Around the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area

Eric couldn't manage two full weeks off from work so we had to compromise.  We dropped him off at the airport and headed to our campground right outside the city.  I was a very nice area, very close to highways and shopping, but felt very isolated with all those wonderful trees!!!  (Oh, how I miss those trees living in Kansas!)

Well the kids and I spent the week doing fun things around the cities while we waited for Eric to fly back.  Our first stop was the Children's Musuem in St. Paul.  We spent the WHOLE day there exploring the 4 different levels of fun stuff to do.  They had it broken up into rooms and each room had a different theme.  The photo collage below is from the city (where my monkeys just wanted to be postal workers) and the construction site.  The constriction area was unique to us and we spent a lot of time there.  Kids moved foam blocks up conveyor belts, move foam beams with a crane, and worked on their plumbing skills with the water valves.

 My personal favorite room was the forest (of course!!).  The kids (and me too!) tried on various animal outfits and crawled through tunnels, dens, and lodges.  Amanda enjoyed the ant colony the most.

They also had a traveling Curious George exhibit and got to meet the famous monkey in person!  : )

After we saw the whole thing, I let the kids choose their favorite room to explore some more until closing time.  Amanda chose the city where she found some crutches in the medical building and pretended her leg was broken.... the whole time!  She had the other mother's convinced that she really had an injured leg!  : )  Logan, on the other hand, wanted to go back to the pluming area where he got super wet making those balls flow through the different chambers.

The next day we headed to the zoo and my Two Little Monkeys were fascinated with the snow monkeys!  They were very cute, indeed, and we spent a half an hour there watching them play.

Then we had to rush over to the aquarium to make the Dolphin Show.  It was super awesome!!!  After the show we explored the reef area and touched sharks and starfish in the touch tank.

 The zoo also had mechanical dinosaurs visiting.  The kids thought it was neat, but it wasn't their favorite thing.  My monkeys are just not into prehistoric animals I guess.  But I did think it was pretty cool that the creators made them life sized so you could see just how big those animals were.  My favoirte photo is of Logan standing by the pterodactyl.  LOOK HOW HUGE THAT THING WAS!!  Logan would have been a snack for sure had that thing was real.

 One of my favorite places was the grizzly bears.  This big guy was very active in his swimming hole and kept trying to eat the guests on the other side of the glass!

 They also had a very fun kids playground that we put to good use.  I took a ton of photos (like I always do) and I had a hard time deciding which to use for the blog so you just get a collage of some of my favorites!

At the end of the week, Eric flew back to Minnesota to join back up with us.  We were waiting for him to get back so we could all four visit Valley Fair Amusement Park.  These kids are well on their way to becoming full blown amusement park junkies!!!  Amanda was tall enough to ride almost everything, and ride she did.  She was totally fearless.  Logan really enjoyed himself too, but he had a nice appreciation for breathing and the crazy thrilling rides he passed on.

The next day we packed up camp and headed South.  We all were exhausted but oh, what a wonderful family vacation!