Lark Toys

A couple of weeks ago Grandma Mari Lee came down to visit. The weather was nice for a drive and so we headed over to Kellogg, MN to visit Lark Toys. Lark Toys is an old-fashioned toy shop/soda fountain/carousel/mini-golf (in the summers) destination located about 45 minutes from Rochester. The carousel is the big attraction with all wood-carved animals that are beautifully painted. It's not often that you see a huge carousel and the girls really love it!

The rides are $2 and last for less than 5 minutes. It doesn't seem long, but the carousel goes pretty fast and one could get sea-sick if it lasted much longer! They play fun music while it's running too.

Sorry for some blurry pictures...but, obviously the carousel was in motion!

The following pictures are from the toy shop area. They have areas to play and they have some really cool, different toys.

Miriam playing tea...

We also ate lunch at the "soda fountain." They have a pretty good menu - burgers & fries, etc. They also have fudge & ice cream...but, we passed on those. This was our second time going to Lark and it won't be our last. It's such a great place for a quick little get-away from home!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Eleanor got to do Valentines for her preschool class this year! All 20 of them! She wrote all the names and crossed each name off the list. Then, she wanted to do one for herself. When I explained that you really don't do one for yourself because you get one from everyone else she quipped, "that doesn't make any sense!" So, I let her make one "To: Eleanor From: Eleanor." She was very concerned that she wouldn't get the Tinkerbell lollipop that came with each Valentine. Also, I think it's probably a very good life lesson - love yourself first! :)

I wanted to show her 4-year-old hand writing. It's coming along nicely! FYI...Her teacher's name is Ms. Cat.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Introducing "Izzie"

It's been a gorgeous weekend here in MN! In the balmy 30s & sunny! Michael and Eleanor got out to play and made this adorable "snowgirl." When asked, Eleanor said her name was Izzie. I'm not sure where she got that from!

It was really sunny and Eleanor was having trouble looking at me to get a picture. We love all this sunshine!

Snow Much Fun!

We got all the kids outside a couple of times while in North Dakota. The snow was piled high and temps were pretty good. The kids were warm & cozy in all their winter gear. Great fun was had by all!

Christmas in North Dakota

We spent the majority of our Christmas holiday in North Dakota this year. It's a long drive for us, but well worth it! All of Mom & Dad's kids & grandkids were home this year and so it made it so special. I will admit that I got a bit lazy about taking pictures because Natalie has such a nice camera, but the following are some of the ones off of my camera. We got a really nice family picture (with all 10 of us!) with Natalie's camera and she also got some of the kids in their Christmas outfits. Most of mine are when the kids were in their pajamas!

Natalie & Eleanor made this cute pancake Santa. In the end, Eleanor didn't want to eat it...kids - what are you going to do??

Our adorable (& very happy!) cousin/nephew Seth. His first Christmas!!

I love this picture! Our girls are really starting to play with each other (sort of!).

This is another favorite picture. The cousins really got along well and Seth just brought a smile to all of our faces - he's truly such a happy baby. I have some more pictures from North Dakota when we took all the kids outside in the snow. I'll get those posted soon. A special thanks to my Mom & Dad for making the holiday so special - we have lots of great memories. Also, my apologies to the St. Cloud crew. Due to bad weather, we only got to spend about 24 hours there after we left Bismarck and I didn't get a single picture!! I'm now slapping myself on the wrist and vow to have better picture-taking capabilities next time! :)

December 2010

OK...so, I'm just really behind on blogging - but, here it goes. I'm posting some pictures from December. It seemed to go by in a blur, but now here we are in January and it seems like winter is going to last forever! At the beginning of December, Eleanor and I made these stars to hang in our window. I learned how to do it at work by a friend of mine (thanks, Sheila!) and they were really fun to make. They look complicated, but are really simple.

The weekend of Michael's CAE concerts we had a HUGE blizzard. Aunt Sue got here on that Friday night (December 10th) to beat the storm. Well, beat it she did - but she got "stuck" here until Monday! We had over 16 inches dumped on us and it was truly insane. Michael had to cancel the Saturday night concert which I think was a first for Choral Arts. We finally got ourselves dug out by Sunday in the early afternoon (oh..yeah...in the meantime our snowblower decided to die). Anyway, Saturday was a perfect day to make some Christmas treats!

Check out all that snow! Eleanor had so much fun...

Trying to catch some snowflakes on her tongue...

Here are just a couple of pictures I took (I was lazy at making sure to get better pictures!) of our family Christmas as home on December 17th. We had pizza and let the girls open all their presents from us. Oh...and my tree is a work in progress. With a 20-month-old it just wasn't going to be beautiful this year. ;) You can see all the ornaments were all moved to the top half!

Eleanor's "big" present this year was the start of her Calico Critters collection. She received the starter house from us and then went on to get a rabbit family from Grandma Karma & a bedroom set & bunk beds from Grandma Mari Lee. Mari Lee also had a beautiful kid-sized table & chairs made for Eleanor's room. She has her Calico Critters collection (among some other playthings) on her table in her room. Miriam's "big" gift was the Little People Happy Sounds Home. It is so darn cute and makes many noises including the toilet flushing and the door bell ringing. The door bell really gets to Dolly and she immediately thinks someone is at the door!

I have more pictures to post from our holiday travels and I'll get them on the blog soon...