Fun In The Sun--Oh, Wait.

So, as soon as it turned into October, the lovely Indian Summer came to a screeching halt and it started to rain and didn't stop till it turned into SNOW. Seriously. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm posting mostly because I promised Julie and because I have a ton of pictures from the past two weeks when my parents flew here to visit us, and then let me and the kids tag along with them to go visit my new niece (and her family) in Indiana. Nice sentence, huh? Anyway, I don't want to make this too huge of a post, so I'm just going to post about when my parents were here and then post about our Indiana trip later...

After a bunch of delays, my Mom and Dad arrived late Friday night, where they were greeted with much joy from the munchkins and a fresh batch of cookies! Saturday we decided to check out the Art Institute, which was pretty impressive, but one of those places that makes me feel like I shouldn't take pictures, so I didn't take too many. It just didn't seem appropriate to snap a bunch of pictures in there, but it was a cool place, and I'd like to go back without kids sometime to take it at my own pace. I always feel like I'm too vanilla to fit in, in an art museum, but I still love people watching in them. There were lots of impressive exhibits, and I think a fun time was had by all, well, all the adults. The kids kept asking when we were going to do something fun, but they were pretty well-behaved for most of the time, I thought.


After the art museum, we decided to check out the pizza place featured in the Sky Mall magazine my mom read on the plane. It was definitely worth finding it! It was totally authentic, and we had amazing pizzas and a delish salad to go with them. If you come visit, remind me to take you to Punch's Pizza. Yum! Then we went to the James J. Hill House, where we had just gone the week before for my birthday. Obviously we were impressed by it enough to go again, and it was a lot of fun to tour this amazing mansion. Check out the website to see what I'm talking about if you want--pretty cool!

http://www.mnhs.org/places/sites/jjhh/



I was planning and hoping for beautiful weather to be able to show off our new surroundings, but no. It rained, and rained, and rained. So, instead of enjoying the 10,000 lakes and many parks that go with them, we shopped. Much of Monday and Tuesday were spent in the Mall of America, which needs no introduction. Most of the pictures are from the "Underwater Adventures" place in the basement of the Mall, which was a lot of fun. Pictures in an aquarium never turn out for me, so sorry about that. You'll get the idea I think. It was way cool to be in the tunnel under the huge tank--the rays and sharks kept swimming right over us. Kind of eerie, but very cool.


The seahorses were too cute!

The "Nemo" tank...
And a bunch of mini "jellies."
And I finally got Sara to smile for a picture--in front of nothing.

Sara thinks that if she is saying cheese, she doesn't have to look at the camera. I'm working on that.

This is us in the shark cage. Probably the one and only I will ever be in.

We got to touch all these things--fun!

Horseshoe crabs...did you know they have blue blood?



The other pictures are from the Lego store, which has a "mini build" the first Tuesday of every month, so the kids got to make these adorable pumpkins for FREE--love that!


This picture cracks me up--she really looks like a lego!



And there you have it. Stay tuned for the sequel to our vacation post...