summer trip #3 - staycation! (part #1)

The end of summer is rapidly approaching!  Being that a big remodel project has monopolized most of our time this summer (more on that soon!), we did not take a big family vacation.  But when August was on us, the stress was taking it's toll and we knew it was time to get away, even with the giant list of things to do at home.

Florida?  nope, rather the small conservatory at the Sculpture Gardens.

And while we would have LOVED to make it a tropical vacation and really get away, time and budget just weren't in favor of that (they weren't even in favor of going 2 hours north...mental note, if you want to vacation in Duluth in peak season, try to plan more than 5 days in advance otherwise all places to stay will be $250).  So S took a couple of days off to make a long weekend during a small break in the remodel project and we decided to do the staycation thing.

Which actually turned out to be absolutely wonderful.  We are fortunate to live just north of the cities with all sorts of museums and attractions and places to stay.  We decided to focus mostly on the south side of the cities as we don't get to that area as often.  We spent the earlier part of the week planning a few things to do, and then found a two room suite at nice hotel with a pool close to the airport (another mental note, we will totally do that again as the kids loved watching all the planes and being that we live near a train track the noise did not bother us one bit) for a very decent price, made reservations for Thursday night and planned to start our vacation Thursday morning.

Then life happened.  Thursday morning came, S had to go into work, I had nothing packed, and C broke a crown off one of his front teeth and we had to wait to get into the dentist.  While it would have been great to get a start on having fun right away, we realized that this was supposed to be a weekend about relaxing together as a family and that meant going with the flow.  So S cleaned up stuff at work, I packed, we took C to the dentist, and headed off from home barely in time to beat the rush hour traffic.

First stop:  supper picnic in the Sculpture Garden at the Walker Art Center  We had such a great time exploring all the different sculptures on a beautiful evening...makes us wonder why we don't do this more often as it is just 30 minutes from our home.

kids loved the Spoonbridge and Cherry and had fun burning energy by running around the pond where the bridge sits

that was where we decided to have our picnic too, and REALLY started relaxing

We enjoyed all the native plants and flowers in the Arbor Garden

some sculptures are meant to be climbed on, like Arikidea - S and I have pictures (somewhere) of us on this in college

We then ventured on to our hotel and settled in.  Kids had fun watching air planes on our balcony before bed!  But to bed we did go as Friday we had a big day planned at the Science Museum of MN!  We actually bid on and won tickets to the museum at the charity auction for G's school back in May, so it was fun to use them over this weekend.  And the guy who arranged the tickets for us threw in Omni-Theater tickets for S & I, so we played tag team parenting and each got to watch the Mummies movie on the big Imax screen. 

driving the big tug boat

building a dinosaur skeleton

family picture after our picnic outside the museum

this air stream machine probably impressed the kids the most throughout the day...well, what kid wouldn't be - they got to play with a ball and it "magically" stayed above their heads!

The kids loved the mini-golf addition to the Big Back Yard.  We maybe should have timed our game a little better as it was the hottest and most humid part of the afternoon, but expensive smoothies from the lobby afterwards cooled us all off nicely!

Up next?  Swimming at the hotel pool!

they are not the least bit excited, can you tell?

Saturday morning we decided to head for Como Park Zoo and Conservatory.  We know this zoo well, so we just planned on making it just a short trip as to avoid the worst of the heat and humidity in the afternoon.   And we had a great morning and saw all the animals and plants at a pretty quick pace (which the kids didn't seem to mind at all), and we also took in the Sparky the sea lion show which we have not seen before. 

clapping for Sparky!

getting a very close up view of a polar bear in the new polar bear exhibit

G was excited to see the Galapagos tortoise, as their school studied the Galapagos islands and Ecuador last year.

G was also excited to go through the rain forest exhibit as they also studied rain forests in kindergarten, but this pregnant momma let Dadda take them through...yeah, the humidity was so high in there they walked through fog!

I took them to the sunken gardens in the conservatory while S got the van.  So pretty!

We knew that it would be too hot for any outdoor activities Saturday afternoon, so we headed for the giant Mall of America and visited the newly renovated and renamed SEA LIFE Minnesota Aquarium, which is famous for its underwater tunnels with sharks and fish swimming all around you.  We purchased a year pass to this with Christmas money, and have enjoyed visiting it every couple months or so (visitors get in for half price with us so let us know if you want to come with us sometime!).

looking at the swimming manta rays through the "glass floor"

the new touch and feel pools were a big hit too

I haven't figured out yet how to get decent pictures in the tunnels, but we may go again a time or two before the year is out!  After the mall we retreated back to the hotel for pizza in our room and Shaun the Sheep on Netflix. 

More on the last day of our staycation in the next post!

sneak peek...

There is a lot of clean-up and organizing and a few major things left to do before it is done, but here is a photo from supper tonight...

summer trip #2 - Brookings...

Brookings is also near and dear to my heart.  We spent 4 years there while Steve got his doctorate at the pharmacy school.  It was our first real home away from parents and college.  Steve had a good experience with schooling, I loved my trust accounting job at the local bank, and we made a lot of wonderful friends that we still keep a connection to today.  Plus it was a small town feel but big enough with the university to have many conveniences as well as a wonderful arts scene which we loved.

Towards the end of July, S had a big inventory weekend at work.  It meant that he would have a big day of work on Friday followed by an 8 to 10 day on Saturday with follow-up Sunday morning.  He has these two times a year and I always try to find something to do with the kids during those weekends, whether it be playdates with cousins, visits from / to grandparents, or just a special trip to a museum or park with supper out.  On this particular weekend, I decided to pack up the kids and head for Brookings, to spend time with dear friends and also take in their newest addition to town, a Children's Museum.

Friday night we settled in by A's condo and had pizza.  Saturday we spent the whole day at the Children's Museum and had supper with A's son and wife and their new baby.  Oh and went out for ice cream and S and my favorite place, Zesto's!  Sunday we attended church (and Aahma and Boppa R drove up to go to church with us!), ate out for dinner and headed home.  So it was a whirlwind trip, but so worth it to catch up with good friends and enjoy summertime in Brookings.

(and DO stop by the Children's Museum of SD if you are ever in the area!  It easily rivals big city children's museums, if not out-does them!)

One of the museum's most famous attractions, a life-sized T-Rex!  The loud roars and animation were too much for my dinosaur loving 4 yr old though...=)

There is also a T-Rex baby, who also roars and comes out of her cave.

The outside play area of the museum is a fabulous prairie style play area with all sorts of fun things, like a giant nest to pretend to be birds in.

There was an outdoor kitchen and table...

A stream with rocks to explore...

And of course a splash pad!

This happened to be one of the hottest and most humid days of the summer so far, so getting completely soaked felt great for the kids!

And one bonus about such a lovely Children's Museum in a small town?  After getting soaked outside in the morning, we could go back to A's and change clothes, eat lunch and catch a nap and then go back to the museum to continue exploring for the afternoon!

playing in the music room (complete with life sized SDSU marching band on the wall!)

playing with the sand art table

the grocery store was a big hit as always, and I loved how everything in this one was from Hy-Vee!

there was a big exhibit on different houses/homes

And this cloud sculpture that you could climb to the ceiling on was fabulous!

there was also a great view of the T-Rex's from inside

But while the museum was a great part of the weekend, I really made the trip for these special people.

Baby D!!!  We loved meeting this 3 month old sweetie and catching up with his sweet parents, S & C

And a big thank you to these lovely ladies (and wonderful "aunti's"!) for such a great weekend.  Love you both!

summer trip #1 - family...

Family is very near and dear to my heart.  I love spending time with anyone in our family, and so I was looking forward to our vacation at the end of June visiting my immediate family on the farm, and also attending the first family reunion on my mom's side at Inspiration Hills Bible camp.  This week turned out to be a huge blessing with lots of quality family time and a lot of fun too.

Highlights from the farm included:

• spending a lot time with our whole immediate family (L&J being able to come out in the evenings, and M&A&E traveling up from NE for the week too)...we haven't done a lot of that without events or holidays in the mix, so it was great to just relax together
• campfire!
• celebrating W's birthday with a fabulous blue dinosaur cake made by Auntie J (pictures here)
• helping Dad install a huge farm history display rock at the end of the driveway
• Farming Family Fun Night!...supper out at Lange's and family pictures to follow on a beautiful evening

Highlights from the reunion included:

• being able to connect with cousins and aunts and uncles that we haven't seen in a while (and feeling like we were caught up with immediate family from our time at the farm so we didn't just hang out with them the whole time)
• (lowlight of W getting sick, but he recovered Saturday afternoon and was able to have fun the rest of the time)
• golfing for S
• silly family team games (I usually hate these, but oh it was so much fun and good bonding time...now I know where some of our childrens' competitive spirit comes from)
• impromptu talent show (kids' acts stealing the show!)
• Rook
• story-time with M&A (M&A, hope you don't mind me signing you up for that, I love listening to your read as much as our kids do!)
• 25 out of 34 members of the K side being able to attend (including 8 children ages 5 and under!)
• A 14-player Scrabble game where we took out the blank tiles and gave each player 7 tiles - only 2 tiles were not able to be laid

On to a lot of pictures:

Dad entertaining all his grandkids with his iPhone

campfire on the farm (notice how wet the fields are?)

M & S helping Dad install the big rock at the end of the driveway

M & A & baby E posing by the rock

the kids love being on the farm

no, this is not a game of chicken, just a little fun while...

...these guys set up...

*...a great family picture!

high fives during family team games at the reunion

*S looking for the bubblegum in a plate of powdered sugar

little C helping with the popcorn game (he still talks about "poptorn on my FEET")

*the kids sang the Grizzly Bear song during the talent show and took part of a 3-way tie for first place!

storytime with M & A every night...the adults enjoyed it as much as the kids did!

G and E had fun in cutey-patootie matching pj's!

my contribution was a craft for the kiddos on Sunday - we made tumble bunnies and raced them

by the end of the weekend, the kids needed some down time with a movie, and cousin G was more than happy to find one on her laptop and join right in

I think this is one of my favorite picture ever

fabulous first Kole family reunion!

so the B family DOES have a garden this summer...

Even with all the choas around our house this summer (more on that later), we did decide to plant a garden!  The annual garden planting holiday in my family is always Memorial Day.  The frost is officially out of the frozen tundra yet there is still enough time to grow most garden variety plants and get a good harvest.  And this works well for us since S always has Memorial Day off!  Well, we did plant on Memorial Day, but I have no pictures.  So fast forward a month to these July 8 photos and I will give you a little garden tour...

Beans!  I went a little overboard and planted 3 big rows of beans.  And our ever present rhubarb plants which we enjoyed a lot of strawberry rhubarb sauce from this year.

3 roma tomatoes, 2 peppers (possibility of green, red or yellow...one died I didn't remember which one!), and a packet of morning glory flowers thrown under the windmill (which started climbing all on their own!)

butternut squash, zucchini, cantelope, watermelon

S got a new used mower last fall (our reel one couldn't handle the leaves on the ground), and it has a bagger, so for weed control, this year we are going with grass clippings.  And I will say after 2 layers, it is working splendidly!

We also picked strawberries this season too already.  I was hoping for the bounty of last year (30 jars of jam and 8-10 quarts frozen smashed ones), but it was not to be this year.  So goes life with farming though...it has been a tough spring and early summer for all farmers and our prayers and support are with them!  We headed out to our local berry farmer on July 4 (along with every other family in the city it seemed like!), and picked delicious yet raspberry sized small strawberries.  We picked for over an hour, but only got enough berries for a flat and a half.  We still had fun though! 

G thought we should all wear our sombreros (is it wrong to wear sombreros on July ? =), but only Dadda joined in on that one...

...and the novelty wore off fast and they switched to their sun hats soon enough.

2 1/2 hours of cleaning strawberries later, we had a wonderful berry fool to eat and 3 precious quarts of smashed strawberries to put in the freezer.

Well all the prayers of the farmers were heard and this July we have had some hot and incredibly humid weather!  Not good for pregnant ladies, but awesome for the fields and also for our garden. 

Look how much it grew in just 2 weeks!  Small fail from farm-girl, I totally planted my bean rows too close.

what the kids are most excited about in our garden...

... and one of the things I am most excited about in our garden!

Here's to a bountiful harvest for farmers on all scales!

introducing baby b...

I am at 21 weeks with Baby B, and that means an ultrasound!  Last Friday, S and I and the kids headed off to the new clinic and hospital in MG to have an ultrasound and get a tour of the hospital that Baby B might be delivered at (our midwives deliver at 2 locations now, so we need to be familiar with both).  The ultrasound was fantastic.  I was extremely nervous going in, but as soon as they turned our monitor on (ok super fancy place - the nurse had a computer and then we had a flat screen monitor on the wall for us to watch on!) and we could see the little one wiggling about, my heart settled down and we just enjoyed seeing our very active little baby evading the ultrasound tech trying to take their picture. 

The kids really got a kick out of it too.  They were all in awe looking at the screen, especially looking at the profile because you could really tell it was a baby!  Their attention span of course was pretty short, but they did great just playing during the rest of it.  G would come back to the screen quite often and ask S what they were looking at now.  And she wanted to know where the placenta and umbilical cord were too! =)  A highlight for all of them though was after the very nice technician took the above picture, she asked how to spell each of their names and changed the "Profile" caption to "Hi G!", "Hi W!" and "Hi C!" and printed a personalized picture for each of them.  They held on to those pretty tightly the rest of the night, especially C.

After all measurements were taken and everything looked at possible, apparently Baby B joined their siblings in getting a little bored with the ultrasound (hence the yawn =) and we were done.  G checked the monitor and exclaimed "You took over 100 pictures!!!  If someone took 100 pictures of me I would be super tired of it."  Oh, and just so you all know, we are going to be surprised about the sex of the baby like we were with all the other kids.  It is such a fabulous moment at birth to find that out, and even though I waned a little bit and wanted to find out with this one, S talked me out of it pretty quickly.  I told him it was a good thing I am a sucker for tradition...

Everything looks really good with Baby B as shown on ultrasound, which we are so very thankful.  And we are overwhelmed by His goodness and power in creating this perfect little one pound person growing inside me.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow!