Eden Prairie News - Comments

Real Parent: The Island of

Deb Sweeney — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:19:40 -0500

Real Parent: The Island of Misfit Toys

Now is about the time of the summer when all my grand plans for the kids to experience fabulous field trips, read the great literary classics, exercise for an hour a day, learn a second language and other equally high-minded pursuits have, well, lost a little bit of their steam. Even the kids are getting tired of playing video games and fighting with each other. It’s time to shake things up. It’s time to visit The Island of Misfit Toys.

I came up with the idea for our island vacation one Christmas season, while watching “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Among the many tear-jerking situations in that movie is the poor toys that Rudolph and Company discover, eating their hearts out alone on the ice-bound Island of Misfit Toys . There’s a train with square wheels, a Charlie-in-the-Box – a whole slew of toys without any children to love them or play with them. All these poor misfit souls want is to be appreciated by someone.

Now, I don’t know about you, but we have a great many “misfit toys” in our house. They come in the form of games, crafts, books and toys of all kinds that have been neglected – sometimes never even opened – due to poor packaging, forgetfulness, grandparental holiday excess or simple disadvantage compared to the charms of other toys. This summer, we’ve made it our mission to rescue them, try them out, and at least give them a fair chance to redeem themselves. Every day or so, it’s time for a new toy to do or die (or at least, move along to achieve the dream of being loved by a child somewhere else). Here are just a few of the things we found in our house:

* “Insure! The Municipal Bond Insurance Game.” Nothing says fun like municipal bond insurance. We found that the game basically consists of insuring bond issues and rolling dice for claims that never seem to actually occur (regardless of how junky the bond may be), followed by a mysterious endgame where each player gains or loses billions of dollars based solely on their number of “relationship chips” with bankers. A wonderful education into our financial markets. We kept it for the camp value.

* “Settlers of Catan.” This was a present from a well-meaning uncle, highly recommended as a great game but unfortunately requiring three players and given to us when our oldest child was 3. Turns out, it really is a great game for kids and adults aged 8 and up. This formerly misfit, dusty toy gave us two full weeks of fun. A definite keeper.

* Latch-hook kit. Could I get Kid No. 2 interested in this at Christmas? No way. Buoyed by the misfit toy initiative, however, I finally convinced her it is not in fact too hard. She got a whole week of latch-hooking in before losing interest.

* Candy-making kit. Amazingly, the tiny bags of sugar and artificial flavoring rattling around in this oversized box had neither been eaten by ants or leaked out, staining the cabinetry. That stuff has got to stay good for three years, right? We made it, we struggled to chew it, we moved on.

* Good Manners Flash Cards. Illustrated by cartoons of pigs in stylish little outfits and subtitled What to Do, What to Say, Polite Behavior Every Day, this was a purchase only a guilty mother could make. We took advantage of the summer boredom to try them out and then move them on. They will no longer be a constant reminder of my good parental intentions gone unmet.

The real key to surviving the summer with kids is to provide periodic novelty – new experiences they can fixate on as “what I did today.” Start your own misfit toy campaign and see how many weeks you can get out of it.

Rumor has it, there’s only about six weeks of summer left to go.

Deb Sweeney is an Eden Prairie parent of five children ages 6 to 13.
Deb Sweeney's column "Real Parent" runs the third Thursday of each month in the Eden Prairie News.

To view the photos and hear

Kathy Ghost hunter — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:58:06 -0500

To view the photos and hear the evps, please go to my web site. The link to this story is on the bottom of the first page.

Thank you.

Kathy Ghost Hunter

Minnesota's Beyond the Veil
http://www.freewebs.com/oldsoul/index.htm

The Global Warming

Jagu — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:21:15 -0500

The Global Warming Debate

Where do you stand on the global warming debate? And why do you believe, what you believe? Have you done the research, or have you just heard what others say?

The mainstream media, movie-makers, and politicians are certainly trying to convince Americans the global warming debate is settled.

President Barack Obama: "There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy. It's happening."

Former Vice President al Gore: "...and the reality is that scientists have been warning us, with ever-greater clarity and ever-greater urgency, that we simply must start cutting the pollution that causes global warming."

But think again. Tens of thousands American scientists don't agree that anthropogenic, or man-made, global warming is threatening society as we know it. ...

http://www.klfy.com/Global/story.asp?S=10666569

How exciting. The Today Show

Miss Mollee — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:51:03 -0500

How exciting. The Today Show is a huge stage!

Here's another good one. The

Leah Shaffer — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:44:03 -0500

Here's another good one. The pasta dish looks really tasty.

http://www.cookingfordads.net/page1/page33/page33.html

One last link: Lyng is also

Leah Shaffer — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:51:46 -0500

One last link: Lyng is also doing some promotional work related to the Ford Fiesta. Her Fiesta Movement videos can be found here

According an e-mail from

Leah Shaffer — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:46:06 -0500

According an e-mail from Lyng: "The original score will be composed by Kush Mody, a film scoring student at Berklee College of Music. Casey Carlson will be recording vocals with a local musician/songwriter for an original song to be used at the end of the film and during the credits. We have not chosen this artist yet, still in the process of deciding. The song will be produced by Ellie Bjorklund (also a past EPHS drama participant and close friend of myself, Angie, and Casey) who is currently the Marketing Director and a DJ at Radio K in Minneapolis. Casey, Ellie, and Adam will be recording the song in the fall."

Update: Here's some

Leah Shaffer — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:44:40 -0500

Update: Here's some additional information about other EPHS graduates working on the film.

Angie Voreis (2006 graduate)and Marc Van Osdale (07 grad) are both producers.

Casey Carlson, a 2006 graduate and American Idol contestant, is also doing some vocal work for the production.

Adam Voreis (2003 graduate) is the sound designer and field recordist

Peter Heeringa (2001 grad) is an actor along with Matt Kraft.

Matt Koshmrl and Scott Hamilton are both crew members and both 2005 EPHS graduates.

Click here for more photos

Leah Shaffer — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:27:48 -0500

Click here
for more photos from the Inveen garden.

Updated, corrected data from

Leah Shaffer — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:46:35 -0500

Updated, corrected data from the district can be found here.

Wow, quite the eyebrows on

markaweber — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:16:53 -0500

Wow, quite the eyebrows on that puppy. Makes her look kinda grumpy, though.

(Mark A. Weber is publisher of the Eden Prairie News. He can be reached at mweber@swpub.com.)

More photos from the event

Leah Shaffer — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:10:04 -0500

More photos from the event can be found here.

One of the staples of

ErnestoS — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:00:33 -0500

One of the staples of celebrating July 4 is fireworks shows. However, the recession is expected to see a drop in fireworks shows, and fewer sales of Fourth of July fireworks, as fewer people these days can justify spending a bunch of quick cash just to blow stuff up. (Well…some people can.) Displays at state parks and on rivers are mainstays of Independence Day celebrations, though fireworks themselves are illegal in many areas. Cities such as Colorado Springs, CO, Utica NY, Flint, MI, and many other states won't be having the municipal displays this year. Maybe next year we'll have enough fast cash to bring the fireworks shows back.

More data can be found

Leah Shaffer — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:14:25 -0500

More data can be found here

and here

The Hiawatha Bicycling Club

Leah Shaffer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:12:21 -0500

The Hiawatha Bicycling Club has a busy schedule of rides this summer.
Almost every day, there's a ride scheduled for some part of the metro. Click here
to visit the club Web Site.
Also, feel free to share some of your favorite rides in Eden Prairie.