Friday, October 29, 2010

Nickelodeon Universe with Papa and Bebe

We went to Nickelodeon Universe (the amusement park) in the mall of America with Papa and Bebe. They have a few rides that kids Callie's size can ride with a chaperone. Lots of them had to do with her favorite show, Dora the Explorer, so she got real excited about those. We have a few videos that we may post later on.
This was the "big rigs" ride that Callie rode with Bebe. She got to turn a steering wheel and honk the horn as the mini-trucks rode around the track.

This was Callie riding on Azul, the train from Dora the Explorer.

Callie and I rode in this hot air balloon ride together. It was tough to get a good picture of this one, but we had fun nonetheless.

Callie loved seeing this big Dora statue. It was all we could do to get her to stop looking at the statue and look at the camera instead. She probably said "DORA!" about 50 times for the hour and a half that we were at the park.

This was Callie's least favorite ride. By the second time around the track, she was in tears. This one went a little faster than we thought. She was pretty much done with rides after this. Even when we tried to get her to go on a ride that she had previously enjoyed, she didn't want anything to do with it. We hope we didn't ruin her enjoyment of rides for the rest of her life.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Papa and Bebe

Last weekend Papa and Bebe came to visit. We had a great visit with them and the weather was really nice. These are just a few shots from the weekend. We will have more to come in a few days, including our time at the amusement park in the mall of America. But for now, I'll leave you with these. Sorry these are not the greatest pictures. Most of them are from the sculpture garden in Minneapolis and it was hard to get Callie to look at the camera!




Tuesday, October 19, 2010

A few more videos

This is a video of Callie playing in the yard. She is working on kicking a ball around. It looks like she is well on her way to getting a scholarship to play soccer in college.


And this is a video of her playing at the Children's museum. She enjoyed playing with this super high-powered hand dryer.


We took lots of pictures from Papa and Bebe's recent visit and will post them up later this week.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

A couple of videos

Callie in the tub - we had a good time singing "if you're happy and you know it." Callie will regularly say "happy?" when she is asking if we can sing it. She has also enjoyed singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes."


Callie watching Dora the Explorer - We let Callie watch one episode of Dora the Explorer every day and she absolutely loves it. THe two main characters are named Dora and Boots, so she runs around the house shouting "DORA! BOOTS!" a lot. There is another part of the show where they tell Swiper the mean fox to not steal things by saying "swiper no swiping" he responds by saying, "aww man!" Callie does a pretty good imitation of this that is in the end of the video. (we wanted to give all that explanation to those who had never seen the show before).

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Friends

Callie has had a lot of good times with her friends this fall. This first picture is from a walk we went on with Evey. We now have Evey living just down the street from us. Callie really enjoys seeing her on a regular basis. And, Evey is getting old enough to begin interacting more with Callie. It's fun to watch. Note: This is not Evey's mama. This is Hannah, one of the girls in my Bible study. She was hanging out with me one day while I was watching Evey.

Every Sunday night we have couples' time with a few of the other staff couples. We all get together and talk about how our marriages are going. It is a great time to connect. We used to bring the kids in tow, but now as they have gotten older and more "active" shall we say, it's no longer feasible to bring them to couples time and expect to have good conversation. We have been getting some of the Northwestern girls to watch Callie and Annie for a couple of hours during that time. These pictures are of Callie and Annie at our house. The babysitters were nice enough to email me the cute pictures they took of the girls.




Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Apple Orchard

Probably my favorite thing we did while Gami was here was visit an apple orchard. There was this cute, little orchard/family run farm about an hour away from our house. It was a beautiful day. Callie saw goats, chickens, cows, cats, and even a peacock! We got to pet some baby chicks and feed an apple to a cow. We went on a wagon ride, picked gords from the field, and of course picked apples. It was Gami's last full day with us and it ended up being a good one to end on. Thanks for visiting us, Gami. We love you!




Monday, October 04, 2010

Children's Museum with Gami

While Gami was in town, we made another visit to the Children's museum in St. Paul. It's so awesome that you can get a library pass to the museum. What would normally have cost us $36 for the four of us, only cost $4. It's neat to go back to the museum with Callie now that she's a little older. She can enjoy everything a little more.

She's got something cooking in the wok. She loved the mini asian restaurant.


now for some grocery shopping

And, of course the water room! Stay tuned for more of our adventures with Gami.