Joe Bliven

This summer was full and fulfilling. Looking back to the beginning of summer, it's hard to believe how much we fit into the past 3 months. I decided it would be best to break our summer road trip off into its own post. I also have a separate gallery of additional summer photos.


At the end of Elena's school year, they took a school trip to valleyfair. Rather than just buy her the ticket, we decided to get season passes. Maya is the perfect age for the kids area at valleyfair right now. She has so much fun riding the same rides over and over. At one point in the summer, one of Elena's online friends was in town and going to valleyfair, so we got to meet up with them. The parking lot was super flooded at the beginning of the year, which brings me to my next notable part of the summer...




...Did anyone build an ark this summer, just in case? It never stopped raining. For the first month of summer I only had to water the garden about 3 times, and the rest of the time the garden was getting too much water. The battery backup on our sump pump kept beeping so we called our HVAC group and they discovered that we didn't have a sump pump, only a battery backup! They fixed the issue and our new sump pump was dumping water like crazy for weeks.



When it wasn't raining Elena was in tennis with Saint Paul Urban Tennis again. She and Natalie also spent a good chunk of the summer skateboarding. She took a boat building class where she built a punt boat. She's still practicing piano a lot, she even started playing the harmonica at the same time. She started high school this year. She spent some time hanging around town with her gang: Sigma Family. She had a few sleepovers with them too. Amelia brought them to an open house at the school where she made sure they were all aware of what resources all of the faculty could provide to them as students. In doing so she came across an administrative assistant who happened to be tasked with assigning lockers. Amelia then proceeded to bring the girls all around the school to find the absolute best bank of lockers, all in a row, factoring in their schedules and the doors they'll enter and leave through.






Amelia is back to working full time and still working through her online masters program. She's in three book clubs currently, one of which we're in together. We're also considering reading a book for another local book club, we'll see if we have time. Amelia continues to create really fun outings for us like the day that she and Maya went to the Capitol building, Candy Land, and a festival in Rice Park. She said it was like being tourists in our own city, because that's a lot like what we do when we visit other cities. She also took us to many of the local city parades and festivals. We became aficionados of the local parade scene and can honestly say West Saint Paul was second only to Grand Ole Day. Woodbury has the best festival, headlined by High and Mighty (one of my favorite local bands). On her birthday we went to a new-to-us library in Minneapolis, got some cinnamon rolls and coffee, went to Bed Maka Ska, and Elena's Dad's food truck (Go there, it's great! Google Maps says it's permanently closed, but it's still there every day).



Maya has been growing up so quickly, even more rapidly since her fourth birthday. It's like a switch flipped and she's leaped into a new era of independence and maturity. The morning of her fourth birthday she was jumping up and down saying "I think four year olds jump higher than three year olds!". She had a really fun birthday party, and it was the first one where she really had friends her age to invite. She has recently gotten interested in LEGO, which is great for me because I enjoy building LEGO sets with her. She also discovered my old Tamagotchi virtual pet which spurred a Tamagotchi craze in our household. We bought quite a few Tamagotchis and Maya, Elena, and I were all raising our own Tamagotchis at the same time. She has been super into animals lately. She's especially fascinated by sharks. We've read tons of books, magazines, and websites with shark facts, watched videos, and even went to the MN Zoo so she could see a real shark in person. She caught her first fish this year, and it wasn't her last. She even cooked it and ate it. She's always been fascinated with the idea of catching, cooking, and eating fish, and has played it as a game many times. I'm glad she finally got to experience the real thing. She cut her own hair this summer, which she's very happy about. I did my best to even it out. Over the summer she had a drop-off day camp where she insisted I stay at the car so she could run in by herself. She is going to drop off preschool 3 days a week now, and she loves it. She feels like such a big kid.






Clara has two front teeth and loves to use them to eat everything. She's crawling quickly, standing well, and I can tell she'll be walking any day now. She likes to clap and sometimes likes to wave. She's got proto-words for all sorts of things. This baby wants to eat everything in the world, especially if she sees you eating it. She's still a very happy child, though she loves to cry crocodile tears whenever Maya so much as breathes wrong. She and Maya absolutely love playing with each other. She turned one year old on September 3rd.





I managed to play the first two Final Fantasy games on game boy over the summer (well, I still have a couple hours left in FFII). They were fun. I also have been back on the reading rainbow. In addition to reading an exhausting amount of books to Maya and now Clara, I've also finished my fair share of books for myself. Since my last blog post I've read 13 books and 7 audiobooks! I haven't kept up with my book blogging, but I have been keeping up pretty well with my goodreads. After catching up on tech news last month, I got bit by the computer project bug. I knew I wanted to work on something, but had a hard time deciding what. I eventually decided to finally finish the arcade machine I had started customizing last fall. I'll never be truly done with this project, but over the last few weeks I've gotten it into playable condition, and have already had some really fun gaming sessions on it. Another fun thing I've gotten up to is meeting up with some old friends to play music together.




Alright how many things can I rapid fire to make this blog post a more reasonable length? Tons of family outings to Saints games, Twins games, berry picking, cabin trips, Children's Museum, picnics, playgrounds, outdoor concerts, gardening, storytimes, the Keith Haring exhibit at the Walker, Ice Cream, West Side Soul, Almelund Apple Festival (incredible baked goods). We hosted four separate couch surfers this summer, who were all really cool. One was from Colombia, one from Turkey, one was from New Orleans, and one from Saint Paul who was illegally evicted without notice. We finally got out to the Minnesota Bluegrass Festival. It was a super fun festival and I hope to go back. We also played with giant bubbles a lot this year. The end?...