As journalists, we rely on open government and freedom of information principles to keep the public informed about its government. Sometimes, we are met with roadblocks.
Sunshine Week, which is spearheaded by the LifeEnterprise News Leaders Association, champions open and transparent government at all levels. That means from the local school board or city council meetings, to the emails a state representative sent that supports a bill, all the way up to the President at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C.

If gratitude can seep into your blood, my February blood donations are brimming with it.
My daughter Anna required multiple blood transfusions during her open heart surgery, a a procedure she underwent when she was just seven months old.
So, if my blood donation day happens to fall in February (the month her surgery took place), I dedicate my donation to my now 12-year-old daughter, her skilled surgeon, and those amazing anonymous people who donated the blood that saved her life.
I became a regular blood donor last year.

I was venturing back through some of my first columns and came across this Schneid Remarks from 1990 when I worked at the Waseca County LifeEnterprise News. I actually thought it was quite funny.
I wrote this column about the art of refereeing basketball, something which I have always had a frustration with. Since playing high school and college basketball, and now reporting on the sport, I have grown to appreciate what referees have to go through.

Driving my kids to school one morning, and my fourth grader reports from the back seat:
“Mom! ‘Bob’ and I were talking, and he told me that his mom is going to drive him to and from the field trip next week because he gets sick when he rides a bus. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!” my little redhead spouted in utter disbelief.
A quick glance in my rearview mirror revealed her mouth hung wide and her eyes lit up in shock.

As my family gathered for dinner the other night, we noticed we were one cat short.
Usually, our three felines join us.
Honey, our big orange boy, stretches out to expose his great, wide fluffy belly near 12-year-old Anna’s chair.
Penelope, our sassy, but sweet little tortie, will try to sneak her way onto 9-yearold Ellen’s lap or will spend dinnertime weaving between our chairs, looking for dropped morsels.

I was having an in-depth discussion with a long-lost friend of mine the other day.
We were talking about goofy things which people probably scratch their head about for hours.
He showed me a website which includes many of these wild realizations people have on buzzfeed.com Here are some of my favorites to get your brain waves working…
"The best part of a cucumber tastes like the worst part of a watermelon.” I personally don’t agree with this one.
"Drinking water with a minty mouth is the cold version of spicy."

Are my kids the only ones who forgot how to act in public?
It has been months since the COVID lockdown guidelines were lifted, but I still find myself having to retrain my offspring on the basics.  It’s baffling, frustrating, and a bit hilarious.
Last weekend, my family of four ventured to Kohl’s and Target because 9-yearold Ellen needed a few things for camp.

As I sit at my desk at 7 a.m. Monday morning I started to tear up a bit. One because I was up this early after Bullhead Days and two because of a special event which is about to happen in our family.
The following day, Tuesday, June 15, is/was our son Jayson’s 21st birthday.
There are so many milestones in a person’s life and it seems as if this is one of the last ones which gets a dad a little bit sentimental.

My kids are ready, but this momma is still marking up the color-coded calendar and trying to figure out the logistics of getting everyone everywhere they need to be.
I’m excited for my girls to participate in swimming, soccer, tennis, and volleyball, plus a babysitting clinic and a few other activities—all good things.
But, what working parent can get their kids to a 10 a.m. event every day for an entire week and then be back two hours later to shuttle them home?
I get it.
It’s summer. Kids don’t have a schedule per se.

I have been a huge music enthusiast ever since I got that first transistor radio when I was six or seven years old.
As I got older, my music boxes continued to get bigger and louder. The transistor just didn’t cut it. So I got another radio, which had not only a large speaker in it, but you could also play cassette tapes in it.

We missed Easter this year. Well, most of it. My family of four (my husband, John, daughters Anna, age 11, and Ellen, age 9, and myself) recently spent a week in Florida with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s family of five. They have three kiddos—ages 7, 5, and 3, and one more on the way. Basically, the Ingebrands invaded Florida.

“Spring has sprung. The grass has riz, I wonder where the birdies is?”…so goes the old saying. Apparently, there are several versions of this as well as a longer poem. Everyone of a certain age seems to know this saying one way or the other, and it is recited as soon as it feels like spring.
It sure has felt like spring here and there over the last few weeks, with the usual snowstorm thrown in, just in case we forget we live in Minnesota. “It must snow on the robin’s tail three times before spring can begin” is another often-quoted tale.

I wanted a unicycle.
I was 10 years old and wanted nothing else—just a unicycle.
I begged for one for my birthday. Begged.
I cut a picture of one out of a magazine and dreamed of riding the darn thing around my driveway.
I would have been so cool.
But, instead, I got a pogo stick.
My parents were “concerned” I’d severely injure myself learning how to ride a unicycle, but for some reason… a pogo stick was “just fine” in their minds.
I was not pleased when I unwrapped the pogo stick.

I wanted a unicycle.
I was 10 years old and wanted nothing else—just a unicycle.
I begged for one for my birthday. Begged.
I cut a picture of one out of a magazine and dreamed of riding the darn thing around my driveway.
I would have been so cool.
But, instead, I got a pogo stick.
My parents were “concerned” I’d severely injure myself learning how to ride a unicycle, but for some reason… a pogo stick was “just fine” in their minds.
I was not pleased when I unwrapped the pogo stick.

So now that the snow is gone for now, how many of you have started cleaning up your yard? Obviously this column was written before Monday…UGH
This time of year it is always interesting to see what you were not able to get to before that first snow fall.
As I was walking around our home the other day I realized either I was very lazy earlier in the year or the snow came too fast to pick items up.

Daylight saving time has returned, prompting many to celebrate with an eye toward warmer temps and the change of seasons. As if on cue, this is a great time as well to celebrate newspapers and the sunshine they deliver to all of our lives and communities.
Reminding citizens and public officials about the public’s right of access to government information is the focus of “Sunshine Week: It’s Your Right to Know,” March 14-20. At its foundation, Sunshine Week underscores preserving the free flow of information for an open, effective and accountable government.