Christmas Letter

We go our separate ways

This weekend the family will be heading to Welch for the 7th race of the MNSCS season. Hopefully I will have better luck this time. The last race I blew out my front tire for the second time this year. I did manage to switch wheels and finish the race, but my time was over 1 hour behind the first place rider. Oh well, at least I got a good trail ride in. After the race Andrea and the kids will make there way to Breezy Point for a weeks vacation. I might head out to Afton after the race and turn a lap or two to get ready for the 24 Hours of Afton in a couple of weeks.

Because of work obligations I will be unable to go up to Breezy Point with the family this year. Andrea, however, is always up for anything and will be going up with the kids to fight for sleeping room. Early in the year the plan was to get a second condo unit and have a nice end of the summer vacation with the entire Cielinski family. As time came and went, however, it became more and more evident that finding an open unit was not going to happen. Therefore, 12 people with 2 under the age of 1 will be sharing a two bedroom condo. Not for the faint of heart. I just hope everyone is tired enough to sleep well. It looks like the weather is supposed to be warm so hopefully the kids can hit the pool fairly often.

Devons Birthday Weekend

It is funny how just about everything our family does in some way involves bike or biking now. Now that my wife is just as addicted to the sport as I am things have changed. In the past loading up the poor minivan with all the bikes and stuff for a weekend intended for a birthday party at the wife parents would have been shunned. Now it is my wife that is suggesting trail rides with the family on days when we can fit it in.

We have family comming over Saturday night for Devons sixth birthday. Because Andrea's mom works late on Saturday we typically have the part at their house so she doesn't miss much. Location wise it is not too far to drive for my brother and parents so everything works fine.

The plan for biking looks like this. Saturday morning Hillside, Sunday morning long road endurance ride, and Monday we might take the entire family to Lebannon Hills. It has been a long time since we have road Lebannon and the beginner loop would be fun for the kids, minus Jordan - who can handle just about anything thrown her way. I have dreams of how good she is going to be, last week she finished 2nd out of 7 in the citizen class for the 10-18 age group. She can easily hold her own with kids nearly twice her size.

Well got to go, the van is packed and we need to get a quick bit to eat before we hit the road to the twin cities.

So we go our separate ways!

Because of coaxing from my wife I will be spending the weekend without her over Mother's day weekend. Jordan and I will be heading up to Maplelag Resort in Calaway, MN for the UCI spring opener. The past two years we have races at the Laddie's Loppet typically the last race in the MNSCS (now second to last) series. Jay Richards always puts on a great event despite the fact that the last two years the weather has been less than spectacular (raining and cool). I love riding the course at Maplelag. It is probably the most technically demanding course in the series and despite the fact that there are no extended climbs is physically very demanding.

Andrea is going to her parents in the Twin Cities for the weekend to visit her two sisters (and new babies). Her sisters drove in from Kansas City midweek and are staying through the weekend. I don't know the entire plan, but I did hear something about Como Park on Sunday. Andrea is planning on riding Hillside this weekend and fortunately the spare set of "feet" for the Thule rack fit the Saturn nicely. Therefore, after the race tonight I have to pull off the rack from the van and set it up on the Saturn for the weekend.

Race Weekend and Mother's Day Celebration all in One

This weekend we head off to Mankato for what looks like mayhem at the Mud Madness. Since the following weekend is Mothers Day and Jordan and I are going to be up at Maplelag, we decided to celebrate Mothers Day this weekend. We have a hotel booked in Mankato for Saturday night. Jordan has a soccer double header in Waconia starting at 8:00 AM Saturday morning and after that we will go down to Mankato to do some shopping.

Made it back home allbeit a little late

The remainer of the weekend was fairly unaventful, but that's fine with me. I took the kids with me to look at cargo trailers for the upcommng MTB season, however, they were all closed. They must be controlled by the same rules as those for car dealerships. We had some time so we stopped at Erik's bike shop for a little while and then made a pit stop at Burger King for a few treats and time to play time.

I got the van packed up and kids ready so we could leave right after dinner. The ride home was fairly calm except for Wyatt and Devon who really wound up for some reason. They didn't last long and were fast asleep after about 45 minutes. By the time we got home all the kids were drooped over in there seats. It would have been nice to get home a little earlier so we would have some time to put things away and relax a little before trying to go to sleep.

Matt

I love unsecure wireless connections!

It gives me a chance to keep up on the various forums and make changes/additions to my blog site while at my wifes parents (they have dial-up). I got a chance to see Ester for the very first time this evening, she is a beautiful little girl. Not yet 10:00 PM and mom and baby have gone up to bed, boy do I remember those days. There were at least a couple years of my life (over the 4 kids) that I simply do not remember due to lack of sleep. Your body/mind has a way of blocking out those tramatic times in your life. Levi Jamie's little one is no longer so little nearly 17# and not yet 5 months old. I think it is remarkable how much a baby can schrunch up there face, without even thinking about it.

The ladies are starting to hang twirly things up in the living room. I think this is my cue to go find something else to do. As always there will be pleanty of food around and I will do my best to not get carried away with the eating.

I have an early morning bike ride tomorrow morning, we will see how that goes. Later in the day during the shower the plan is to take the kids out for lunch and then a movie. That should be really fun.

Baby Shower this Weekend

This weekend we are traveling to Andrea's parents for a baby shower for her two sisters. She is in charge of games and refreshments (Andrea correct me if I am wrong). I am going to go homer early today after my 1:00 PM meeting to help pack up the car and go to Devon's school conference. With any luck Adam will stop by early to pick up the twins and we can get on the road before it get too late.

Blog Updates!

I am in the process of performing a great deal of updates to our blog. I have revamped the structure and created a new "Main" page; Although it is hard to believe, but our family does have other things going on besides mountain biking. I also helped Jordan start a blog page for herself. She did not have much to write about, but that will come as she becomes more comfortable typing on a computer.

I started uploading images into various galleries and they are linked on the main page at the right. It took a little while to find a freeware program for performing a batch size reduction on the images; reducing them from approx 4 MB to 100 KB. Soon to come are the images from our recent trip to Arizona. We took pictures of the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Tucson, Phoenix, and various national monuments.

I am also in the process of populating and linking a couple of calendars to our site so I have a way to check and update our schedules

Resuming the weekly Thursday Lunch

Because of the past trip and subsequent snow days, the past three Thursdays have not worked to go out for lunch. I find that I eagerly look forward to the nice relatively quiet lunch dates with my wonderful wife and "wildman" Wyatt. We haven't yet decided where we will be going but it is between the following two.

Taco John's is a little closer and more convient for me to get to and from work, but Wyatt likes to play and it gives Andrea and I a chance to relax and talk for awhile while he plays; it's a toss-up either way.

Just called Andrea, Mc Donald's it is. Although, I will be a little late due to a communication meeting at work and Andrea needs to leave in time for a dentists appointment at 1:00 (yuck!).

We will get this populated soon!