Keeping Busy

Still sans house.  Still living out of boxes.  Still looking forward to the day this is all a distant memory.  Still trying to keep busy while we wait...

We found a new place to go strawberry picking this year... and afterwards found out it was the same farm/orchard that my MIL (Sam and Anna's grandma) went strawberry picking at when she was young.  Strawberry picking is one of my top summer activities to do with Sam and Anna- and the fresh strawberries, strawberry pie made by Daddy, strawberry shortcake and strawberry bread that follows is a great added bonus!

 

We've spent more time at the Lake Elmo Park Swimming Pond (chlorinated and filtered water) since there have been more warm and humid days lately.  I only wish it was close enough to keep coming once we finally move into our house.

 

We took one long morning to to go the Minnesota Children's Museum.  It was a lot of fun, although pretty expensive for what I'd typically spend for a half day of entertainment for my three year olds.  Anna touched the coral snake although Sam declined.  Some of the favorite activities were moving the blocks on the conveyor belt and "making" a thunderstorm by moving clouds across the ceiling to create thunder while producing lightning. 

  (Dr. Sam)

 

We took the opportunity to use paint in the Children's Museum art room since ours is all packed up to make blow paint art.  My little artist Anna kept at it for a long time as usual.  After Sam was finished, he hunted down the letters in both his and Anna's name on the wall and built their names.  He was pretty proud to build Anna's name without any assistance.

Another big hit was watching traffic downtown through the Sky Walk.  Next time we'll just do that for free for hours and I can save the $30+- ha!

Anna got her second haircut at 40 months old to even out the long back.  After only trusting my hairstylist of over 7 years to cut my kids' hair, I tried out a kid's haircut place for the first time.  It went okay, but made me nervous to find a new hairstylist for myself in the next few months!

For the Fourth of July holiday weekend, we traveled up north to Grand Marais, Minn. (2 hours south of the Canadian border) to visit grandparents.  Sam and Anna practiced the fine art of skipping rocks while waiting for the fireworks over Lake Superior (and enjoyed popcorn eating).

We played in the river to beat the heat.

 Sam and Anna also got to go fishing again this year with their Grandpa Dan while we were up north.

 

We attempted to take the same photo in Duluth, Minn. in Canal Park as we did on last year's trip... but it was very cold and windy.  This was the best attempt before I threw in the towel:

 

 Last year's photo (yes, the same shirts were deliberate)

Other pictures from Canal Park and the Lift Bridge:

After returning from our trip I took Sam and Anna bowling.  We utilized kidsbowlfree.com and only had to pay for shoe rental.  It kept Sam's interest for a game and a half, while Anna stuck it out for the entire two games. 

 (Sam celebrating his spare- or "knocking all of them down".)

We also explored a new park, North Mississippi Regional Park on one hot morning.  I originally picked the park because it had a wading pool (plus a huge playground and sand/water feature) but upon arriving the wading pool was closed.  That was okay though, because the sand and water area kept Sam and Anna's attention for over 2 hours alone.  They didn't even want to stop once to explore the equipment behind it.