As Long As My Family Tree Forks!

Sunday afternoon we came home from Bowdon, North Dakota, where every two years about a hundred people related in some close or distant way to the family Kleinsasser (rhymes with "flying saucer") originally come from southern Russia assemble at that town's Community Center for two to three hours of fun, food, and fellowship. After about the fifth person I introduced myself to for politeness, I got fed up with answering how I'm related -- if I recall right, Martha's great-grandmother on her dad's side married a Kleinsasser and considered writing it down on a back name tag that way I saw another man do! And if you're a Minnesota Vikings fan, follower, or hornhead, you may recognize Jim Kleinsasser who played for them for twelve years -- he was there. I remember Carter and Kathe his mom and dad were among those there (and stuffed!) too. I wanted to fall asleep in the car on the way home with Martha driving the kids and I, but I couldn't bring myself to nod off.


Six days after being born, Avery Marie Zietz won her first drawing!


At the reunion we had a drawing for two homemade quilts and she won the first. AND already our great-niece's grown at least a quarter-inch longer than she was at birth, so she's twenty inches long as I write this. After Martha, Sarah, Jeffrey, and I got home we started to assemble bedframes that we'd paid for at Kmart on layaway for the kids. With extended family help ... let me see, by the time we were done Lesa, Mary, Robert, Sharon, and the four of us were circulating up and down the stairs and assembling these bedframe the directions said should take two people an hour to assemble (though a third could come in handy). After basting until we fixed the tripped circuit for upstairs in the basement and deciding to work on one frame at a time until reinforcements showed up -- Martha and I need work on our communication skills -- and getting screws to enter in where the threads were, we got the frames together and the kids slept on their mattresses there for the first time in years! 


Sarah and Jeffrey hadn't had bedframes and mattresses, just mattresses, since the FEMA trailer.


Friday night the kids came back home from camping at Totten Trail with their grandparents. (Robert and Sharon are the grandparents, let me not lose you.) After Martha and I enjoyed an anniversary dinner of oven baked pizza at The Starving Rooster -- great stuff, just keep in mind when you order a pizza with garlic you'll get miniature garlic cloves on it! -- we headed out to Margaret's house where she and Milton were bringing the kids to meet us. It was only the second time I'd seen Avery live since she was born, and like I said she's gotten bigger. Her mom our niece Breanna is doing a great job breaking into motherhood, and she looks SO different now that Avery's out of her! And it hasn't even been a week. Sarah and Jeffrey got to hold her as well, and then we brought them home and properly collapsed. I hate that Martha for now doesn't get to sleep in like the kids and I do on Saturdays -- they wanted to sleep on the couch and were out until ten in the morning!


I was up a few hours before.


And while the kids were out of town last week, I got word of a Where's Waldo search going on at twenty-five area businesses. The Waldo figures are hidden in various locations at said businesses and all wearing construction hats, and as the kids enjoy this I got extra "passports" for them and I to have stamped at each location where we found Waldo. So it's The Great Waldo Hunt going on in Minot until the end of the month, and by the time we finished Saturday we found 11 of them. Find between twenty and twenty-five and we get entered into a prize package drawing, and some of them are really tricky! One blended in with a similar-colored background and we'd nearly given up before we found it, and another was in the back pocket of a purse facing away from the entrance so you'd have to walk around and around to find it, and another I had to stare across the room to see it at my eye level so the kids probably would not have seen it!


Eleven down, fourteen to go if we want them.


After lunch that day, Martha soon came home and we went to see her Burger King co-worker's child born that morning, first name Heavenly. From there we went to our nephew Trevor's fifth birthday party -- the party was Saturday, his actual birthday's today -- at his mom Lesa's house and with Trevor's older brothers and extended family (you've seen them in here) had fun with an inflatable pool and hot dogs off the grill! Also I've learned how to operate a Keurig coffee maker without adult supervision (baby steps, David, baby steps) and this morning after the kids' first sleep with their new bedframes which we would have surprised them with when they came home from camp but that didn't happen, we had to schedule a doctor appointment for Sarah because she's not been as tip-top as we would like. But that is a story for another day ... and provided I'm still able to type out a post, that other day will be tomorrow.


So stay tuned!


David