still blows my mind.
This is up close magic and we got to be part of things:
If you are in Chicago I highly recommend taking the whole family to this.
Related: Magic Parlour via Zoom.
Mazie did some parking lot driving for the first time tonight! We found an empty parking lot and did start / stop, figured out some basic turning, and a little backing up. She did really great!
Tyler introduced the family to Machi Koro tonight and we had a great time playing it. Easy to learn, fast to play, and fun strategy options.
