my camera is working again! (day trip to Mankato)

Remember back in May when I went on that photography trip with my friend Mary? Well, ever since that time I've had a few weird specks that have been showing up in all my photos. (Hence not posting my 4th of July camping pictures yet.) After much internet research, I determined that I must have gotten dirt on my sensor. Wah-waaaaahhh.  And after several attempts to clean it myself, I determined that there are some things (like dealing with delicate parts that can literally cost several hundred dollars to replace) that are just better left to the professionals. So I finally bit the bullet and brought my camera in for cleaning. Fifty dollars later, no more weird specks on my photos - hooray!!

I had my first opportunity to try out my new and improved camera yesterday, when we decided to take a family trip down to Mankato for the day (inspired by this article in the local paper yesterday). 

We started off bright and early around 8am, eager to put some of the 90-ish miles behind us. Our first stop was to check out "Minnesota's Largest Candy Store," because really what else would you do with a 3-year-old at 8:30am?

 Totally overwhelming. I could feel my insulin kicking in already, just walking into the store!

 Rose did an admirable job deciding what her "one special treat" would be. Mike, on the other hand, was more like a "kid in a candy shop" than our actual kid - he came out with two puzzles, three types of taffy, two kinds of licorice, and a caramel apple!

 She really wanted "a person I can eat," but settled for a chocolate turkey instead.  And wouldn't you know that our little champagne-tastes child didn't want the $2 foil-wrapped turkey, she wanted the $7 decorative turkey?! Sigh.


And then we were off again! We drove along a little scenic route (off of highway 169 for awhile), and then drove through Le Sueur. There we saw the Mayo house, the wooden Jolly Green Giant (but not the 3D statue), and a cheese factory. We were hoping to get cheese curds at the cheese shop, but it turned out to be more of just a small corner store that sold homemade pizza. Super disappointing.

Next up was Mankato! After getting a little turned around trying to find the areas mentioned in the newspaper article, we finally ended up in the "old town" area. We were expecting a touristy little area (like Northfield), but instead found just three or four little shops in the area that was clearly on the cusp of becoming revitalized but just not quite there yet.  We stopped at the local bakery since one of us was in desperate need of a bathroom break, and then felt beholden to buy something.  (Twist my arm.)

Rose LOVED her cupcake.

By then we were all pretty hopped up on sugar,  so we needed some protein and veg to give us some lasting energy. Mike did some google searching to find a brew-pub type restaurant in the area, and we ended up at the Boulder Tap House. It had pretty good food and a large selection of beers, but the cheese curd appetizer we got was a weird fried cheddar heese cube thing. Our second disappointing cheese experience of the day!

Love the light in this picture! It's so nice to have my camera back again.

After lunch it was starting to get close to nap time, so we decided to do "one last thing" before heading for home. It was such a beautiful day, so I lobbied hard for a walk in a park. We found a beautiful location that made us all happy - Rose had a playground, Mike could sit and relax, and I got to go off and explore with my camera!

 

There were "motivating" signs all over this park.

 We also explored the park a bit together.

There were two weddings going on, and Rose was enthralled by the brides and the bridesmaids in their "princess dresses." 

 We had a bit of a scare at the end of the park exploration, when we realized that Rose's doll had fallen out of Mike's pocket. We painstaking retraced our steps, and luckily found her in the area where they had been walking "off trail" earlier. Whew!

With that, we got back in the car and headed for home. We made two quick stops along the way (one to pick up a growler for Mike, and the other to check out some lake that Mike heard was good for ice fishing). Of course Rose fell asleep only about 15min away from home, but luckily she stayed asleep in the car for a full 45min sleep cycle anyway. By that time it was about 4:30pm - what a day!  I'm thankful for my repaired camera, for such a beautiful fall day, and for having such an awesome family that is willing to do crazy day trips like this with me. :)

Tall girl

Check out the outlier on that otherwise normal distribution!

Rose-ism: cheese (and ALLOWANCE!)

Sometimes when I get home from work, I am absolutely starving and just need a quick snack so I don't bite someone's head off before dinner. Rose is always up for a quick snack, so we now share in the habit of occasionally having "a slice of cheese to tide us over." (I am from Wisconsin, after all, so what else would tide me over until dinner?!)






Yesterday Mike picked up Rose at daycare and HE was starving. Rose, being the thoughtful girl that she is, suggested that they each have a slice of cheese "to tie us up."   




Ha!




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In other news, I think I've mentioned how infatuated Rose is with her magiclip dolls. She has been incessantly asking for more princesses, more dresses, more princes, more houses for them, etc. A couple months ago we started her Christmas list so we could deflect some of the never-ending begging for more, more, MORE. She is now up to 30+ entries and still counting.




So yesterday we decided to try a new approach: we instituted a weekly allowance to start teaching her the value of money. We're starting with $1 per week (seems reasonable for her age, no?), so she got her first dollar yesterday. She is SO excited about her dollar and has been taking very good care not to lose it. (Pretty impressively so, for a three-year-old!) She has been begging to go to Target to get a new doll for the last couple weeks, so I told that we would go yesterday afternoon and check to see how much the dolls cost.  I was bracing myself for the inevitable disappointment that I was sure would ensue she she realized that the dolls cost $5-7 each. What I was not prepared for was stubborn little miss insisting that we just weren't looking hard enough and surely there was a doll available for only $1. We must have spent 30-45 minutes in the toy section at Target, with her stubbornly insisting that we look harder (and ask for help!) and me stubbornly insisting that she would just have to start saving her money because EVERYTHING in the entire STORE costs more than a dollar. ARGH!




I finally got her out of there, but I still don't think she's convinced.

Brave girl (in blue)

miscellaneous photos

Man, I feel like it's just been forever since I last blogged! I guess it's been awhile since I've had some time to slow down and organize my thoughts. Gotta love a three-day weekend!! And, I suppose our six-month trial with an alternate (and horrible) internet service provider probably also played a role. So now we're back to the devil we know. Sigh. But at least it actually works. ANYWAY, here are a couple random photos from the past few weeks:

Mike and Rose each started back at school last week. Mike was in teacher training and his students all start tomorrow. Rose had one last week in preschool and tomorrow will be starting "young pre-k." In other words, she'll have this school year, then next year in "older pre-K," and then will start kindergarten in the fall of 2017! Wow.

We tried out a new grocery store this weekend, since Target (my favorite) has been out of eggs and/or milk each time we've gone for the past few months. Rose LOVED the carts at this store, but sadly it was too expensive to make it a part of our regular routine. Next week it's back to Target for us!

Finally, I've been spending a lot of time beginning to think about next summer. Now that we know she can camp (pictures still pending from our 4th of July trip, I promise!) and we know she does pretty well in the car, I think it's time we start chipping away at our goal to visit as many National Parks as possible before she graduates from high school! Assuming I can actually take a full two weeks off from work, our tentative plan is:
Day 1 (Sat): drive to Badlands NP
Day 2 (Sun): explore (hike) in the Badlands
Day 3 (Mon): explore the Black Hills (including Wind Cave NP)
Day 4 (Tues):    "
Day 5 (Wed): drive through Wyoming
Day 6 (Thurs): explore Grand Tetons NP
Day 7 (Fri):      "
Day 8 (Sat): explore Yellowstone
Day 9 (Sun):    "
Day 10 (Mon): drive north through Montana
Day 11 (Tues): explore Glacier NP
Day 12 (Wed):     "
Day 13 (Thurs): drive east through Montana to ND
Day 14 (Fri): explore Teddy Roosevelt NP
Day 15 (Sat): drive home
Day 16 (Sun):  relax at home for a day before returning to work

Any thoughts on the rough outline? Recommendations on what to see/do at any of these places? I've never done a "great American road trip" like this before, so I'm super excited to see if this is a model we can continue in future years or not.

weddings 2, 3 and 4 this summer

Earlier this summer, Rose and I went to my cousin Alice's wedding. We had so much fun, and she was absolutely enthralled with attending a real wedding. (Her dolls have had many, many weddings through the summer.) Sadly for her, she was not invited to the next two weddings on our docket, but she wasn't too disappointed when she found out she would be going to Grammy and Grandpa's instead!

Wedding #2 was for Mike's cousin Nate:

The funny story for this wedding is that cousin Emily and I were seated alone at the table for awhile while our husbands went to the bar for (lots of) beer. Then our new tablemates joined us, and they were very sweet but got confused about who we were and they thought Emily and I were married to each other. So now we refer to each other as "wife." :)


Wedding #3 was for Mike's cousin (on a different side of his family), Jessica. This one was down in Atlanta!

Mike's mecca: Bass Pro Shops

My first po' boy.

Wedding #4 was for my cousin Ashley. As you can see, Rose had a blast!!

So many Shirley Temples!!!!

Another four generation photo!

I can't believe how many weddings we've had this year! And they were all so different and all so fun. One more to go next weekend, then it's back to yoga pants and t-shirts every weekend :)

magiclips

Rose is in a hard-core princess phase right now, and lovingly collecting every "Magiclip" princess and dresses that she can get her hands on. These dolls go with us everywhere.

Not my hands.

The other day, Rose asked for a car for her dolls. Rather than spend even more money on this new collection, Mike crafted this vehicle for her:

Apparently she was disappointed that it didn't have seatbelts, but otherwise she loves it.

So when she asked for a house for her princesses, I was determined to avoid spending hundreds on a store-bought house, and instead we craft this one. Hey, it has windows and doors - what else could you ask for?!
 

:)