Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

I have enough time and energy to report on our 60+ hours as tourists in Sydney in a very narrow way only. We landed on Thursday afternoon, collected our luggage, bought our transit cards and rode the lovely, modern train for about 15 minutes into the city. The Museum Station in downtown Sydney reminded me of stops on the London Tube: big, winding, hot...and never before had I needed to depend on elevators. I think it took us 3, maybe 4, to reach the surface. We walked less than half a mile through the Big City to reach our hotel. The kids did remarkably well on their first non-taxi navigation of a city. I have a very favorable opinion of the Radisson Hotel and Suites near Darling Harbor. It's a familiar kind of hotel/apartment combination and our suite was clearly a converted apartment. The location was perfect and on Thursday evening we walked to the very-nearby Tumbalong Park in Darling Quarter where our kids devoured a really nice playground. We had a lovely harborside dinne...

Sorry for the wait, folks, but things have been a little too hectic here to get a post (or several posts) online. This morning I pointed out to Elise that two weeks from today (Saturday, August 10), we will be in Duluth with our RV. Between now and then, she and I will fly back to Oregon, spend about a week packing and preparing, and then three days driving to Minnesota. That also means we're two weeks away from something resembling a first day of school. Holy cow, the preparation for that has really consumed us for the last few days. Probably procrastinated on that task a bit too much. Anyway, the purpose of this post is to tell you the story of last weekend, which we spent in Minneapolis. To set the scene, we left our cabin in northern Wisconsin on the morning of Saturday, August 3rd; we dropped excess stuff back in Duluth and then drove about three hours down to "the cities." Unbeknownst to the kids, our former nanny was on a flight from Colorado for a surprise visit...