The Great Minnesota Get-Together (stay-cation, day 3)

The MN State Fair, according to Henry:  "see more amibals (animals)", "sit on tracors (tractors)", "cheese curds HOT", and "more ice coom (ice cream) please"!  

My favorite part of the fair was the Little Farm Hands exhibit.  The kiddos had to get their aprons & garden gloves on and get to work!

They had to haul their hay around in the back of their tractor/trailers (seriously, could this be any more perfect for Henry).....

.....plant some seeds.....

.....and milk their cows!  

There were a few other activities they had to complete - pick apples, get some wool from the sheep, feed the chickens and pick up eggs.  At the end, they were rewarded for all their hard work.  They got to choose between a can of corn, a box of Cheerios, or some beef jerky.  Cheerios it was :)

This was Henry's favorite part of the fair - MORE TRACTORS!  If I would have known this, I guess we could have just hit up Fleet Farm for the day, huh!?  

We did heed the warnings and avoided the swine barns, for fear of the swine flu.  There were signs all over the place recommending that children under the age of 5 not go near the piggies.   The Miracle of Birth Center is always a big hit.  We didn't get to see any babies that had been born that day, but this was a baby sheep that was 2 days old.

I definitely wasn't very adventurous with my fair-foods this year.  I stuck with my staples - cheese curds, Sweet Martha's cookies, and an ice cream cone from the dairy building.  

Cheese curds at 10:30am, yes please.  

As I sit here writing this, I just finished off the last of my Sweet Martha's cookies, and boy were they ever sweet!  I think Phil and Henry maybe only had 1 or 2 each, oops.

This is what you get when you go to the fair at 8am and leave by noon, a completely empty park-n-ride bus, the boy LOVED it!

Aaahhh, then it was time to get home for a nap.  We were all exhausted :)

Stay-cation, Day 2

On Day 2 of our stay-cation, Henry got to show Daddy all of his fav things to do at the Children's Museum.

First up, make a thunderstorm in Earth World (this involves turning a steering wheel, which then makes a cloud move and creates a thunderstorm; let's get real, the boy just loves the steering wheel).

The Rooftop ArtPark is my fav part of the museum, because you can only enjoy it during the summer.  I love checking out all the artsy things to do, while Henry loves to watch the public transportation that you can see on the busy streets of St. Paul below.  He did manage to sit down for a little bit of art, though.  Today's project - water color painting.....

.....and painting with water on rocks.

The guest of honor each Tuesday during Storytime is none other than Curious George.  Henry is quite the big talker when it comes to meeting the big monkey.  He couldn't stop talking about him all morning, but then was clinging to his Dad when they got closer, "no hugs, no high-fives."  

 After the museum, we hit up Black Sheep Coal Fired Pizza in St. Paul for lunch.  Mmm, Mmm, Good!  The servers were too kind to Henry, bringing him books to read and a "special pizza hat" too :)

Stay-cation

I have booked our social calendar this week.  I'll call it our stay-cation :)  Today's activities - a hearty breakfast at Ikea followed by a trip to the SeaLife Aquarium at the Mall of America.

Here we are at the Interactive Rockpool, where we got to touch the live starfish.  These were the instructions - "you can touch anything in here with 1 or 2 fingers" and apparently Henry heard "grab a huge handful of sand, it feels really cool!"  No, he really was gentle when touching the starfish. 

Here, it was like walking through a tunnel - this part of the aquarium was, by far, the coolest!  Henry and Dad are checking out the ferocious Sand Tiger Shark!

Henry's favorite part of the day (besides a ginormous portion of eggs at breakfast) was looking at the Seahorses, but I couldn't get any pictures because you weren't allowed to take flash photography around them :(

3 little monkeys

No 

more 

 monkeys 

jumping

on

the

bed!

Henry sure did have a good time playing with his buddies, Jack & Joe last night.

Thanks for having us over, Budija's!  

choo choo IQ

Poor Henry, that mother of his has led him astray again when it comes to his choo choo train information.  

Apparently, this guy (or at our house, the Fisher-Price little person dressed like him) is not the conductor as we've been calling him all along.  He's actually the engineer!

Fact - the conductor is the one who says "All Aboard" and loads up the people onto the train, and then he gives the OK to the engineer (this guy) to start driving the train.  Who knew?!  

Another tidbit - the choo choo trains go night-night at the roundhouse every night.  

All this wisdom was given to us at Choo Choo Bob's this morning.  We went for story-time (which we managed to stay for 1/2 of before wiggling out of our seat to go play with the trains) and then stayed to play, of course.  Choo Choo Bob's - always a good time :)

Lake Calhoun

Philip and I say that the biggest thing we miss about living right in Minneapolis is hitting up the lakes on the weekends.  We've had absolutely beautiful weather these past few days, so we went and relaxed at Lake Calhoun yesterday morning. 

This team of ducks must have smelled the Cheerios on Henry, as they swam right over when we started walking towards the water.  Feeding the ducks was, by far, my favorite part of the day!

Had to stop by the park for a little dirt-digging :)

For some reason, the boy had to kick off his shoes while snacking on those delicious & nutritious (or not) fun fruits.....total relaxation.

He said he spotted his uncle Matthias' sailboat all morning ("dat one over dare").

At the end of the morning, we had to drag him out of the sand!  Thank goodness the itty-bitty dump truck and Bobcat made the trip too, as they were busy hauling rocks and sand all morning!

Opa's boat

Thank You to Opa for taking us out on the boat this weekend!

One of Henry's latest things is giving directions as to which way you should turn, whether we're in the car, on a wagon ride, in the Burley, or apparently in Opa's boat too, he's constantly telling us "go dis way!" 

Mr. Bossy saying "go dat way"         

"now dis way" 

"go way, way, way over dare"

This loon was, by far, the highlight of the morning.  We followed it all around Coon Lake.  One of Henry's buddy's, Brennan, is quite the loon fan, so there was a lot of "baby Brennan" talk around the loon!

Watch out, who's in the control seat with Opa now?

Just checking out where all those fishies are under the boat (or simply pushing any button he can get his hands on, either or :)

Poor boy couldn't handle Opa's high speeds for a moment here :(

Thank goodness those fun fruits always make everything better!

What a fun morning we had, thanks again Opa!

good-bye Olympics

As we were watching the gold-medal Men's Bball game after breakfast this morning, I thought we'd do our final medal count for the Olympics on this last day of competition.  Here it is.....45 yellow, 29 gray, and 29 orange medals (or if you want to get all technical, that's gold, silver, and bronze).  

Well done, USA!

Henry, the next time you watch the summer Olympics, you're going to be 6 years old, whoa, that's so crazy to think!  

running mate

What's that, Henry.....you're excited about Mitt-Mitt's VP nomination?  

So is your daddy!

After the press conference was over....."more Mitt-Mitt, more Mitt-Mitt" says Henry!

Lovin' the ladies

Henry sure does have a lot of nice little girlie-friends.  A few weeks ago, he was invited to two birthday parties in one day, as baby Violet turned 1 and our neighbor, Diya turned 2!  Diya's party was at the Eagle's Nest, an indoor playground in New Brighton.  Do you think the boy loved the ball-pit?

Diya usually comes home from "school" around 5pm and it seems like we're always playing outside around that time.  You can hear her little girlie voice screaming for Henry as she's getting out of the car.  Henry then has to run over there and they give each other a great big bear hug, it's so dang cute :)

Today, he had a date with Beau at the beach by our house.  Henry met Beau at Storytime at the library, and can't get enough of her!  (I can't either, the girl still has baby-rolls in her upper arms and thighs, good lord is she cute!)

He's really making his rounds with his girlfriends, as we have a picnic-in-the-park date scheduled with Finley and her baby sister Fiona this weekend, looking forward to it!