Earlier this year, the kids agreed to cook at least one dinner per week for the family. They have chosen a number of bold recipes, including their first lasagna this week! It was delicious.
Kid Dinner Night
Category Archives: Maggie
Thanksgiving 2023
Pam and Jeff joined us for the feast. We grilled the turkey on the green egg. It came out well, but I may have been over-enthusiastic with the apple wood chips—the smoke flavor was intense.
Besides the turkey, the menu included mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green beans, and Dick’s Buried Treasure. (The latter is a delicious Stocco tradition consisting of yams, canned pineapple, and dollops of cranberry sauce.) Dessert was Sarah’s pumpkin pie and Andrew’s cheesecake.
While we were prepping the meal, the kids asked what everyone’s favorite Thanksgiving food was and what we were thankful for this year. Then they created custom place cards for each of us.💖
Grilling notes for next time:
- 300-325° on the grill is perfect
- Use fresh lump charcoal (the smaller chunks at the bottom of the bag interfere with airflow)
- Cooking time is faster than in an oven at the same temperature. The Green Egg estimates seemed spot-on. (We started our 17 lb. bird at 11:15 and it was done just after 2:30.)
- Skip the smoking chips next time. I think the basic grill flavor will be enough.
- The drippings were very dark and smoky too, which made the gravy a bit too powerful. Might be better without the wood chips. Clean the grate beforehand so none of the old char falls into the drip pan.
Saint Louis Wedding
We drove down to Saint Louis to attend Clay and Meghan’s lovely wedding. Everyone found new fancy outfits for the occasion. Oliver’s was the talk of the town.
Brandi Carlisle
Sarah, Maggie, Griffin, and I went back to the fair on Tuesday evening for the Brandi Carlisle concert in the grandstand. It was Griffin and Maggie’s first big concert, and Brandi set the bar pretty high. It was a phenomenal show.
State Fair, 2023
We love going to the fair. Even with the lines and crowds. I didn’t take many pictures, but I found this cute selfie of Sarah, Maggie, and me packed into one of the cable cars over the fairgrounds.
So Sweet it Hurts
As mentioned in the previous post, Maggie was away at camp all week. Griffin is also at camp and Sarah is out of town, so it’s just been Oliver and me holding down the fort for the past few days. We’ve had a great time.
Maggie returned yesterday. We had a lovely welcome home dinner of spaghetti and meatballs (one of her favorites). Things felt pretty normal. Watched a show. They were bickering before bed, just like usual.
Then, today, Maggie went over to her friend’s house for a few hours. When I was getting ready to drive over to pick her up, Oliver started gathering things in the kitchen. I asked him what he was doing, and he explained that he thought Maggie might be thirsty, so he was filling up her water bottle with fresh water and lots of ice. Then he packed a container of Nilla Wafers because he thought she might need a snack.
Seriously. I just wanted to hug him and never let go.
Maggie and Olive at Widji
Maggie and Olive are up north at Camp Widjiwagan this week. We just received this photo from their counselors.
Du Nord 2023
We spent the third week of June up at Camp Du Nord. It was our fourth visit to this amazing family camp on the edge of the Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota. We eschewed our tech gadgets on this trip, so we didn’t take many pictures. But it was a fabulous week of hiking, swimming, canoeing, kayaking, enjoying the arts and crafts options, and playing lots of games on our cabin’s lovely screen porch. And we appreciated, of course, the wood fired sauna with a ramp leading directly into the cool lake—the perfect way to feel refreshed at the end of a hard-working day.
For the second or third time, we got our camp reservations with the Brown family. We met them when Griffin and Gabe were in ECFE together when we first moved to Minnesota. All three kids are in the same age groups as ours, so they have a lot of fun together. (There were multiple sleepovers and late-night games.)
I always like to include a map or two because maps are cool. Obviously. This is a topo map scaled at about 8 meters per pixel (at full resolution… click on it). Camp Du Nord is along the north shore of the North Arm of Burntside Lake, north and east of the “Birch Bay” label. Sarah and I hiked out toward the pink lake on the northwest side of the map (around the red 33). Griffin’s age group canoed south into the channel that connects to the larger lake. They portaged from the channel to Chant Lake and then swam out to a small island there. (My borrowed sunglasses may still be wedged in a crevice on that island.)
As with our last visit, inkle weaving was a popular pastime for Griffin, Maggie, and Sarah. Sarah is, in fact, considering making her own inkle loom for home use.
One of the daily activities for the kids is called “Nature Notes.” They gather at 9:00 AM, before regular activities, and learn about the ecosystem around the camp. On the first day, Oliver received a “Plant Passport” with sketches of different local plants that he could try to spot in the wild. (I may have been more excited by this challenge than he was.) In the end we were able to check off all but one of the plants. We’re pretty sure that we saw that last plant, too, but it wasn’t blooming so we weren’t 100% sure. The most exciting find, especially during this hot, dry week, was a sundew that we found on a walk through a bog.
passing insects with its sticky droplets of “dew.”
As a nerdy aside, my first encounter with a sundew was in the 1980 D&D adventure, Slave Pits of the Undercity. In the adventure, naturally, characters encounter a giant variety that happily gorges itself on human-sized prey; barrels of vinegar from a nearby storeroom were required to dissolve its glue. I was surprised to learn, many years later, that sundews are both real and relatively petite.
A Doozy of a Valentine’s Day
Tuesday, February 14, began like many other Valentine’s days at the Stocco-Roy household. The table was set with a surprise for the kids. Andrew got up early to make strawberry shortcake.
Griffin awoke and was frustrated that a lingering cold seemed to be getting significantly worse. He was tired and stuffy. We had him do a COVID test just out of habit. Meanwhile, we were all enjoying ourselves.
Laughter turned to shock when Griffin’s test came up positive. Panic! Everyone else takes tests. Maggie is positive too. What? How can this be?
First COVID in our house since waaaay back in November of 2020 when Oliver tested positive. That time was far scarier, of course, because it was pre-vaccine and we thought we would all catch it from him and it wasn’t clear how bad it might be. Now, even though COVID is rather hum-drum in the world around us, it was still surprisingly upsetting. No school for the two of them. Testing every day for the rest of us. Worries about sub plans and school.
Most importantly, we had a wild weekend planned for Presidents Day: three nights at a cabin in northern Minnesota, skiing, a sauna with potential icy dip in the lake, and a dog-sledding adventure (Sandy and Stape’s awesome Christmas gift to the family).
At first we duped ourselves into thinking that we could still go as long as the rest of us avoided the COVID. Griffin and Maggie would have to stay masked, but we could avoid others until Sunday when they would be in the clear. The dog sledding was on Monday, so everything would be fine. We had the kids packing on Thursday and were getting ready to load the car on Friday when Sarah realized that she wasn’t feeling well. COVID test was negative, but she was worried.
We sat down to think it through. Instead of focusing on how to preserve our plans, we considered how we would feel if someone else showed up at Du Nord (the place with the cabins) with active COVID cases in their family. We would think they were jerks for putting the rest of the community at risk. Sigh. So, we did the right thing and cancelled the trip. (Darn golden rule…)
This turned out to be a good thing. No further COVID cases that we’ve yet detected, but Sarah definitely had a stomach bug (not fun) and Griffin’s recovery has been slow. We managed to make it feel like a staycation, complete with the kids cooking a surprise feast for us on Friday night. The menu: fresh French fries appetizer (from scratch, hot oil and everything!), pasta with fancy sauce, fresh squeezed orange/mango juice, and butterscotch blondies for dessert. There was an intention to make a salad too, but somehow they forgot that bit.
This set a great tone for the weekend, where we chilled out, played lots of games, watched some movies, and managed to do some epic cleaning of the house.
Maggie and Oliver’s First Day
Finally, the first day of school for these two big kids: 5th grade for Maggie and KINDERGARTEN for Oliver 
It’s a testament to their teachers, who they both know very well, and the school, that they were excited (and not at all nervous) to return!
