Daddy's Home!

Many thanks to Grandpa Gustafson for staying with the girls last night through this evening!  He got them to/from their piano recital last night, school this morning, and swimming practice after school.  In exchange, they made his meals and showered him with affection.  Fair trade.

I spent the day driving around northeast Minneapolis, MN with my colleague Dawn (remember?).  We visited with school administrators from an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school, all with highly diverse student populations (i.e., 80-90% of the students speak English as a second or third language and come from low-income families).  We would like to take our own teacher education students to these three schools for experience working with students in settings featuring urban diversity, something they don't get much of in Western ND!  The Minneapolis schools were receptive, so we will move ahead with this initiative in the coming months.

I came home tonight to find the sweetest thing awaiting me:

Suzanna decided to leave me a snack.  I was supposed to put ice in that glass and pour the Mello Yello into it.  The bowl contains several packages of microwave popcorn, one of which I was supposed to pop and serve myself in the bowl.  And that's a note to me on the pad in the middle.

Suzanna wrote, "Welcome home!  The sheets on your bed are clean . . . and we missed you!  We have a little welcome home snack.  Just press 'popcorn.'  You know where the ice is, so help yourself!  We love you, and we can't wait to see you in the morning!  [heart]  Suzanna, Abiail, and Hillary  (Popcorn button, ice . . . DON'T FORGET!)"  The clean sheets comment was to let me know that they had changed the sheets after Grandpa slept in our bed last night.  And our microwave has a "popcorn" button that one can press and then let the machine determine when to shut itself off after most of the kernels have popped.

When I opened the microwave, I noticed that they had unwrapped a microwave popcorn package and put it in there so that, truly, all I would have had to do was press the "popcorn" button and wait for the magic to happen!  Aren't they awesome kids?!

Susan remains in SC (remember this and this?) until tomorrow; but thanks to modern technology, neither she nor our relatives seem too far away:

That's our adorable nephew Davis, tucked in to bed and ready for a good night's sleep.

Susan is next to her little sister Cassie.  Those are Cassie's kids Marly (on Susan's lap) and Davis.

And this is Cassie's sweet family: husband Nick and cute kids Marly and Davis.