And the winner is...

the results are in--emma's spongebob got second place in the extremely competitive junior 12 and under crop art division. we're really proud of her, and lots of folks are telling us how great her piece looks at the fair. she celebrated with a sleepover last night. terri, ben, and doug went to the Rush concert at the State Fair. it's a classic rock group terri has wanted to see for 30 years, since 8th grade. it was a lot of fun--they played for over 3 hours in front of a passionate sold out crowd. best overheard line: the forty-year-olds in front of us, inspired to plan their jam session for the next day: "we need the smoke. we gottabreak out the fogger. yeah, man, the fogger."

ben's football team had their big, multi-team scrimmage this morning (all went well!) and tomorrow afternoon emma's softball team has another double header. soccer for her (coached by doug) begins tuesday night. in the meantime, the four of us have tickets for the Vikings 3rd preseason game tonite with brett favre and the starters scheduled to play into the third quarter.

Spongebob Goes to the Fair

Emma finished and turned in her Spongebob seed art to the Minnesota State Fair today. It was a fun summer project. All seeds and plant parts had to be from crops grown in Minnesota. Emma used wild rice for the black, safflower for white, millet for yellow, peas for green, flax for brown, wheat and barley for sand, and dyed millet for the red, blue and maroon.

minnesota summer

things have been busy since we got back from LA. doug went to Atlanta to the annual sociology meetings this past weekend (he's back now); ben started two-a-days for football (and continues to work evening shifts at connie's). emma's back at softball with a fall league team (the red hots) that has their first game on sunday and working on her seed art for the state fair (pic of work in progress here). terri's been trying to keep everything organized and moving forward. the big event of the day? we got two new mattresses delivered and set-up--a new queen for doug and terri, and a memory foam full for ben. sweet dreams, everyone.

wrapping up LA trip

we have spent the last week here in Temple City with Terri's family. everyone here, even julie and keith from georgia. no big events, just lots of eating and swimming and hanging out. doug, ben, emma, and nancy did get to see the dodgers win an exciting, extra inning ball game at dodger stadium--and the two ladies got a good bit of attention with their wigs (see above). heading back to minnesota this evening, with one more week of regular, summer activities before doug goes to Atlanta for the annual sociology meetings and ben starts two-a-day football practices.

society pages and LA

hey, hey everyone: doug and his sociology crew are launching a new website today, a spinoff of the Contexts.org site they've been developing over the past couple of years. This one is called "The Society Pages" and can be found at:

http://thesocietypages.org

The idea is to track social science research that regular folks might find important and interesting. It will still have the contexts.org stuff (doug and chris are still editing the magazine for another year) but will try to go beyond sociology to incorporate work from other social sciences like psychology and political science.

In other news, we leave for 5 days in Los Angeles bright and early tomorrow morning. Will spend the rest of today wrapping up and getting ready. Terri taking a computer training course his morning; Ben works, and has a bass lesson; Emma reading like crazy, and going golfing with Doug later.

oh, and a belated happy anniversary to denise and pete! seems like just yesterday...