it's hard to believe but odin's 5th birthday is almost here and this year we decided to have a pre-birthday party at norskedalen, a local norwegian-american culture center, before his "real" birthday party with family in the upper peninsula of michigan.

of course, if your name is odin, you simply must play a few round of your new favorite game kubb, or viking chess, with guests!

since we usually typically are on vacation during his birthday, this was his first we celebrated with his friends and i must say that it was a bit daunting to plan a party for 15 youngsters and their parents!

i think everyone had a grand time.

odin really, really, really enjoyed getting together with all his friends and we're all super appreciative to everyone who came out and made it a wonderfully fantastic, memorable day.

you can click on each image for a brief description.

odin, somewhat patiently hanging out on the most super awesomest tree swing before his pre-birthday party with a few friends.

c'mon lazyweb, help me identify this native prairie plant on the organic valley hq grounds.

a beauty, no?

update: informed sources tell me it's an ox eye sunflower.

in addition to our home garden and employee garden, i'm also helping to maintain a much larger community garden at organic valley.

clearly, someone has a sense of humor - all the moreso when you have a lot more weeds than the chief marketing executive's plot ;-(

stress free or not, the 50 or so tomato plants in the community organic valley garden are coming along quite nicely! i think we're going to get to use the organic valley kitchen to process the bounty.

i went out to organic valley hq to tend to our employee garden and i noticed the plot maintained by theresa marquez, cropp/organic valley's chief marketing executive, was just bursting with peas.

so, i might have helped myself to a couple hundred.

just kidding, she said they were there for the taking and i was all too happy to take her up on the offer.

she has an astounding garden, and while picking peas i wondered how many chief marketing executives take the time to tend to an employee garden.

my guess is that the answer is none.

whooey, the strawberries are coming in strong!

we're going to make some mighty good strawberry shortcake for odin's pre-birthday party bash out at norskedalen tomorrow!

you can see the wall of raspberries behind him that are just beginning to ripen.

driftless locals will no doubt mourn the end of freaks of nature. check out their myspace page to listen to a few of their "...daring feats of improvisation and sonic expression."

a good time was had by all on their last occasion together. more shots here and here.

friends of the freaks might enjoy this shot from october 2006.

naturally, if you're visiting a norwegian-american culture center and your name is odin, you can't pass up the opportunity to play a game of kubb or "viking chess"!

the rules are straightforward enough - knock down all your kubbs ( wooden blocks ) without knocking down the king in the center of play.

the swede in the blue crocs was quite pleased to have odin play, although i must admit that we lost to our opponents ;-(

we spent part of father's day at norskedalen getting ready for odin's pre- birthday party and enjoyed the sights and sounds of their midsummer festival.

driftless angler was there and odin got a chance to practice his fly fishing casting skills.

it seems that his aim is true :-)

happy father's day!

and, yes, his soccer shin guards have become everyday wear.

hmmmm. odin and i were hanging out getting ready for Yet Another Bike Ride when the power went out. neighbors emerged from their houses and we all quickly confirmed that the outtage wasn't limited to us. odin and rode to a nearby intersection and a friendly police officer who was trying to guide traffic at one of 3 traffic lights in the county told us that 3/4 of the county was without power. activity from lots of fire engines and emergency vehicles reinforced the impression that Something Big was happening. reports from twitter ( and facebook ) further reinforced the impression.

reports from the local paper seem to indicate it was a localized incident.

/me wonders, what's up?

during The Nightly BedTime Ritual we often like to tell each other Tall Tales, improvising and evolving them with grander and grander plot twists.

if you're relatively new to odin's adventures, the following may seem to be just such a tall tale, but it's as True as True could be.

a few days ago i took odin to his umpty billionth eye exam and we were all quite pleased to hear that his sight has continued its gradual improvement over the past year! his eyesight is 20/30 which is almost normal for a 5 year old ( typically 20/25 ). there's even a chance that he might not need glasses, which i find hard to believe since both of his parents are nearsighted. but even more importantly, his retinas look astonishingly healthy as his eyes continue to grow, which is remarkable given all the scar tissue on his retinas from the surgery that prevented him from going blind.

and so, perhaps, five years later we can think a little less about retinopathy of prematurity. it proved the curse of the nicu to be true and caused an emergency transport to a new, scary nicu and an emergency laser surgery with 1,500 burns in each eye and innummerable eye exams with dilated pupils and bright lights shone in odin's eyes. its effects brought news of possible legal blindness and the day we thought he had really gone blind only to discover he had a late vitreous hemmorhage ( eye filled with blood ) that somehow, improbably, had no associated retinal damage.

perhaps.

after all these years, odin is not nonplussed when i sit next to him at breakfast to take a picture of him gingerly arranging his toy horses snout to snout, observing him while eating french toast.

he says, simply, "poppi, they're sweet."

i think, for a moment, of huginn and muninn.