I’m a Big Sister!

How can this be?? I’m a Big Sister!?! My not-so-little brother might read this and say “Duh!” Um, Jason, (yes, my brother’s name is Jason too), that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the First Timers’ program for the PASS Summit!

You might be asking yourself how the heck I am qualified to be a Big Sister. The honest answer is, I’m not, exactly. I’m not a SQL person, I’ve never been to PASS Summit. I am however, married to Jason Strate (blog|@StrateSQL). He knows a thing or two about the PASS Summit – he’s been to 4. We are sharing the Big Brother/Big Sister role for our group. My portion of our list gets a two for one deal! I’ve been to enough SQL Saturdays that I know people in the SQL Community. That sounded cocky, not what I intended, but you get what I mean. I also spend a decent amount of time on twitter, mostly chatting with SQL Community members. Though I have not met some of them in person yet, I intend to meet most of them in Seattle. Heck, some avid tweeters, feels like we’ve known each other forever! I can introduce members of our group to some of the SQL Saturday and twitter “regulars.”

Besides being a Big Sister, during the Summit, I will be volunteering with Karla Landrum (@Karlakay22), from PASS. I’m not exactly sure what all she’s going to have me doing, but I know it will be fun!

I’m looking forward to spending the week with a great community that has adopted me in as an “honorary member.”

Our Crazy New Schedule

When Grace started dancing competition in WI last year, I was a bit concerned about how many hours she had to dance on her one night a week that she had class. I didn’t know if she’d be able to handle the long night, followed by a later-than-normal bedtime. Little did I know, that by comparison, her new dance life was NOTHING! Sure it took some adjustment, but…

When I was talking to a Mom from Lake Area Dance last year at Masquerade, she was telling me how some local studios had their girls (yes, I know, there are a few boys too) dancing 5 nights a week. WOW! Fast forward to today, Grace is now a Lake Area Angel. She’s dancing 4 nights a week for about 2 1/2 hours each night (except Sundays, when she only has an hour and 15 minute class). It’s a huge time commitment for all of us. Grace’s life now consists of coming home from school, doing as much homework as she can, scarfing down some supper, heading to dance, coming home, and going to bed (or finishing homework if she didn’t get it done before). It seems a bit much for a 5th grader, but she loves it, and has already improved in her flexibility and technique a ton!

As if driving her back and forth to/from dance isn’t enough, I was smart enough to sign Michael up for karate. He’s been wanting to go for so long, I figured 1st grade is as good a time as any to have him start. He tends to be a bit… um…. hyper. Maybe this will calm him down a bit.

Here’s the good news on karate, the dojo is two doors down from dance, and classes are during Grace’s dance times. Score on that front! He can go as often as he wants (though there are set times to choose from). He’s been there 3 times. Already, he’s shown improved discipline (though, I can tell he’s trying with all he’s got). Last time he was at karate, the teachers even noticed his efforts, and gave him his white belt. This was huge for him! At Forte’s Karate, where he goes, they start out with no belt. They earn their white belt, then 3 black stripes. After that, they can graduate to their gold belt. Michael’s loving it as much as Grace loves dance. I suspect he’ll be working hard to get to that next level!

Where does that leave our schedule? Well, Between dance/karate schedules, and me working 2 nights a week, our schedule is crazy busy. Bedtimes have become later, and we’re all still adjusting.

MN State Fair

Saturday morning, I woke up with motivation to unpack and re-organize my half of the office. Jason also woke up with a mission in mind, a mission to conquer the food booths at the MN State Fair. We hopped in the Jeep, and drove to the state fair grounds, where we drove in a 10 mile or so circle looking for a parking spot. Finally, we gave in and paid (gulp) $20 to park about a block away. Never did I think we’d be paying that much to park!

We walked into the fair and checked out all the things we can’t do when we have the kids with us. We walked in the Eco Building (where I picked up some info on making my own compost bin). Then, we went to the art building, where we got to see Jason’s friend Charlie’s painting on display. We also checked out the Education Building, which was MUCH different than I remember it being the last time I was in there. It felt more like a political building.

After walking and people-watching for a while, we decided to start on conquering our list of fair foods to eat. We ate lots of different things. We shared all of it so that we could eat more variety. We ate a foot long hot dog with onions (which cured my craving for a Chicago Dog from Sonic), a pork chop on a stick (one of my favorite fair foods), a “giant juicy turkey sandwich” (which maid Jason say “good” when I was too full to eat much – more for him), a stuffed pepper (never had one before, I liked it), a corn dog, cheese curds, lemonade, ice cold Coke, and my other favorite – Sweet Martha’s Cookies. What we didn’t get that we normally would included roasted corn on the cob, mini donuts, funnel cake, french fries, soft pretzel (not for me – ew – but Jason and the kids like them), and all you can drink milk (I SO wish I could still enjoy this booth – doesn’t agree with me anymore, even though I love milk).

A little bit of heaven - NOT on a stick!

A word on Sweet Martha’s Cookies, and The Mouth Trap Cheese Curds: Not only do these two items represent some of my favorite foods at the fair, they have super efficient systems to move the herds of people through very quickly. At the cookie building, there were about 100 high school kids working there (or, at least seemed that way). Several of them were just bringing the trays of fresh baked cookies to each of the scoopers. The scoopers had all the buckets hanging above their heads, and someone kept them stocked… The line was incredible, but they moved us through in just minutes. At the cheese curd booth (in the food building), it’s $5 for a tray of cheese curds. You give one person the money, they hand you a ticket, you move down the counter, and they had cheese curds fresh and hot, waiting for you… again, super long line, moved us through in minutes. Way to go!!!

We also went into the birthing barn where a pig was having difficulty giving birth to her babies. Six babies had been born, and they thought there were probably 6 more to come. We waited about a half an hour, with her looking as though she’d get another one out, but it wasn’t quite happening. They said she was nervous about being a first time mom and all the people around… A lamb had just been born moments before we got in there too. We saw the Mama cleaning up her baby (or, maybe she was eating it, according to Jason).

We also got to go into both the coliseum and the bottom of the auditorium, where all the booths of things for sale are. We had just run out of some yummy garlic seasoning that Jason had bought at the fair before. We HAD to get more of that! We also got some info on a water softener (I hate the way our water smells in the shower and laundry), and found some awesome storage racks that hang from the ceiling in the garage. Jason and I had just been talking about building something like, not 2 days before! It will be cheaper for us to buy them and install them, than to go to Menards, buy all the materials, and then take the time to make the shelves ourselves. That was a win! If the kids were with us, there’s no way we could have even gone into the building!

Overall, it was a good day!!

3 Day For The Cure – Day 2 2011

My first words in my notes after Day 2 was “pain, pain, pain.” It was an emotionally and physically exhausting day! Our entire path seemed to be hills – ugh! My mom had problems with her knee spasming. At lunch, she went to the medical tent, and got her knee wrapped. She and Peg (our other “Mom”) left lunch early, and walked to the next pit stop. By the time she got there, she realized it wasn’t getting any better, and every step was painful. She made the decision to ride the bus back to camp. When she was there, she went back to the medical tent, where she saw the chiropractor. She found out her pain was not actually coming from her knee, but from a disc that was out in her low back. She got adjusted, and things were much better. Peg kept on through the rest of the day, slow but sure.

As the day went on, so did the blister count. New ones kept popping up as the day went on. By the end, I had 7 blisters, and a worse case of the “3 Day Rash” than I did the day before. I went to the medic tent twice to get my blisters taken care of – once at the beginning of the day, once later to get one foot re-wrapped (thanks to a new blister). The bottoms of both of my pinky toes were completely blistered, my 2nd toes on both feet were blistered, and I had blisters on each of my heels. By the end of the day, I was hurting, but I really wanted to make it to the end. I had to be back by 6:30 in order to get in the Training Walk Leader photo. I made it just on time, but it took some hustling in the end. I didn’t eat or drink quite as much as the day before, which may have contributed some to how exhausted I was. I thought I was doing ok, but looking back, it may have been just under enough for the energy I needed.

As exhausting as the day was, there were some awesome things about Day 2. First of all, the 2nd pit stop of the day was the New Balance pit stop. It was early enough in the day that I still had lots of energy. We walked in to the pit stop to a squad of cheerleaders cheering everyone on. I noticed the orange and black pom poms, and wondered to myself if they were from White Bear Lake – my old high school. As they started cheering, I recognized all their cheers. I had to go over and talk to them. Sure enough, they were the White Bear cheerleaders. They asked me if I had a favorite cheer, and I said the White Bear Beat. I didn’t know how they might adapt it, but they did. “Cancer is the crap that we’re gonna defeat, so come on everybody do the breast cancer beat…” It was awesome! I was pumped!! The rest of the day, going through Vadnais Heights, and the general area I grew up, was lots of fun! There were LOTS of cheer stations. So many people, so much energy… even when the going got tough, there were tweets and texts, cheering stations, treats, and spray bottles to keep us going. Carrie, Krista, Tennille and I all walked into lunch agreeing how much fun we were having (despite the blisters). We got to pose on the “Pink Carpet”, hang with the “Boob Brothers”, etc. The Vadnais Heights Fire Dept. had a hose set up (high enough so as not to hurt) for people to walk under, and a tent with misters going. That felt good!

The 2nd half of the day, there were even more texts, tweets, and cheering stations that offered support, tattoos, stickers, etc. I was excited to get one of the pink ribbon tattoos, which I put on right away, and now have a tan line from. One station gave stickers that said “I wear pink in honor of…” and then had a Sharpie so that you could write a name on it. I had been looking for a Sharpie to write the names down the back of my legs. I wanted to do Breast Cancer on one side, other cancers on the other. We only got as far as the breast cancer fighters. I missed two, and added them later.

At the last pit stop of the day, I was SO ready to be done. I was ready to be done with hills, done with my aching feet, done with blisters. I knew there was one more day of this… We had walked 40 miles in 2 days at that point. The thought that in about one more hour, we would have walked 43 miles in two days kind of hit me. I felt extremely overwhelmed, and I’m not sure why. I was proud of what we had accomplished so far, but I was also a bit embarrassed to be feeling so proud. We were walking for a cause, and for some reason, I felt like it was wrong to be proud. I think the exhaustion was contributing to how emotional I felt at that moment. Carrie assured me we SHOULD be proud. We had walked more than we had walked in a week before. We raised money to help fund breast cancer research, and we were doing an amazing thing.

After the Training Walk Leader photo, I went to eat some great food, and watched the “camp show”. They had some games, and then brought on the Youth Corps. Each of the children introduced themselves and why they were volunteering. One girl broke down in tears as she talked about her grandma. The tears I had been fighting off, and the emotions of the day could hold back no longer (I am such a sucker for kids). They also had a Breast Cancer Survivor come on stage and tell her story. It was so touching, and inspiring. What a great reminder for why we were doing this!

My Mom then came and asked me to go shopping with her. She wanted to buy me a shirt. I hobbled over to the tent with her. As I was looking at the shirts, she pointed out a pair of sweat pants that I had been eyeing up the day before. She offered to buy me those instead. I told her what I really wanted was a pin they were selling. She got me both. What a nice Mama I have! We then went to back to our pink tent, where I had to lay with my feet up, listening to the dance going on in the big tent not far away. If you know me, you know how much it tortured me to have to listen, and not be participating. At that point in the day, just standing was painful. Eventually, I got up and took a shower, which felt amazing. So did bedtime that night (probably at 9:30 or so).