Cousin Noah

Noah Charles Hamann arrived on Sept. 20, 2011 at 8:50 pm, lovingly welcomed by Uncle Reid and Alysha. He was 8 lbs, 2 oz and 20.5 inches long.




The boys and I couldn't wait to meet him, so after Collin's school day adjourned we journeyed to Madison on September 23 to spend the night with Auntie Ellie in her apartment. The next morning we continued on with Ellen to Plano to join Grandma Julie and Grandpa Russell and Alysha's sisters, Bethany and Chelsea, in celebrating Noah's arrival. We stayed at the Best Western Timber Creek Lodge in Sandwich, IL, and enjoyed the hotel pool, before returning to Minnesota on Sunday night.

Given the number of miles we traveled and transitions we accomplished in a very short period of time, the kids were amazing. Still a couple hours from home, the boys were stir crazy in the backseat. Road weary myself, I exited the freeway, pulled through the McDonald's drive through, and ordered 3 chicken nugget happy meals with honey. It was clear I was a rookie when I didn't know how to answer the "what toy do you want?" question. Despondent, I passed the meals, complete with the "boy" toys into the backseat. It was the best ~$11 bucks I spent all weekend...even though the backseat, along with everything in it became a sticky mess and toys were whirling around the car for the remainder of the trip.

Proud Grandpa

Auntie Ellie, holding her 6th nephew
Grandma with her Beduhn boysGrandma and Collin spent some time on Saturday afternoon building a front-end loader out of Legos.



Adam had left Thursday morning, September 22, for USTA Nationals in Palm Springs, CA. The summer team he captioned went undefeated through the regular season, Sectionals, and the first round of Nationals. The following is from an e-mail Adam sent to his team following their return from Indian Wells.

"And in the end....

Our weekend at Indian Wells was a blast and came out with a respectable 2-2 record which puts us about 7th in the nation. Not so bad. Too many matches and not enough time to do full recaps on all the matches but a quick summary was:

1) It was hot...110 degrees on court was a real factor this weekend and there was a fair amount of cramping up for players on all teams. Luckily we had three singles players so there isn't any need to sacrifice anyone and make them play two singles matches in one day...

an aside: [Adam won his first singles match, but lost the second after pulling his hammy, which required a trip to the trainer who scolded him for playing successive singles matches in the heat, especially since he was from MN]

2) Everyone played well although this group never feels that when we lose, we couldn't have played better and pulled out a win. There was some talent out there but I don't think there isn't a match that we played where we really were out of it. Had we won all our tie-breakers and super breakers, I think we would have got the wild-card spot for top 4 play-offs on Sunday so we were close."