Trip to Minnesota

We had been talking up our trip to "the city" to the kids for weeks so they were very excited about this trip by the time it finally arrived.

We arrived at our hotel on Thursday night around 10:30, they had been asleep in the car, but the trip inside woke them up. They were quite impressed with the hotel room and Clae was pumped to get to sleep on this cool couch!



We spent Friday at the Mall of America. We got there at 9:30 only to find out it doesn't open until 10, but it actually worked out nicely because we were able to scope the place out without fighting huge crowds. By the time the amusement park rides opened we had our tickets purchased and the rides we wanted to go on picked out. There were no lines at all for the first half and hour which was nice since waiting paitently is neither of my children's strong point.

Clae was obsessed with these big rigs. We rode on them countless times, Lydia didn't really care what she got to ride as long as she was riding something.



Daddy was mainly the rider and I was the stroller watcher/picture taker.



This little bus was actually Lydia's favorite thing. Clae even let her drive it!



We visited the Sealife Aquarium at the mall.



The kids played with the Legos.

We spent Friday evening with my aunt and uncle, Doug and Delilah, who live just a few miles from the mall. They watched the kids ride a few rides and then treated us to dinner. You don't realize how high maintenance your kids are until you try to have a dinner conversation with two other adults. It kinda...doesn't happen. But we made the most of it and had a nice evening.

Saturday morning we went to Doug and Delilah's house so Kirby could see where they live and then they joined us at the Minnesota Zoo. It happened to be a cold and rainy day, but we were able to do a lot inside and ventured outside to see the grizzly bears and tigers. Clae was very impressed.





We stopped at Cabela's on the way home. Clae thought we should buy daddy a boat and a truck. When we left he couldn't understand why we had to drive our car home and not drive Daddy's new truck, pulling his new boat behind it!

The kids had fun driving these Rhino thingies or whatever they're called.



Taking a two and three year old to the biggest mall in the US was not the nightmare I thought it might be. Clae was awesome the whole time, Lydia wasn't bad she was just...two, what do you expect. Other than a little sleep deprivation and a whole lotta laundry to catch up on we had a really great time!