The heating is on

This week the weather has turned a bit and it now looks as though we're staring down the barrel of winter. Cycling in is takes a lot more effort with cold legs and I finally relented and gave up wearing sandals and bought some SDP clip on cycling shoes. The first day I wore them in I jumped straight on the bike cycled a mile or so until I came to some red lights, pulled alongside a car and found I was completely unable to remove my shoes from the pedals and fell over in front of the traffic. The lights changed to green and I was still lying on the ground trying to get the shoes off of the pedals. As it was not overly comfortable lying on the cold ground with a backlog of traffic waiting for me to magically flip upright I had to unstrap myself from the shoes and carry the bike, with the shoes still attached to the side of the road. I have since loosened the tension settings on the pedals.

We went on the first parent organised school outing at the weekend (just as England were beating France in the rugby - not that you it is shown anywhere in MN) at the Minneapolis arboretum. Did anyone spot the typo in the last sentence, it was of course 'parent disorganised' trip as the instructions of 'arriving at the arboretum you will be directed to the meeting point' should have been 'arriving at the arboretum you will be let in and must wander helplessly around for several hours trying to spot other small people in the hopes that they go to the same school' It would be different if it was a school for people with two heads or for smurfs as you'd be able to recognise them from a distance but this was hopeless. Still the weather was brilliant, the arboretum was lovely and we got a picture to use a t Becky's wedding - see below.



On Sunday we joined the Minnesota children's museum

and the kids had a great time playing with all of the interactive exhibits and I also got to BBQ twice - I'm going to have to see if there are any breakfast foods to BBQ so that I can do it 3 times a day.

Work is going a bit better, we finally got approval to do what we wanted to do more than 3 months ago which I think is quick progress for Best Buy. Not sure what the corporate slogan is but my suggestion would be 'Run By Committee - Powered By Meetings' . Nothing seems to move quickly here and I still don't have my corporate discount so I can't get my hands on all the nice shiny things.

Becky has learned to say 'Daniel did it' which she uses even if caught red handed doing something naughty - such as eating toothpaste. This is the difficulty with children, either they are running around screaming which is painful or they are quiet, which is worse as it means they are up to something.

Andy is having a bit of a 'what am I doing here?' phase which is hard, but the 44lbs of chocolate she ordered a while ago arrived today which may answer that question, or at least prove a diversion.

Dan is still busy using the camera whenever we leave it in reach, this is one he took of Andy hard at work in the kitchen.