Last week, I decided to take on redesigning my bedroom, as it’s the one room in the house I haven’t touched since initially decorating it when we moved in seven years ago. Around that same time, my grandmother had given me a box of keepsakes my grandfather had saved from his youth. At the time, it was still too sad for me to look through it and so I put it in a storage bench.
The Upward Bound Program at Southwest Minnesota State University has received grants totaling $2.96 million from the Federal Department of Education. “We’re just so happy to receive funding so we can continue this worthwhile program,” said Amy Nemitz, Director of Upward Bound at SMSU and grant writer for both proposals.
Soup’s On January is, on average, the coldest month of the year. And that means one thing.
Question: I was driving on the freeway during the worst part of a recent storm. Just had a question— are people supposed to use their emergency flashers when they are driving? So many cars on the freeway were, and it made it impossible to tell if someone was actually stopped or moving slowly (also, if they changed lanes, there was no way to tell).
I hope everyone enjoyed the mild temperatures over the weekend. We had plenty of low to mid 30s across much of the state, while southern Minnesota saw some upper 30s and lower 40s! These temperatures were 15 to 20 degrees warmer than average for this time of the year.
Yesterday, I spent so long building a snow fort that my forearm muscles ache as I type this. I have no regrets – after a lot of awkward shoveling, our five-year-old visiting friend was delighted when two burrows connected to make a tunnel, daylight breaking through the hole in the middle. Hope you too have been able to sculpt something out of snow this winter – there’s sure enough of it around.
My condolences to the families of Sonya (Berg) Dahlin & Christopher Long. Dave & Tami Berg watched the Minnesota Vikings vs.
After having the grandchildren here for a couple days to celebrate Christmas, I noticed a word that seemed to work itself into many of the conversations – the word, No! Realizing that many of my decorations are not “kid-friendly” the parents of our three soon to be two year old grandsons were saying things like: “No, just look at the manger scene” or “No, do not take the ornaments off the Christmas tree.” Even our four year old granddaughter Charlotte needed to be reminded, “No, Charlotte, we cannot open presents just yet!” After doing some research, I learned that the average toddler hears the word ‘no’ an astonishing 400 times per day! At first I felt that 400 times seemed to be an exaggeration. However, just stop and think about how often we say things like: “no running, no throwing, no hitting, no jumping on the furniture, etc.” We are constantly telling our children how NOT to act – instead of telling them positive things like: “walk please, put it down gently, be gentle with your hands, or sit on the couch please.” Even though it is good for children to learn the word ‘no’ and what it means, I feel that we use the word ‘no’ more often than looking for or saying a positive statement.
My youngest child decided recently that she wanted to become a dog mom. She wanted her very own pet that would be just hers. So when one of her friend’s families adopted a dog for their grandmother, only to find out she didn’t, in fact, want a dog, my child volunteered to re-home the dog. Thus, another rescue animal joined the household, which should probably now be called a zoo.
To write about a thing, like, say, I don’t know, hypothetically, an ode, you might really want to have an intimate knowledge of the thing. Or perhaps you might want to really get to know thing, so you spend hours and days and weeks researching the thing. Or you might chat with experts, folks that spend their life studying the vicissitudes of the thing.