all that's past is prologue...

Every morning, Beatrix asks "What are we doing today?" Usually the answer is something like "Going to school, then dance/circus/violin/etc." To which she replies "And after THAT?" This weekend has been a little slower. Patrick and I both have bad colds, and she has a minor one. But we still wanted to get out of the house today. We started the day with the Springboard for the Arts Health Fair. We pretty much go every year, though Beatrix was pretty unhappy the first year we went that it was nothing like a fair, with no animals or rides or cheese curds. This year she was happy to decline the flu shot (since we had already had the mist, which might be why we are sick), but ran around stamping her passport so she could get a prize (a princess book, because Springboard wins!) We got a lot of good information about MNSure, also worth its weight in gold. We then hit a small batch of fairly new shops along Minnehaha Avenue — Junket, Tumbleweed, Paris Ap...

Tonight was the PTA Open House for Beatrix's school . We attended and learned A LOT, but maybe not in the way that was expected. We learned: 1)  Always save the slip that comes home in your student's backpack. I remembered the event while at a client's, and I had not seen the slip in awhile anyway, so I went to the school website. There was nothing about the event on the website, but I found a link to the (separate) PTA website; by going there, I found the event time of 5:30. Except that the event was at 6:00pm (which we realized when we got there at 5:30 and there was no one there and the sign in front said 6:00). Which gave us time to go to the store and pick up some apples. I also learned by this that I had better start following the school's principal on Twitter. 2)  Free stuff attracts people. Tonight's event had flu shots/mist (cue big tears from Beatrix when she realized that), and a pizza dinner (yum). Attendance was good, and it was fun to meet so...

Today I attended (much of) the Minnesota Blogger's Conference . Originally founded four years ago by my friend Missy and Patrick's friend Arik, the conference has undergone a lot of changes over time, from a kind of rough-and-tumble beginning at CoCo, to honing for two years, and then a slightly pulled-back-but-still-incredibly-valuable event today. The conference is involving more people — more volunteers (it seems), more people on the steering committee, more topics — and even more male presence (it looked about 60/40 female to male today, a big difference from Year 1 where the group photo with Patrick and a whole bunch of hot women would make a lesser wife very jealous). As it addresses more ideas and topics, it also struggles with some growing pains, but the sheer ability to meet lots of other bloggers, and learn how to be a better blogger while doing so, is incredibly valuable. (you would think that after all these years and networking and education that this would be a...

At least here in Saint Paul, our orchestra (the SPCO) is back from strike and playing. I had not realized how much I had missed them until we attended a free family concert today. With corporate sponsorship, the SPCO has these events a few times a year. Often they are over in the rehearsal hall, and feature crafts and an "instrument petting zoo" and the like, plus a short concert. This one was actually over in the Ordway, and was targeted towards an older audience, with an educational narrative, some musical examples, and then a full movement from Mozart's 23rd Concerto. The best part, though, is that we got to go with both grandpas! Grandpa Kenny was in town, so he and Grandpa Dennis came with us. Beatrix got to sit between the two grandpas for the concert, and then share some of her strawberry pancakes at brunch afterwards. Beatrix was so excited about this last night that she started calling it the "grandpa party," which kind of stuck. I don't get t...