Got the Chat Pack from my friend as a birthday gift.  (http://www.questmarc.com/our2.htm)  The cover says, "Fun Questions to Spark Conversations.  Ideal for Dinner parties, Family gatherings, Car trips, Hostess gifts, Business meetings, and Classroom activities."  There are some great questions in it.  So, I thought that I might use some from time to time on here and then you can ponder your own answer as well.  Cool.

 

 

Hhhhmmm.  It has taken me a while to think of some bridges.  There is the tunnel in Antwerp, Belgium that I was always amazed at as a kid because it was soooo steep/deep.  I heard about the Chunnel and have wondered about it with some degree of awe.  But back to bridges.  As a kid I have always wondered about bridges on playgrounds and how no one ever seemed to get their feet caught in the open parts of bridges.  There is this one in Florida between Tampa and Ft. Myers somewhere that has cool and modern architecture, is extremely windy, and Nathan's family has told me of horrible boating accidents that have happened at the base of it.  There is the historic lift bridge in Stillwater, MN that joins us Minnesotans to the beautiful cheese-filled state of Wisconsin and it sparks so much fueding about what to do with it next because it is sooooo out of date, too much traffic.....but dang it is a beautiful sight!  Saw an approx. 200 yr old bridge in Turkey.  Looked at its perfect stone arches at a distance and noticed the contrast of the amount of traffic and basically large trucks that were still using it today....gotta say that I had NO urge to drive over it....looking at it from afar was nice enough.  But I think the winner is the newly constructed 35W bridge in Minneapolis.  Drove over it on Tues. to go to the Twins game.  It is clean, sleek, modern, wider than the old one.....and has 2 matching artwork/statue thingies at both sides of it.  Three lines that would otherwise be parallel, but they are wavy lines shooting up to the sky maybe 15 feet or so....and there is a much clearer view of the river and downtown now when you look over the siderails.  I did a lot of thinking in the few minutes that it took to cross the bridge about life, death, the things I am thankful for....when you consider that this is the replacement bridge for the one that just went down for no apparent reason just over a year ago. 

 

What is your answer?

 I am now officially 32. 

 

Been looking forward to this for a long time....since grade school when Gold, Silver, and Bronze Birthdays were a big deal.  HHhhmmm.....interesting thing happened.....when you get older, Gold, Silver, and Bronze Birthdays mean NOTHING!!! and I have reached the point where (when I was younger I couldn't fathom this, swore it would never happed to me, but reality is setting in...) I seriously can't remember how old I am!!!!  I could give lots of excuses about this but I think it boils down to one thing and that is I just have too many other things to think about...pure and simple.....oh man, that better be the reason!

 

Tyler only needs a cake to officially dub the day a "Birthday" for someone.  That's nice...had cake/pie/dessert (Thanks Mom! Yum Yum!)

See the "S" in yellow raspberries....Man I LOVE Raspberries!!!!

 

Tyler got to help put the candles on the cake.  There were 24 candles in the package, Tyler was bound and determined to get them all on there...but we put the "kabosh" on that and he really thought long and hard about how to make 24 candles work when he really needed 32....I have yet to hear his answer....I think we all got side tracked with the "lick the candles" part of the festivities....especially Beth.

 

Had a relaxing day....Nathan took the whole day off of work.  But since Tyler still had school and there were other things to get done.....we did not truely celebrate until we got to the Metrodome.  GO TWINS!  It was a good time!

What a way to end the summer.

 

Met some friends there a couple of weeks ago (a rainy day).  HAD A BLAST!

 

at least that is what Tyler likes to call it....

 

The story is that they played some sort of "face/body part" game at school today.  This is how I picked him up from school.  He did have one other sticker on the cheek that you can't see and one on his neck that got moved to his nose when he lost the nose one in the bathroom.  Actually Tyler's teacher met me at the door with stickers on her face too...and a wild bear hat....because the class went on a bear hunt today.

 

GREAT TIMES!!! 

 

(And my lesson for the day is that I now need to keep my camera handy on school days because I never know what I am walking into when I pick him up....I am lucky that this many stickers made it home well enough to get a picture.)

 

At lunch Tyler passed the stickers on to me...hence the new profile picture....and the stickers have been saved so that Daddy can "try them on" after work.