checking out the city

We took Riley to a few of our favorite places to play in the metro. 

First day, the Children's Museum in St. Paul, of course!  We love that place!

Oh, Curious George.  I do wish Henry could sit through a Curious George book, but nope, too long yet. 

Henry was quite the hoarder at the grocery store this trip!

We had to bring them to Teddy Bear Park in Stillwater, too.  Then we snacked while seeing the sights down by the Mississippi.

This visit from Riley gave Henry a lot of, how do I say this, "learning opportunities" (to put it nicely) to SHARE HIS TOYS!  Oh man, why is that such a hard lesson to learn?!  Steph & I decided they truly acted like brother & sister this week.  I would tell Phil each night how much he simply picked on her all day (literally.....poking at her, sitting on her, stealing her favorite blanket and giggling while saying it was his blanket, and the list goes on) and Phil would feel really bad because he said he was a BIG teaser to his sisters (which he still talks about to this day, Sarah & Katie, and feels really terrible about it), so I'm going to have to blame Phil for that behavior, right?!  Of course, the day before they were leaving, Steph and I busted them playing TOGETHER like little angels up in the loft, yessssss, but then unfortunately they were leaving the next morning :(

We had so much fun, little Miss Riley!

More pictures to post from J-town.....

Miss Riley

Little Miss Riley was visiting us, along with her Mom and baby-brother-to-be, this past week.  

Whoa, were we ever busy!  

We traveled to J-town and Bismarck for a few days to see the fam :)  Henry sure thought Great Grandma's "house" (aka, the nursing home) was pretty cool because the bathroom had automatic hand dryers (LOVES them, even gets sad when we go to to a public bathroom and they have paper towels instead of dryers)!

We made a quick stop by John & Marilyn's house in Mandan, just checking out the big Missouri from the deck.

He kept spotting "Thomas and Percy and Henny" on the train tracks outside of John's house.  

"Hold hands" - he sure will hold anybody's hand (except his mother's, of course) when in a parking lot :)

Henry, why the face?  He's keeping one eye on that Great Grandma and one eye on his Mama!

I have lots more to post, will get to it soon.....

weekend in review

Aaahhh, the end of summer, Labor Day weekend.  Nothing too crazy going on around here this weekend, which was nice after a busy week with Daddy being home!  

Lots of good breakfasts as you can see by the smile on Henry's face when he was whipping up his own eggs.  That Daddy definitely does it right when it comes to breakfast on the weekends! 

A night out with the adults to celebrate Mrs. Gillespie's big 3-0!

Some good 'ol pool time with Miss Greta on Oma & Opa's deck.

As always, lots of hugging on their Oma!

Henry and Daddy had a date together at the MN Zoo on Sunday morning, followed by a delicious "hamabur and fa-fies" Happy Meal from McDonald's too :)  When they got home from the zoo, I was asking Henry all about it.

Mommy:  Henry, what was your favorite animal at the zoo?

Henry:  Ah, ah, ah, the leopards!

Mommy:  What else happened? 

Henry:  Henny was cwying (crying)!

Mommy:  Oh no, why was Henry crying?

Henry:  T-Wex burped (apparently, the mechanical T-Rex at the Dinosaurs exhibit made quite the loud "rooooaaaar" and somebody got a little scared).

Mommy:  What did Daddy do then?

Henry:  He pushed the stroller away (all smiles)!

This kid cracks me up!

  

oh no!

say it isn't so.....

.....no more swimming!  is summer really over?  

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 :(