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.
- Pancake breakfast. Mazie and Tyler both love pancakes.
- Trip to Minnesota Zoo. Tyler digs the zoo.
- Swimming at the Edina Pool. Mazie’s new favorite place.
- Mazie’s favorite dinner, Cheeseburger Pie.
- Tammy and Mazie to Mr. Popper’s Penguins.
- Mazie and I went the Minneapolis fireworks. Awesome!
Impromptu S'mores
Our neighbors down the street, the Conley’s, hosted an unplanned S’mores evening last night. Mazie loved staying up to 11:30 pm! 🔥🍫
Gypsie
Tonight we put Gypsie to sleep. Tammy took her to the vet a couple of months ago because we noticed that she didn’t seem to be urinating right. There were puddles of water in her litter box. She had also lost over half of her body weight, leaving just four pounds of mostly fur and bones. The vet did some tests and concluded quickly that her kidneys had failed. A terminal situation regardless of treatments, just a matter of time.
Gypsie sitting on a chair in my old apartment in 2001.
Gypsie got her name because she was a bit of a Gypsy originally. I got her when I moved into an apartment in college and the previous people where moving out and couldn’t take a cat with them. They had gotten her the same way, and had named her Gypsie. She ended up being my cat from then on. I never really knew exactly how old she was. We figure that she was 22 years old now, but that could be off a year. Needless to say she lived a long cat life.
Gypsie was my cat for years of college living with roommates and then a decade of living on my own. She was always a good cat and fine even when I was traveling for work a ton. She had incredibly soft calico fur. Her favorite thing was to sit on my lap or on my desk while I was relaxing or working on the computer. One of the odd things about her was she couldn’t really meow. I have no idea why, but she could just make a “kak” kind of sound. No meowing. She was also had an understated purr.
Gypsie sitting on my desk at the apartment in 2001.
Gypsie ended up being one of those challenging things from your life before being married and kids. She never liked Tammy’s cat Logan. She never really like Tammy. She was downright mad when we got a dog, and then another dog. She was mostly stoic about all of that though, and it wasn’t until our last move that her health really started to deteriorate.
Mazie and Gypsie just shortly before the vet visited.
The end for her was incredibly peaceful. She had a shot to put her to sleep, and then another shot that euthanized her. I held her while she fell asleep and it was all harder than I expected. While she had gotten progressively out of sync with the rest of the family happenings, she was after all my cat for nearly 20 years. I can’t help but feel that I could have been a better cat owner for the last year with the new house, a new son and an uncountable number of other things. But I also know that all the kids liked playing with her and she liked playing with them. She wasn’t the friendliest cat in her youth, but in the last year she was very nice to everyone.
Her kidneys had failed and she was very frail. When she fell asleep after the first shot tonight she seemed about as small as a little kitten. She faded away very calmly. Mazie was there and involved in the process. Tammy answered her questions about what was going on. It was hard, but I know it was the right thing to do.
See ya Gyps…
Tyler got a new background to his landing page website. tylerthing.com Gave me an excuse to use the text-shadow CSS attribute.
Tammy put up a blog post about how much Tyler loves to play with shoes. This was one of the pictures that I thought was just great.
Car Seat Toy
I brought Tyler’s car seat into the house so it could be put back in the van. He then decided to spend a half-hour getting in and out of it. Great fun!
Car Seat Does Fit in Mini
Tyler got to ride in my Mini Cooper for the first time today. His infant seat definitely would not fit, and the car seat wouldn’t fit rear facing (and how would we get him in if it did?). Now he is facing forward and while it isn’t spacious, it can be done.
Concrete Trucks
Today was a big day for our project. This morning a bunch of guys showed up between 6:45 and 7:00am. Two big, blue concrete trucks showed up and parked right out front. One truck had the concrete mixing, and then it was pouring it into the pumping truck.
The concrete pumped through this hose and poured into the basement for the new floor.
Tyler was digging the big trucks. I would have stood there and watched too but I had to get to work!
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Last night Mazie and I finished reading Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I really enjoyed reading each and every poem to Mazie, and she thought they were funny, goofy and good.
I distinctly remember reading Where the Sidewalk Ends when I was a kid. They were likely the first poems I read. I even remembered some of them. Mostly I remembered having the book and the cover of it.
We were reading the 30th Anniversary edition so I was at the youngest 9 when I read it. It was a real treat to read it to my daughter and hope that she has the same recollection when she reads it 30 years from now.
Tyler the Monkey
Tyler loves to climb on things, and he doesn’t give up easily. This morning I had the Tour de France streaming on one of the computers and left the room for a moment. I thought Tyler was being pretty quiet and was wondering why he wasn’t running around as usual. I came back to find him pretty excited to have climbed up in the chair and running the computer himself. The kids a climber!
Epic Fourth of July!
Today was the best Independence Day in memory. The day started early.
To top that off we even had an impromptu visit from Grandma Rosalin that involved coloring.
Mazie said everything today was her favorite thing. 😀
Cars 2 in 3D
Mazie and I went and saw Cars 2 this weekend. We splurged and saw it in 3D! It was a ton of fun with a Daddy-Daughter movie and some Gummy Bears.
Mazie was excited to wear her special glasses!
I really like Cars. It is probably my favorite kids movie. I liked Cars 2. It was a lot of fun. It wasn’t as good as Cars, but that is a really high bar.
Tyler Mowing
Tyler thought it would be fun to push the lawn mower for a while. (Note: that is our neighbors lawn mower. I was out shooting pictures of the remodel)
Saving Plants
My Mom came to the rescue of more plants. This week the excavation starts on the remodel and the side of the house is going to get dug up. A lot of Hostas and others had to be moved or destroyed. Mazie helped loading the rescued plants into Grandma’s car.
Open Eye Backyard Puppet Show
Last week Mazie and I had a delightful evening sitting in Garrick Van Buren’s backyard watching a puppet show. This is the 3rd year that the Van Buren’s have hosted the Open Eye Figure Theatre and we’ve made it every year. This year Garrick commented to me that he had counted over 100 people. That’s great, and I hope that Open Eye continues to do this Driveway (or in this case Backyard) Tour.
Before the puppet show starts the puppeteers give a little introduction to the theatre and the puppets. They have a simple stage and are accompanied by an accordion player. Every year there is always some water moment where water will fly from the puppet area into the audience. It’s a lot of fun for everyone involved.
This years show was The Amazing Cow Boat
Taking a bath will never be the same for audiences after seeing the all-new The Amazing Cow Boat! Told through a giant pop-up book with puppets, songs, and surprises, the show is the story of Charlie who, while taking a bath, sails away in his imagination in search of treasure. Traveling in his boat that amazingly is also a cow, he encounters pirates, mermaids, a whale, and an orangutan.
While I was sitting there watching the puppet show with Mazie in my lap, I took a moment to look around at all the other families and their kids collected in this neighborhood enjoying the show. It all seemed so right and so good. We need more things like this.
Fun Day at Zoo
Yesterday Tammy had a photo workshop at the Minneapolis Photo Center. This was a class that we had gotten her for her birthday. Mazie, Tyler and I had the day and I went to the tried and true plan for a Dad left alone with the kids – to the Zoo we went!
We had a spectacular time. This was Tyler’s very first trip to the Zoo and he went crazy at every animal siting. He particularly loved anything swimming and was ecstatic when the Otters came by him. Mazie had a great time as well and brought her camera along. She took a lot of pictures and posted 100 of them on her website.
Our basic plan for visit revolved around the shark feeding and dolphin show. The shark feeding was packed so we didn’t see much of that. We got great seats for the dolphin show and both Mazie and Tyler sat in awe watching the dolphins perform.
After the dolphins finished we should have headed home for Tyler’s nap, but Mazie really wanted to go on the monorail and I’m a perpetual pushover so we each grabbed a soft pretzel and headed to the monorail. Both kids loved it.
It was a huge success and we all agreed we needed to return to the zoo more often.
Tyler Learning to Sit in a Chair
Tyler is still very much constantly on the move. He has started to enjoy the novelty of sitting in the kids rocking chair that my Mom got Mazie a long time ago. It lasts for about five seconds at most.
Mazie with her Spring 2011 Soccer trophy.
Mazie's 2nd Soccer Season
Mazie is playing soccer again this year with the Cyclones in the Fuller Soccer Club. The whole team has improved a ton and there is some improvement to ball handling this year. Mazie is having a great time too.
Twins Fan Tyler
Tyler did his best to try and help our last place team. Doesn’t seem to have had much effect yet.
