The Potgieters in Minnesota – see a small window to our lives below
Sneak peak! This is the behind of the new ram in my garage!
Yes, the lease of our big conversion van expires soon and we decided to change to a minivan – A Dodge Grand Caravan (a ram is the symbol on the Dodge’s nose).
Photos as soon as I take it out the garage in daylight!
Just a day or two before Christmas we had a flurry or two, just to put a
slight dusting of snow on the ground and placate the many people who were
clamoring for a white Christmas. And Ouma Marie had to contend with that.
It has now officially been declared the fifth driest winter ever and it is
starting to hurt the economy – there are many businesses who rely on skiing
and ice fishing and all the many outdoor activities of Minnesota that
relies on there being snow on the ground.
And to cap it all, we have just busted all records for 7/8 January – at
12ºC each day it is the warmest it has ever been on each of these two days.
Yesterday was also the earliest that it has ever reached 12ºC (54ºF) in a
calendar year.
Most Minnesotans are smiling and enjoying the balmy weather – there are
motorcycles on the road and cars are getting washed (not always possible at
the -10 – -15º that it should be this time of year). But the rest of us (I
call us the romantics) are lamenting the absence of at least a foot of snow
at this time of year.
According to the predictions, however, this is the last day of summer –
tonight and tomorrow or temperature will drop with more than twenty degrees
C and for same days we will be back to normal. This cold front falling
down on us from Canada, will hopefully bring some snow as well!
A new magic has entered our lives in the shape of Gina’s porcelain Christmas decorations. There is the little Bethlehem village (above our fireplace), the nativity set (to be set up tomorrow) and this, the little American town buildings with a train running round the outside.
Looking out the window we can see the neighbour’s giant lit-up Christmas tree and our own white Christmas lights on our front schrubs and inside in the big window of the stairwell is a big lit up cross and the bannister inside has a rope of multicolor lights wound round it leading up to out own indoor Christmas trre on the landing. Magic!!
Without too much warning we had the first accumulating snowfall of the winter in the early hours of yesterday morning. Enough for me to scrape off the driveway (if you ride over it, the snow gets compacted and melts onto the tar and is then very difficult to remove all winter).
Not only was the snow a very welcome sight, it had the added benefit that I could see the tracks of a rabbit in the front of the house. I assume it is the same rabbit that visits the front of the house most early mornings (at least in winter when I can see the tracks) for the past three years.
When Toughee killed a rabbit in the back yard three weeks ago, I feared that I would see the tracks no more..! But my old friend seems to be doing its early morning rounds once again!
At least the snow made it a bit more real for our visiting Ouma to think that it is -15ºC outside while she wears just a normal light jersey inside.
…in a snowless Minnesota. Her two grandchildren was in seventh heaven.
No snow for the snowmonkeys yet at the zoo – it seems a while yet before these Japanese animals can enjoy the snow and very cold weather of Minnesota.
Arrival at the Zoo
Not that we went to see the snowmonkeys – I joined Wilhelm and 35 other kids from his school on their field trip – as chaperone. It was I, the young guy who teaches them science and three moms. The whole experience was led by two zoo staff and was billed as the Aquatic Experience Overnight.
Yes, we slept at the zoo! But more about that later.
The security and safety officer and two of the mother-chaperones. 
This trip did its part to dispel the myth that all American children are totally ungovernable and undisciplined at school. These were normal lively and sometimes mischievous kids, but always very obedient and quiet when asked to be so. If they were asked not to knock on aquarium windows, they did not. If they forgot instructions about safety and you pointed it out to them, they listened immediately. The evening was a pleasure.
Hearing the Do’s and Don’ts. 
We all arrived at the zoo at 4.30pm – the kids directly from school. They got a half-hour talk about the rules and how the evening would be conducted and then we set off for the tropical rain forest exhibit.
In the Tropical Rainforest, listening to the diver. 
In front of the open top of the ‘shark tank’ / choral reef tank, the kids had a talk by an aquariust who told them about diving, the tank and chorals, while the chaperones were taken aside and we quickly made sure if there were any allergies or funnies we had to know about. They also told us what our responsibilities would be.
We joined the kids to go down to the passage in front of the tank (where the boys also slept). The aquariust was now in the tank in a diver’s suit and mask that allowed her to field questions asked in a microphone. 
She fed the fish and got really good questions to react to.
From there we went to one of the zoo classrooms where we had pizzas and juice – nothing remained of the 17 pizzas! Bathroom breaks were held often after the meal so that bedtime would see empty bladders and a very peaceful night for all concerned.
From now on the group was split in two and swapped between activities so that each of the instructors only had about 18 kids to talk to. They had a talk about training animals and about dolphins in front of the dolphin show tanks – no organized dolphin tricks, but very different to sit there and here about dolphins while two of them peep at you through four inch glass.
When the groups swapped, they had an activity where they were blindfolded, got little noisemakers and had to avoid a predator while trying to find like sounding fellow ‘dolphins’ (the predator was also blindfolded).
Going Behind the Scenes. 
Then we had a talk about where fish (sharks specifically) fitted into the animal kingdom and on swapping with the other half, we went behind the scenes to where the dolphin food is prepared and to the top of one of the half million gallon tanks where the public is not allowed.
Here the kids could lie prone next to the pool and peer down into the water to where huge sea turtles and moray eels swam amongst other fish.
A quick snack and half a cup of juice followed and when the groups split again, one half-learnt about the shallow tide pools and estuary pool where they were encouraged to put their hands in the water and touch whatever within reach. The sand sharks in those pools were far too clever and experienced with the visiting hordes to allow themselves to be touched, but the sea stars and anemones drew a lot of ooh’s and aaahs.
The other half each got given a T-shirt, templates and fabric crayons to decorate their own take-away t-shirts.
[Some more photos soon!]
It was now ten o’clock and we carried all our stuff to the tropical rainforest area. A pit stop was made at the bathrooms so that kids could change and brush teeth and then on to the sleeping area.
We had carpets to sleep on (a bit hard) and the girls had to sleep on a concrete floor, so they got given thin little mattresses to keep the cold away (they slept in front of the dolphin tank and had a bit of a tough time sleeping with the dolphins playing with their toys and leaping out of the water to splash back). Our sharks floated in the dark tank with absolute silence and when I woke up, one had come to rest and was sleeping ten inches away from my and Wilhelm’s faces (and the six inch glass looks only about half an inch thick).
Those sixteen boys were asleep within the first five minutes – no giggling or laughing or keeping each other awake. Just once during the night one of them wanted to go to the bathroom and I had to escort him there to make sure he could find his way and did not end up behind a self locking ‘staff only’ door.
At six we were up, quickly packed up and went past the bathroom again, this time for a fresh set of clothes and clean teeth – after breakfast their bus would take them directly to school for a normal day of academics again.
The breakfast of cereal (frosted, so no sugar needed), banana and juice went down well while the adults had the added benefit of real coffee, black and maybe bitter, the Minnesotan way.
An hour of free time was spent around the hands-on pools until the bus arrived and the zoo also started to come alive with janitors cleaning and zookeepers coming to tend to their charges.
You can see he is not a little boy any more…
Indeed no snow fell on Halloween, but it was bitterly cold and we decided to go to Burnsville Mall for the evening.
We had great difficulty to get Jacques to wear this Schreck outfit – he flatly refused and there was nothing we could do but take at least a photo of him like this.
Dressing up was quite an operation! Warm clothes for -5ºC and fancy dress do not always blend well. It is so much easier just to be the photographer of the evening.
Jacques had bought his mask and hands himself last year, but found it too uncomfortable them – this year he insisted….
In the shopping mall all the warm clothes could be shed again and stored in lockers.
Gina decided the Schreck mask was just too good to leave unused at home.
For Halloween all the stores sell candy in big bags containing individually wrapped sweets. In previous years you had to buy a bag or two of these in advance or they would be sold out. This year with the cold, it looked as if people knew there would not be many trick’or’treaters on the street and all the shops had loads of candy on the shelves even on Halloween itself.
Every event on our social calendar now seem to be in relation to Semptember 11th. I can clearly remember the Halloween last year when we were still in shock and going out on the street with the kids was almost an act of defiance to show that we are still free and would not be cowered by terrorists. Many folks sitting in front of their houses to hand out candy would remark how wonderful it was to see all the kids going from house to house with their parents.
This store owner decided to remain behind his counter to hand out candy – of course none of his exclusive expensive chocolates found its way into the kids’ bags. All the shops were mainly empty with just two or three employees sitting at the entrance to hand out candy and smile at everyone walking by.
The jewelry store was bold enough to have the kids file through their displays inside their shop – their shop layout and unexposed merchandise helped.
After walking one or two loops of the shopping center (our boys are not really into candy a lot) we went to the food court to have some cheece curds and fish and chips (‘fries’) – the cheese curds are small chunks of fresh cheese just after it hase seperated from the whey, covered in batter and deep fried!
I could not pass up the oportunity to take a photo of this brightly colored gum ball stand in the mall.
This was another shop that asked to have its picture taken – a seasonal shop that opens only for this time of the year, selling every single Christmas decoration you can think of. It really put you in the mood for the season!
Now we enter the time of fall that always drags too long for my liking: after the fall colors have peaked until the real snow comes.
The few flurries that we had earlier this month, was just to whet the appetite.
Just north of us it is cold enough and enough snow fell that they have already opened some of the ski slopes (where we had breakfast on our trip up the St Croix river to look at the fall colors).
Last night the Dalldorfs joined us for the annual pumpkin carving evening – here everything is readied before we have a hearty meal of curry and rice… and then the big carve starts!
The first thing to do is to cut a neat lid in the top of the pumpkin and then hollow it out. Wilhelm saved a lot of the seeds, so we will probably have to taste roasted pumpkin seed in the near future!
With the seed removed there remains just about an inch of flesh around the inside of a very thin pumkin skin.
Huge concentration follows as each participant transfers a pattern to the pumpkin – the paper version is taped to the now-hollow pumpkin and all the outlines are transferred to the pumkin by pricking through the paper with a sharp little instrument. Taking off the paper leaves the pumkin full of little dots and a daunting task lies ahead…
With a small miniature saw, the dots are followed and you cut out parts of the pumkin – whith the flesh nice and firm, it is surprising how thin and fine the details are that can be achieved.
While waiting for the bold carvers with the intricate designs to finish, a cup of hot chocolate and pecan pie tastes like heaven.
At last the last stragglers have cut the chimney holes in the pumpkin lids and the candles can be placed inside. A messy vegetable (without any appreciable taste) turns to magic when the lights are turned off:
Our Evening was pure fun!
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