Have a Wonderful Holiday Season!

From our home to yours...warmest wishes for the season.

xoxo
Heather and family

Once You Go Minnesotan...

I've heard it said that something like 70 percent of people who move away from Minnesota move back. My parents are no exception. When they met, my dad was already in the military. My mom probably knew she would be moving around for a while when she married my dad. They did move a lot. Illinois, Virginia, California, Washington, New York...I'm sure there are places I've missed. I was born in California and by the time I came along we had only 3 moves left.

Only one of the moves really affected me. I was really too young to care or understand that we were leaving these places, never to return. I have vague memories of Washington. I was 2-4 years old when we lived there. When I realize that I do have a few memories of that time it scares me just a little because that means my kids will remember, perhaps, some of my less-stellar moments.

When we left New York I was sad. I was leaving the people I knew, going someplace (although we visited) new.

But we returned to Minnesota. My parents are from Minnesota. It was a coming home. At first, Minnesota felt wrong to me. I loved being with my grandparents but I felt out of place. Even Duck, Duck, Goose had morphed into Duck, Duck, Grey Duck which made no sense to me. I was a kid though so the transition was probably much easier on me than the rest of my family. I was picked on for my strange accent...but I sort of knew that the picking was a sign the kids liked me.

I always thought that I would move away from Minnesota. I was certain of it. I didn't. Minnesota is my home. And apparently the pull of Minnesota is strong.

Wordless Wednesday

The pictures were taken in spring of this year at the Eagle Bluff Nature Center in Southern MN. I had the pleasure of accompanying my daughter and her 6th grade class on a field trip there. A beautiful facility with lot's of great programming, staff and of course outdoor activities. The last picture is of my daughter conquering her fears on the ropes course: 30+ feet off the ground.

Best Entertainment for the Money

Every June, I spend $25. I have been doing it in the State of Minnesota for the last 6 years (since I moved here). For that $25 I have watched eagles soar before my eyes, listened to rivers run wild, met people from all over and watched the seasons change. What did I spend that $25 on - an annual pass to the Minnesota State Parks.

My family and I enjoy being in the parks and exploring. We have gone on hikes, had picnics, and camped. All for $25 annually - and guess what, I can go to the parks as much as I want. Camping is extra... but the memories are free. My daughter knows many birds by the song they sing, or the way they look. She has an appreciation for nature and conserving it for the generations to follow. We have seen trees formed in interesting shapes, paid our respects at Indian Burial Mounds, and been amazed at how water has carved out bluffs.

My daughter likes fly fishing, standing in water and trying to master the cast, and catch a fish. We have yet to be successful, but can't wait for my son to be older to join us. We have stood on the bluffs along the Mississippi and had bald eagles soar past us, close enough that we could only stare in awe at their majestic presence. We have had many discussions over what new trails to explore or conquering the "Five Boot" hikes.

In the future we want to try canoeing or kayaking. Most of the parks have geo-caching where you can borrow GPS units and go find hidden treasures that are left by others. The parks have done a great job of setting up great locations for the treasures that are a challenge and give everyone a sense of accomplishment when there are all found.

At the end of the day, we are all tired, yet relaxed from a day outside. We have gotten great exercise, spent time as a family enjoying nature, learned a few things along the way and marveled at all that being outside has to offer. In today's world of electronics, television, computers and ipods, I treasure those moments where we can explore in the woods. We all enjoy the quiet, the sounds of the wind in the trees, the birds singing and our time together. We have never left a state park wishing we had done something else. $25 well spent...

Why Live In Minnesota?

People in other parts of the country often can’t imagine why anyone would want to live in Minnesota. Our winters are cold and long, our summers are (usually) hot, humid and over in the blink of an eye. But Minnesota has a way of growing on people. Sure, they complain while they’re here but when/if they move out of state I almost always hear them say “I wish I was still in Minnesota.”

Here, some of the good things about living in Minnesota:

1. We have no sales tax on clothing. This includes shoes (as long as they aren’t specialty shoes like soccer cleats or golf shoes).
2. We have no tax on food. This doesn’t include food prepared in a restaurant, but still. No tax on our food is good too, right?
3. We have separate stores for alcohol and they close early. They aren’t even open at all on Sundays. Maybe this doesn’t seem like a plus, but it forces you to plan ahead. Life lessons people!
4. We can say dorky things like “yah, you betcha” and other native Minnesotans don’t think we’re weird.
5. We have Early Childhood Family Education available. I would have gone completely nuts (even more than I have) without ECFE, especially when my first child was born. I learned so much and met so many great people in these classes. Most of all I learned that I’m not the only parent struggling with issues.
6. Our streets are clean, our crime rates are low and we have little air pollution.
7. It’s beautiful, even in the wintertime. Have you ever seen snow that sparkles? Some snowfalls look like glitter.
8. If you don’t like the current weather, you can be fairly certain it will be different tomorrow.

The bluffs did it for me

The bluffs did it for me. We came from desert and dried up riverbanks to powerful limestone banking the sides of spring fed streams. A classic case of desert versus water. We lapped up the lushness and settled into our new home. We began our family in a home rented over the phone. The promised fenced in yard for our mammoth yellow lab was not here when we arrived. The spacious basement for entertaining looked more like a scene from Friday the 13^th. We shrugged and made it work, because the yearlong lease demanded that we do.

That was 2002.

I didn’t realize that this would be the end stop for us. I thought it one more ding on the bus ride of life and we would be transferring to another bus soon enough. Randy, a meteorologist, had visions of a bigger market, but the swishing of the stream waters as he casted his fly rod mesmerized him. I, a high school English teacher by trade and a writer by heart, wished for a place closer to family, but have created a family here.

It is 2009.

We have since moved from the rental with broken promises into a house with about as many problems, but it is ours. We love it and we just keep working on making it better. Making it ours. We have two boys now, Drew (6) and Owen (3), who knock our socks off every day with their giggles, jokes, hugs, and smiles. We still have our mammoth lab, Duncan, but he is slower these days and spends most of his time lying in the fenced in yard smelling the air, than running in it.

We are home, here in the Midwest. We are at peace in our small house, in our small town, in our southeast corner of Minnesota.Looking for inspiration for notsoshinyjules, I asked Randy what his vision was for the future. Where did he see us down the line?

“Here. Our vision is now, Julie. This is our vision, this is our future, and this is our all.”

And it is.

We are home.

Sometimes the life you get is better than the life you imagined

I was born into a military family. At the time, my father was stationed in California. He was a sailor who was away from home for months at a time on ships. We moved from California to Washington State to Governor's Island, NY before settling back in Minnesota, where my parents had both been born and raised.

Minnesota has been my home for most of my life. Most of my family, even extended family is here. Family is what keeps us here.

After high school, I spent 2 years at a local community college before transferring to what is now called Minnesota State University at Mankato. The college campus is where the Minnesota Vikings hold their training camp in the summer. I graduated with a BS in Mass Communications (public relations emphasis) and a minor in Speech Communications.

As a kid I always figured I'd be a famous movie star or singer, except you probably need to not be shy to be successful at something like that. So that didn't work out.

As a young adult I changed my vision to being a television or newspaper reporter (and a great one of course). I limited myself with options for jobs following graduation because I wanted to return home to be near my family. Communications jobs are hard to come by in a smaller city. Rochester is the kind of place that many people start in a job and stay there for the remainder of their working lives. It's tough to break in when you're just starting out.

So I found a job as a communications coordinator for a medical association. It was a job I loved, but the office politics were toxic. I left that job when the stress got to be too much and worked for less money and fewer benefits but also had few, if any, things to stress me out.

Then I got pregnant, had a baby and left the workplace.

I started blogging after following a link someone left on a BabyCenter thread. I had never read a blog before. I couldn't tell you the blog, and I wouldn't want to because I found the writing atrocious. I immediately and vainly thought that I could do it better. Cool Zebras was born.

Cool Zebras has given me, and at some extent, my extended family many joys. I've become closer to many of my relatives because they read many of my more personal thoughts that we never would have discussed in person. We’re reserved Minnesotans after all. Talk about feelings? In person? You can betcha we’ll be making excuses to leave the room.

By the time I started Cool Zebras I had two kids, Miss M and the K-Man. Miss M was born in July 2002, and the K-Man in July 2004. I wish I had a blog about them from the beginning. I love to read my own archives. Have I mentioned I’m a little vain about my writing? But the truth is I like to read about how my kids were when they were younger. They’re still young, but I like to read about the younger days and compare notes to today.

After 2 years of disappointment, in September 2007, I was elated to discover my third child was on the way. Ms. D has completed our family in so many ways.

In January 2008, I launched Midwest Parents on a whim. Things were smooth sailing for a while though we were pretty much unnoticed. Earlier this year it became clear that things weren't working the best. I decided to disband the blog.

In February 2008, I also started my etsy shop, Sentimental Journey. This shop is mostly a hobby for me, but I can admit that I get a little thrill every time I sell something I've made.

These days you can find me shuttling Miss M and K-Man back and forth to and from school and chasing Ms. D around the house picking up all the things she dumps out with such glee. She’s also a climber so I spend a lot of time getting her down from her various attempts at mountain climbing. After school, I check homework, make supper, and perhaps take the kids to swimming lessons or choir practice. The days, as it is with most parents, are hectic.

So in the evenings, I write. I write to remember these days with my kids, with my family, because these days are fleeting and I want to savor them all.

The Elegant Tar-shjay Boo-tique

I’d like to say that I shop at Target because I’m supporting my state’s economy. I’m not sure how all that stuff works though when stores go national when they started in one state (which, I suppose is how they all have to start, right?) do they still pay state taxes to Minnesota or do they pay taxes in every state? Ah, who am I kidding? I really don’t care.

I shop at Target because it is a mere 3-minute drive from my home and that is saying something. Before Target, Best Buy and about 20 other stores opened just down the highway from us it was a major undertaking to go just pick up something at the store. The nearest store was a grueling 10-minute drive away, which was an awfully long drive for the girl who used to live less than 5 minutes from pretty much anywhere.

But this is a little misleading. I live in a city that is 100,000 strong yet still has a very small-town atmosphere. Even today with the city expanding by leaps and bounds (even with the economy such as it is) it generally takes no more than 20-minutes to get anywhere in the city even from the opposite end.* It is stranger to not run into anyone you know at any given store than to run into an acquaintance. It is not unheard of to run into more than one friend during a Target run.

It is only at Target that I have had men (and only men) who I do not know offer to take my cart in for me after I have loaded my purchases into my car.

It is at Target that my son ate ice melt and I had to fill out my first “incident report”. It is at Target that both of my older children have had major meltdowns, necessitating me carrying two crying, flailing children out under each arm while very, very pregnant. That day made me seriously question my parenting abilities let me tell you.

I’m fairly certain that the Baby thinks that Target is our second home.

But Target has afforded me some great deals as well. I’ve gotten things like a s’mores maker for $3 and a kid’s baseball glove for $4.95. Target clearance, hit at just the right time, is a truly wonderful thing.

However I can’t help but think it would be cheaper for our family if I just went in to Target once a week and threw cash in the air, then walked back out. It’s those darn Tollhouse cookies.

*Even if I could say even even more times, even though I could not think of even one other way to say what I wanted to say. Even.

What to do when it's TOO COLD to go outside?

In the colder climates, it is essential to find things to do inside with our kids. Winter usually brings at least one longer cold snap with dangerously cold temperatures that keeps us inside together for days on end. Movies work to occupy the kids for a limited time, then what?

In our house we’ve been known to try to beat cabin fever in a variety of ways.

We have an inflatable punching bag that helps release some energy until things get out of hand. We have one of those mini-trampolines that people use for exercising that we’ve brought out for the kids to jump out some of the energy.

Craig has even set up our big inflatable bounce house in our small living room when we’ve gotten especially desperate to exercise the children.

I have made snowballs from old white nylons and polyfil and we’ve had indoor snowball fights. I couldn’t tell you where all those snowballs are in our house now, but I don’t think they’ve melted. Those days that we had those snowball fights? If there had been someone recording us, they would have heard a lot of laughing.

When K was a baby and I needed ways to occupy M, we set up a big plastic box filled with a 50-pound bag of uncooked rice and sand toys. M would sit in that box for a good hour at least and happily pour and scoop the rice.

These are just a few of the things that we have done at our house to occupy the kids when it’s too cold to play (or even go) outdoors.

How do you keep the kids busy when the temps dip dangerously low?

Getting Around

Roundabouts are a relatively new phenomenon here in Minnesota, but they're popping up all over the place, not only in "the Cities" but in smaller towns and busy rural intersections.

The people in charge of planning the roundabouts claim that they're safer than stoplights or other traffic control devices because they eliminate many high-speed "t-bone" crashes, which are often serious.

They also claim that roundabouts are easy to use, and that drivers only have to know three rules in order to use a roundabout properly. (This was in an article accompanied by a 5-point primer for using roundabouts.) Both the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press have published articles about roundabouts.

Apparently the word isn't getting out, because there's a lot of backed up traffic at some roundabouts I've been through, with drivers unsure of how to get in or out of the roundabout safely. This is compounded if it happens to be a two-lane roundabout.

I've heard several tales of semi trucks carrying windmill parts or farmers towing implements who have arrived at a roundabout and are unable to proceed through it due to the length of the load.

Recently, my husband and I witnessed first-hand with incredulity a driver who turned left into a right-angled roundabout. Yes, there was a one-way sign, but snow was perhaps blocking the curbs that would have led him in the right direction. He ended up heading right into the oncoming roundabout traffic and had to drive up onto the high grassy circle to avoid a collision.

Are roundabouts really as simple as their designers claim them to be? What can be done to teach drivers how to safely and properly negotiate a roundabout? Are they a safety device that will last, or just the latest fad that will be reconstructed in a few years? Does this video affect your impressions?

What's your take on roundabouts?

In The Mood

One of the big redeeming qualities of life in the Midwest is that there is a fair chance to have a traditional “white” Christmas.

The red kettles appear shortly after Halloween and the stores follow suit with their holiday decorations popping up on shelves soon after that. If you listen, you’ll hear the people grumbling, “it’s not even Thanksgiving” as they scowl at the greenery and baubles. It is nearly impossible to get into the holiday mode until the turkey has lulled us all into a coma on Thanksgiving.

Even then sometimes you’ll hear people murmuring about it not feeling like Christmas until there is snow on the ground. We all want the white Christmas, and then we want the snow gone by New Year’s thankyouverymuch.

I have occasion to get into the holiday spirit sooner than most as I decorate a tree (or, this year, two trees) for a charity fundraiser. We pick our themes, adorn our trees and display them at the civic center during the week of Thanksgiving. The kids are always spellbound when they enter the transformed ballroom. Even in my most bah-humbug of years, the festival of trees lifts my spirit and reminds me of the real spirit of Christmas, snow or no snow.

10 Reasons to Visit Minnesota

• The Mall of America – With the indoor theme park, Lego play place and an aquarium along with all the shops there is plenty to do and see in just one destination. And—no tax on clothes.
• Fall foliage and crisp but not cold autumn days that let you get out your comfy sweaters. (most of the time)
• LARK toys and the hand-carved wooden carousel – it’s art you can ride! Also, it’s cheap. $1 a ride over 3 years old.
• Quaint accents – yeah, you betcha.
• Paul Bunyan – you can find him in Brainerd and Bemidji. You can also find his wife, Lucette, in Hackensack.
• A higher chance you’ll find nice people who will help you even if they don’t work at the store.
• Duluth—there are so many interesting things in Duluth to look at and visit, including (but not limited to) the shipyards, a train museum with a children’s museum in the same building, and Lake Superior.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder historical sites— admit it, you loved Little House on the Prairie too.
• Spam Museum.
• Me.

It's Not So Much The Heat

The thing about living in Minnesota is the weather. It’s very changeable. Pretty much everyone who lives here for any length of time will say “oh I love the change of seasons.”

Except sometimes the seasons change daily. Just a couple of weeks ago it was 63 degrees on a Monday, then 73 degrees on Tuesday. By that Friday the mercury had reached 80 degrees.

It’s hard to know how to dress your kids each day. Let’s face it, the weather forecasters are really just guessing most of the time. It’s a crapshoot whether they’ll be accurate or not. Even if they are accurate, Mother Nature has that way of making it autumn one day and throwing a little more summer in the next. This year my city seems to have missed out on summer. The mercury did not climb to 90 degrees even once.

So, how to dress the kids? Layers I guess.

The mornings have been hovering around 50 degrees, so it’s too cool to send them without jackets, and by the time school lets out, they’re feeling warm in jeans. No matter which way I try to err, it’s almost always the wrong choice.

Not that I mind the return to warm weather. I actually prefer the heat over freezing my butt off, but the yo-yoing temperatures tend to mess with a person.

Maybe we all need to carry a change of clothes with us so we can switch to match the weather.

Most of us are Normal

Minnesotans are not known for their strong fashion sense or their refined taste in cultural pursuits.

Some of us even like a good tractor-pull now and then. (I did as a kid. Hanging head in shame.)

If you look at pop culture, you probably think that Minnesotans are quite eccentric, although I'm fairly certain that there is no greater percentage of weirdos here than, say, L.A.

Hollywood doles out movies about Minnesotans like Fargo and Drop Dead Gorgeous. We look like a bunch of idiots, but in reality only half of us are imbeciles. The other half of us are Grumpy Old Men.

The celebrities that have hailed from Minnesota prove just how normal we are:*

There's the guy who sings songs but no one can understand what he's saying.

There's the guy who sings songs who was first known by a royal name, then by a symbol, then by a royal name again.

There's the girl who is named after a town who likes to get things at the five-finger discount.

There's the guy who was a wrestler when they insisted it wasn't fake, who then turned to politics.

Um. Okay then.

Maybe we are kind of strange.

*Who are they?