Tille Family

15 month update

This week is just like all of the others: busy. We had doctor appointments and I had a road trip for work.

Earlier in the week, we brought the kids in to the clinic for their 15 month well visits. We planned for them to get shots, do all of the basic growth measurements, check some developmental things, etc. Taking the kids in to the doctor is still a big deal and requires a ton of planning. I usually have to take the day off so that I can help out. We break the kids in to two groups and we have to plan their appointments around their scheduled meals, snack and nap times so there’s a limited amount of time when we can fit em in. Brook was in the first group. Angela had Brook in at urgent care over the weekend due to her persistent high temps. We did some more follow up while we were there, but still found nothing. By Tuesday, she was back to normal so we’re thinking that it was some kind of virus that just need time to pass, but due to the elevated temps she didn’t get her shots and we’ll have to reschedule her shots. All of them except Brook got flu shots during Monday’s visit, but they will require a second flu shot so that will require another trip to the doctor.

We have some changes regarding the rankings of their weights. Maddie is now the heaviest around 22 pounds followed closely by Alex. That translates to around the 50TH percentile. Alex is closer to the 33rd. That means that at 50%, she is right in the middle compared to all 15 months old children. The 33rd percentile means that he is in the bottom one third of all 15 month old children. After the first year, we stopped using their adjusted age and will now go by their real birthday for measuring growth standards. Lauren has really flourished as a little girl since starting on regular solid foods and has surpassed Brooklyn in the rankings. She’s a really good eater. Brooklyn seems to be a little pickier at the table except when it comes to pasta. Emma is still our little bird. She weighed in around 18 pounds; 4 pounds less than Maddie. 4 pounds may not sound like much, but that’s 20% when you consider their total body weight. She didn’t even show up on the growth charts! She’s fine, just little. Needless to say, they quints are all doing well.

Meredith is testing us every day and we continue to face new challenges, and we’re doing the best we can to keep “the machine” moving smoothly forward. If any of you happen to have an idea on how to keep Meredith in her bed at night instead of sleeping on the floor at the top of the steps or behind her door when we shut her bedroom door, I’m open to any and all reasonable recommendations.

On a side note, I’m sorry to those who have been here in the past few days. The disappointment from the first two loses by the Twins to the Yankees have me a bit down and in a funk. I’ll try to do better, but if they lose tonight, it may take me a week to come out of it. I’m emotionally vested and I just care too much.

Until next time…

A frest start

So here the deal. I’m not quitting the blog. A few of you have asked in recent weeks since my last post if I really did quit. I have not. Truth is that we have been really busy and by the time I get around to writing, I’d rather go to bed. Sorry.

We’ve had so much go on in the past 3 weeks. The big news is that Angela and I have listed our home for sale. We’re really starting to feel cramped and we know that long term, we need to be in a larger home. A year from now, we’ll have 6 Merediths and that scares us a bit. We have not found our dream home yet. We have, but we don’t expect that anyone is gonna give us a million dollar home so we’re still considering all possibilities. There are pros and cons to both building and buying an existing home and we’re still considering both options, but building is the direction that we’re leaning. Since listing the home, we needed to prep the house for photos, which was a major deal. To make all of our “stuff” go away so that we don’t look cramped is extremely challenging. We’ve had 2 showings in the first 10 days it was on the market. We pack up all the kids in the van and make sure this place is spotless. I really mean spectacular, or as close as we can make it. It’s such a challenge to prep the house for a showing while the kids are still in the house. They remind me of the little dirt cloud that follows that kid in the peanuts cartoon. The feedback from those showings has been very good, but no offers. We really didn’t expect anything to take place all that quickly.

In the last 3 weeks, we’ve also had a garage sale. We had more than 40 twenty gallon Rubbermaid storage totes FULL of clothes and things from the kids first year that we no longer need. Yeah, 40 of em and that’s just the stuff that we had in the garage. IT’S ALL GONE. We got rid of everything. What we didn’t sell, we donated to an unwed college gal who is a friend of a friend. We also donated some things to the church and also sent a few items to Goodwill. We’re so happy that it’s all gone. I can fit both our car and the BAV in the garage at the same time. Seriously.

At work in the past few weeks, I’ve had a couple over night road trips and I’ve also had multiple executive and management ride alongs. As a sales rep, I work independently most days. My manager visits every couple months and we spend every minute of the day together, but the extra ride alongs have been a big stressor. To top it all off, I also survived another reorganization of the sales force this past week. My manager Jim, who’s a better friend than a manager, kept his job, but his territory has been realigned. Friends of mine lost their jobs. I’m now on my 4th manager in 5 years at Coloplast. Change is a constant and the stress can be overwhelming sometimes.

Angela has arranged for Meredith to attend dance class in the past 3 weeks. I think it s a bunch of hooey, but Angela and Meredith like it, so I try to keep my bad attitude to myself.

The kids have been incredibly emotional the past few weeks. There always seem to be someone crying. At times, it feels like its more common to hear someone crying than not and I wonder what’s going on if someone isn’t crying. The kids are really changing. I don’t think that I written about it, but as you might image, they are walking. Maddie and Brook are almost running at times. It’s really like herding cats sometimes. They play by themselves much better, but now we have to redirect them a lot more.

They’ve all been sick in the past few weeks. We had the stomach flu go through the house. Angela and I are the only ones to not throw up. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t have our share of dry heaving. I am SOOOO sick of puke!!! I can’t imagine how tired Angela is of it. The past two nights, Brooklyn had fevers of 103.8 and 104.4. Most parents would freak out and lose their minds, but it’s just another day for us. We’re getting so used to it; I slept through most of last night’s fever and treatment, which involved an aggressive dose of Motrin and a bath. Angela took her to urgent care this morning, but they said she was fine. All of the kids have their 15 month well visits tomorrow and will get shots. We’ll revisit Brook’s issues tomorrow morning. I’m already feeling stressed about tomorrow’s appointments. You have no idea what an undertaking it is to get them to the clinic and get them all shots. I have to take a full day off of work to make it happen.

I really have thought of writing a lot in recent weeks, often many times daily, but I just never get to it. It just takes so much time. Tonight’s post will take around and hour and a half to write and post and there’s no photos. Photos add a ton of time. I got away with it tonight because the kids all went to bed early; no one fought us, including Meredith. Most nights, we have to tell Meredith to go back to bed many times a night. We still end up finding her sleeping in the hallway at the top of the steps nearly every morning. There’s so much info that I could write about from the past three weeks, but there’s not enough time for me to get to it so I’m gonna try to start from scratch, if you will. I’m going to try to write multiple times a week moving forward, but the content will be much shorter; just a highlight or two from each day. We’ll see how that goes.

I hope this post finds you all well and in good spirits. I’m in a foul mood. What else is new, right? But as I write this, I’m watching my beloved Chicago Bears get their ass kicked on Sunday night football. Embarrassing. I guess I should be used to it. Thank goodness I still have my Hawkeyes!

Until next time…

Our trip to Tama

It seems that all I do is apologize for not writing more frequently. So here we go again. One of the reasons for my delay is that I’ve been a bit discouraged to write recently. I’ve received some feedback about my writing. Negative feedback. Frankly, the feedback has made me question whether I should continue to write and maintain the site at all. Seriously.

You’re reading this so I guess it’s clear that I’m gonna continue, but seriously, if you don’t like reading it, stop.

One of the things that I’ve failed to talk about in recent weeks was our first trip to the zoo. A few weeks ago, Angela told me that we were gonna pack up the van and make a trip to the Minnesota Zoo. I quickly developed a very bad attitude. I still maintain that outside of Meredith, these kids don’t know the difference between the park a block from our house and a really big frigging zoo, but his was one of those moments where I just needed to say, “Yes Dear.” Just so there isn’t any confusion, I’ll admit, I was disgruntled. We arrived at the zoo late, so Angela’s plans were messed up and it caused some friction between us. Although we had a bad start and the day was very warm and muggy, it actually ended up to be a very good day. Thank you Wendy, Jill and Becky. We couldn’t have done it without you! I’m still trying to figure out the photos. I have a couple already posted and you can see them here, but I’m having some technical issues preventing me from posting more.

Tonight is our first night at home in over a week. A week ago, this past Friday, I packed up the BAV to take the family to Angela’s hometown of Tama, IA for the first time. Our first road trip provided us with some good experience to plan this trip. Prior to the evening meal and also while the kids were eating, I loaded everything up in the van. The plan was to put the kids in the van as soon as they were in the jammies and ready to go. Unfortunately, as I stuffed the last package in and shut the back door, the package squished up against the electronic lock and locked all of the doors. The BAV was running and everything was packed, including Angela’s purse which contained the only spare set of keys. 45 minutes and $65 later, we headed out the driveway. Oh yeah, the garage door opener quit working so that led to another “discussion” before we left town.

Angela drove. She felt that because of the boot she continues to wear for her broken leg, she wouldn’t be able to negotiate her way around the van should the kids need help during the drive. So while she drove, I pulled out the computer so that I could clean up some photos from the zoo and write a blog post. The kids quickly went to sleep and I got to work. A little while later, we came to an unexpected stop and I looked up to see a ROAD CLOSED sign. The bridge was out on Hwy 58 in Zumbrota and Angela missed the detour. I asked what happened and asked why she didn’t take the detour. She told me that she didn’t see it. She turned the BAV around and we backtracked. At the point of the detour, there were two giant road signs on each side of the road with flashing orange lights and giant arrows pointing us in the direction that we should have taken. I asked her to stop and asked again about why she didn’t take the detour. She told me that she didn’t see the signs. She was too busy watching the road and for deer. My dad says it was my fault and I had a bad moment earlier in the evening with the keys so I dropped it. However, I did quit working on the computer and started paying attention to the road. A few hours later, around 1 am, we pulled in to the driveway in Tama. After we got the kids to bed, I walked in the house with a handful of stuff and a stink just slammed me in the face. Initially I thought Maggie, our dog, had an accident after the long drive, but what I’ve come to find out is that Maggie literally scared the shit out of one of the cats. So here’s the cherry on top…Angela didn’t see the pile on the rug under the kitchen table and stepped in it and managed to track it all over the room. The smell was just horrible. We joked during the week that Murphy’s Law should be renamed Tille’s Law.

The week did get better. I held a fantasy football draft on Saturday morning from Angela’s parents house. Angela and I had dinner with the some friends on Tuesday night. On Thursday, Angela got to spend the entire day shopping with her sister Morgan. We also got to see Angela’s other sister Katie for a couple days. It was really good to see both of them. On Friday, Angela and I went to Iowa City to do a little shopping to buy the kids some Hawkeye gear and on Saturday morning, we went back. Angela and I went to the Iowa Hawkeye football game. How bout those Hawkeyes!!! We had a really good time and enjoyed the big win. I just can’t get over how much I enjoy Saturday’s in the fall, especially in Iowa City. This is really my favorite time of the year.

On Sunday night we made the trip back home. It was much more uneventful. Thank you so much to all of the family and friends that helped out during our trip to Tama. Without your help, we wouldn’t have had the freedom to do the things that we got out of the house to do. Thank you so much Dave and Becky. Becky, please take a break for a few days. You deserve it.

In my next post, I’ll be writing about the kids’ developments and some very major changes that we’ll be taking on as a family.

Until then…

Meredith’s 16 Tons

Last night I downloaded the song “16 Tons” to my Ipod. It’s an old song from the 50′s but its in one our favorite movies, “Joe Versus the Volcano.” Meredith heard it yesterday and wanted to watch the video of the song, so I popped it on and pulled out the camera.

Enjoy. Until next time…

He smells like sick

People often ask me, “Is it getting any easier?” It’s a difficult question to answer and I’ve thought a lot about that question recently. As you’ll read below, the best way I can put it is that it’s not any easier, just different.

Since returning from Oma and Opa’s house in Rock Rapids a couple weeks ago, our family has gone through a ton of change and I’m not sure it’s been more difficult on us or the kids.

Last week, we got Meredith a big girl bed and when a little girl becomes a big girl, she doesn’t use pacifiers any longer. Angela came up with a great idea that I hadn’t heard of before, the Binky Fairy. During Meredith’s first night in her big girl bed, she gave up her binkies and in the morning, she found a little present. She hasn’t asked for her pacifier since. Great idea, Angela!!!

We’ve also made some changes with the kids’ feedings. Since our trip, it’s become clear that some of the kids are more than ready for big people solid food. Madeline won’t leave anyone alone if there’s food around. We’ve jumped in to feeding the kids what we eat or at least something similar and we’re trying to reflect more regular meal times; 3 times daily. Madeline is our best eater. She seems like a happy baby, almost like we were starving her before. Lauren is really good too, but she’s quiet. Emma does a pretty good job, but can be picky. Alex isn’t very good and has a tendency to not chew his food, which was one of the things holding us back from starting this sooner. Brook is just flat out resisting. She really isn’t eating anything. We’ve tried darn near everything. We’ve tried mixing fruits and veggies in their baby food, but she won’t take it. If it isn’t Gerber coming from the Gerber container, she isn’t eating…except for graham crackers and cheerios. She’s getting along fine, but sooner or later, she’s going to get hungry and play ball.

We also quit giving the kids bottles. They’re all packed up and in storage containers in the garage. Holy cow, we have counter space! We decided to quit, cold turkey. The kids didn’t want to follow procedure the first day and go with our plans of sippy cups only, but after some dry diapers in the morning, they seemed pretty eager to drink from a sippy cup and they’ve been fine ever since.

The new meal planning has been a big challenge for us. We really can’t seem to find something that they all like and will eat, which is really frustrating. We’re still giving some baby food once in a while to supplement so that no one goes entirely hungry, but it’s hard. We can’t be a restaurant with a full menu for 6 kids. Just isn’t gonna happen. Finding the seating room for everyone has also been a challenge. If we cook for Angela and I first, the kids want to get started with dinner early and if we get the kids going first, then Angela and I aren’t eating until around 9pm each night, which isn’t the best for us. It’s just difficult, but we’ll get it figured out.

Meredith has been increasingly difficult the past couple weeks. She’s been hitting the quints and throwing toys. She isn’t listening and flat out ignoring us when we tell her to do or not do something. When she does listen, she’s been talking back. Where the hell do kids who are totally isolated from that kind of behavior learn to act that way? I just don’t get it because she’s at home all the time and that kind of talking back doesn’t happen here. Today in particular has been extremely difficult with her, and all the kids for that matter.

Have you ever woken up and thought to yourself that you really don’t like your life very much. Today was one of those days. Angela and I talk about it often. I’m being entirely serious when I say that we think that if we could just wake up and like our lives more often than not, then we’d be in pretty good shape; but Madeline is really pushing us to be on the wrong side of the equation. Since our return from Rock Rapids, she’s been waking up earlier and earlier each day. She started getting up at 530, but quickly started getting up earlier and earlier and earlier. I have no problem letting a child cry, but at that time of the morning (or night depending on your perspective), the kids aren’t sleeping deeply any longer and they all start to wake up if we don’t get her out of the room. We’ve tried letting her cry. What’s really frustrating is that she’ll go back to sleep in our arms or on the floor in the other room, but she flips her top if we try to give her a pacifier and lay her back in her bed. Today at 4 am, we had enough. It was gonna go poorly if I went upstairs, so Angela went upstairs to deal with her for the first time since she broke her leg, but I could hear every second of it on the intercom. At 6 am she came back down to bed and I went up. 4 of them were up at this point. It was an extremely early morning and it was the last time. Angela and I are discussing wholesale changes to how we deal with nap time and sleeping at night/morning. I’m not entirely sure yet, but these kids are eventually going to fall in line. For everyone’s sake, this has to end.

The morning continued in traditional train wreck fashion. For whatever reason, Alex’s breakfast didn’t settle well and he threw up 3 times. 3 damn times…2 of them on the living room carpet. He also had a blow out diaper that went all the way up to his neck line. Un-friggin believable sometimes. Guess who got a special bath before 9 am today? Later that morning, Meredith and Angela shared the following conversation:

“Momma?”

“Yeah, Meredith.”

“Momma?”

“What Honey?”

“Alex smells.”

“What does he smell like?”

“He smells like sick.”

And that’s how our day has gone.

Still later today, I need to get Madeline to quit crying a take a friggin nap, mow the lawn, do a few loads of laundry, another load of dishes before dinner, help with dinner, update the website, write an email for the volunteers regarding our next week, do some planning with Angela for a trip to Tama later this month and also plan for a garage sale following the trip, and get some photos updated and added to the website and write another blog about the trip to the zoo that we took last weekend.

So with that said, I have a few things to get done before the daylight slips away.

Until next time…

Our First Road Trip

We have successfully completed our first road trip as a family. The trip went well and was a good learning experience for everyone involved. A week ago, last Friday, Oma and Opa drove to Wisconsin early in the morning. They helped us get packed and loaded. The kids have their final meal and bottle for the night around 7 pm with all of them usually going to bed by 745/800pm. Instead of carting them all off to bed, we loaded them up in the van for a nighttime drive. During the trip SW to Rock Rapids, Oma sat in the back of the BAV and Opa followed behind. The crying stopped very quickly. 3 of the kids were sleeping in the first 15 minutes of the trip. Alex was in the front row of the bench seats along with Meredith. He lasted about an hour before he finally gave up. Meredith though, made an amazing performance of endurance and stamina. She talked and talked and talked. I was upset after two hours of all the talking but by the third hour, it was becoming laughable. The highlight of the drive was probably the following conversation (keep in mind that Meredith in is the first of 4 rows of bench seats and Oma is in last row):

“Oma!”

“What Meredith.”

“Oma!”

“Yeah Meredith.”

“Oma!!!”

“What honey?”

“I saw the chicken nugget sign!!!”

Conversations like that took place ALL NIGHT LONG.

About 3 hours in to the trip, we were treated to one of the most impressive lightning storms that we’ve ever seen. My brother Robert called and warned us of the storm, but we barreled right down the interstate in to the teeth of that storm. We watched for a solid 20 minutes or so before it started getting hairy. Opa called and warned me that he heard on the radio that a semi had been turned over on the interstate just 10 miles from where we were. I could see the rain coming down from a half mile away. Just like a wall. It was impressive. Once it started, I didn’t last a mile. I couldn’t see outside of the windshield at all. The wind was deafening. I quickly pulled over, but that was challenging because I really couldn’t see where I was going. It was disappointing because we were making such good time. Typical comment coming from a man, I suppose. The wind was so strong. The van was just shaking and rocking. Thank goodness that we didn’t get any of the hail that fell in other parts of the storm. The storm really scared Meredith. Keep in mind that it was near 11 pm and she’s still wide awake. She screamed and cried quite a bit and that woke the other kids. Our control of the inside of the BAV was quickly slipping away. Before you knew it, two more cars pulled over behind Opa and one more in front of us. After 5 minutes or so, we decided to continue. I had to get that BAV moving or the kids would have lost it. Due to the pending traffic issue due to the turned semi, we got off at the next exit and headed south. After dodging another developing cell to the storm, Meredith finally fell asleep with 45 minutes left (around midnight) in the drive. We arrived quietly in the drive between 1230 and 100 in the morning.

The week went remarkably quick, but there were times that we felt like it would never end. I got a chance to play a round of golf with my dad, which hasn’t happened in years. I also worked with my boss in Sioux Falls during the course of the week so I didn’t have to face the brunt of the weekday activities back at the house. Meredith spent some time with Opa in the afternoons and she told us a wonderful story about the airplanes that she saw. I’ve included some new photos of Meredith with her airplanes and Opa. Click here to see them. We had a wonderful assortment of family and friends from the community help out with the kids during the week. We had shifts for people to come, much like we do at home. Becky Carlin and Anne and Tina Ageson spent a lot of time with us, but there were many others. Thanks so much ladies. I promised Sabrina Sieperda that I’d get her pic on website. She and her mom were a couple of our helpers during the week too.

My parents acquired a nice swing set for the kids to use during the day. They have a lot of shade in the back yard and that helped out a ton. The kids spent a lot of time outside. Oma and Opa also inflated a pool and they all had a dip with Oma early in the week on a hot afternoon. I have a video, but my mother seems to have a problem with it showing up on youtube. My grandmothers had an opportunity to spend some time at the house and feed the kids as did many others from the community. We learned a few lesson too. A lot of people wanted to visit and see the kids. We get it. Our situation is kind of unique, but the kids really didn’t respond well to all of the attention (extra bodies); especially during feeding time. They got very crabby but we did our best to adjust.

Planning Our First Road Trip – Anyone want to help?

Angela and I have decided to go ahead and take our first road trip as a family. So…are we a little crazy? Yeah, a little. Why would we want to spend 5 hours in a Big Ass Van with 6 kids under 3? We don’t, but Star Trek technology doesn’t exist yet so we really don’t have a choice.

We’re going to Rock Rapids first. Angela’s home town of Tama will be later this summer. We’re going travel at night and pray that the kids sleep during the ride. They normally do well when we make little trips around town and they sleep pretty well early in the evening so I think that we’ll be ok. I sure hope so.

We’re going to need a little help while we’re there. I’m not gonna be around during the days. I’m going to try to work a few days while we’re back in the area. My boss from Indiana may even be in town for a couple days too. Rock Rapids is in my sales territory, as is Sioux Falls. I don’t travel to Sioux Falls for work as often as I should and I’d be a fool not to take advantage of the opportunity. We will be staying at my parents’ house and we’ll be there July 24-31. If you’d like to help, we will have shifts similar to what we have here at home over the course of the week. If you’d like to help, please send me an email by clicking here. If for any reason the link doesn’t work or you’re having trouble, my email address is: heath@tillefamily.com. I need to know what day and general time of day you’d be available. For example, I could help in the morning on Monday the 26th. If you can, please include your contact info in the message in case we need to make a phone call. My mom is managing the schedule and is filling all of the shifts. I’ll be forwarding all email requests to her and working with her to fill things up as best as possible. If you’re comfortable enough calling my mom and you know the number, go ahead and give her a ring.

Before you pick up the phone or click “send”, I want to share with you a little about where the kids are developmentally. The kids are crawling, but not walking. We’re asking that if you want to fill a shift, please consider your own physical abilities. We basically need you to be able to actively play with them. You need to be able to easily pick up 25 pounds. You need to be able to get up and down off the floor with them. You need to be willing to change a diaper and spoon feed the kids. We rarely rock and hold the kids anymore. Things will be VERY structured. When nap time comes, there will not be any rocking or cuddling. They go to bed. No exceptions. Sorry for the harsh stance, but that’s the way things work at home and we need to be consistent.

So with all that said, if you’re in the Rock Rapids area and you’d like to be a part of the circus, go ahead and send me an email or give my mom a call. We look forward to seeing you all soon. Wish us luck.

Until next time…

Birthday and Baptism Photos

I’m finally getting around to talking about the photos that we had taken during the kids’ birthday party and baptism. They’ve been on the site for a while, but I haven’t had time to get anything written about them. I’ve added two more folders of photos on our “photos and videos” page. I’ve also added a new video.

Many people have taken photos of the birthday weekend and shared them with us, but we really want to thank Erin Hegrenes for her amazing photography service. We invited Erin to come back and take all of the photos of the weekend for us. Erin is the daughter of one of our volunteers. She has a photography business and you can find out more about Erin by checking out her website www.picsbyerin.com. This is the second time that we’ve had Erin help us out and we think that she does an awesome job. I’ve only provided a handful of the photos on our website. We have over 700 of them between the two days and I’ve uploaded all of them on snapfish.com. You can see all of our photos by clicking on birthday or baptism. This will re-direct you to snapfish where you need an account to view the photos. Accounts are free to set up and you are not obligated to buy anything. This type of site allows me to show all of our photos. Adding all of those photos to my site would cause problems and take me months to complete. We hope you enjoy them.

Thank you Erin!!!

Until next time…

A new video

One of our fantastic volunteers, Peggy Kugel, recently offered up a tent that she used with her kids. Since its arrival, it’s been a hit down the hall in Meredith’s room. The kids have all love it. I even got Meredith to sleep in it once. Now that the kids are crawling, they’ve been in Meredith’s room more than ever. I took this video of the kids a week or two ago.

You can check out all of our photos and videos by clicking here or by visiting our youtube page by clicking here.

Birthday Party and Baptism photos are coming soon!!!

Until next time…

Our First Trip to Target Field

Angela and I got out of the house last night.

Let me try that again…I got out of the house last night, I drug her along and forced her to drive me home. Some college friends of mine arranged for some tickets to see the Minnesota Twins play the Tampa Bay Rays. Sounds right up her alley, doesn’t it? Angela is most wonderful person in the world. I owe her a foot rub, at least that’s what I thought the agreement was.

I had a chance to take a quick pic before we went in

Our seats were about as far away from home plate as possible. My friend Brendon was in charge of getting the tickets so, I guess I should have expected the seats we got.

I’m proud of this pic that I took of Old Glory as the National Anthem was being sung.

Old Glory

The food was great, but a bit expensive (even compared to what it was back in the dome).

I even had a chance to say hello to my childhood hero, Kirby Puckett.

My childhood hero, Kirby Puckett

Go Twins!!!

I love baseball. I love the Minnesota Twins. I love the new ballpark. Outdoors is the right way to watch a game; sunshine, a light breeze, a brat and a beer. Anyone who thinks that they should play in a dome is just wrong. Sorry Dad.

Until next time…