Fun Sunday Picnic

On Sunday, one of our most beautiful Sundays thus far, Kevin, Charlotte and I ventured out to Moir Park in Bloomington, a diamond in the rough. It's the closest thing the Twin Cities can get to the North Shore like atmosphere. And for those of you who know us, we LOVE the North Shore. So, we packed up a real picnic basket, a blanket, a football and some sand toys for Charlotte and enjoyed a beautiful evening in the park. The best part was that barely anyone was there. They have this nice sandy shore to the creek and Charlotte had a lot of fun making us sand pies as Kevin and I tossed around the football. We finished off the perfect evening with a walk through the park. I'm looking forward to bringing the kids out there next Spring.

A Fun Weekend

Kevin had a long weekend off so we certainly took advantage. Our first adventure was to the indoor play park in Edina. Charlotte is obviously more mobile now so she had us chasing her up the equipment and we were definitely wore out. Charlotte had the most fun on the jumper with the other kids. It was not easy getting her out though. It's a great place to bring your kids when you want to wear them out and this certainly did for Charlotte.

The next day, Saturday, we had a very long but fun day. We started the day out by heading out to Hyland Park. Even though it was a dreary and semi-rainy day we thought it would be crowd free and then Kevin could go for a run. When we got there we noticed a lot of Target signs. We figured it was a family corporate picnic. So, Kevin headed on his run and I decided to go to the playground with Charlotte. We started going down one slide and quickly realized that it was going to be a bit too wet. Then I thought, I think I'm gonna check this "Target picnic" out and when I got down to where everything was, I realized that it was a huge book fair for kids. What a coincidence! The best part was that we arrived before it officially started so we got a killer parking spot. And since I walked down there right as it began we got to do a lot of the fun projects before most of kids got there. I think there were 4 highlights for Charlotte though. The first one was being able to see the Backyardigans live (a kid's show on Noggin if you haven't heard of them. Her cousin Rory LOVES them). Then we got to hear this fun kids' rock band in the park and Charlotte had so much fun dancing along to the music. She really got into it, but of course had to take important breaks to eat some french fries, probably her absolute most favorite food ever. Then we headed down to the blow up jumpy things (have no clue what the official term is) and Charlotte jumped for a very long time in the jumper. In fact, because she wouldn't come out I had to creep through this ridiculously embarrassing small whole for children to get in there (in front of like 50 people of course) and grab her. I literally felt like I was going to be jumped on by 10 kids so I had to make a swift move to get her out. After the "rescue" we finished our fun morning off with Charlotte getting her 1st face painting. She did surprisingly well. Thank goodness though the lady was willing to make a heart instead of her normal designs. We were so lucky to land upon this book fair. It turned out to be much more fun than we anticipated our rainy park visit to be.

So, the fun didn't stop there. We headed right over to Charlotte's friend, Grace's 1st birthday party. Charlotte had a great time there and of course was gracious enough to help Grace open her presents. We weren't able to stay too long though because we needed to head out to Prior Lake for Brian (Kevin's brother) and his 50th birthday celebration (J/K....his 40th).

Charlotte had a great time with her cousins. It certainly helped that Rory had plenty of dollies and accessories to play with. Charlotte has so much fun playing with dollies and playing house too (which Rory also had). Even more fun was being able to spend time with her cousins, Rory, Nathan, Mathew and Jacob. Although Jacob was enjoying from a distance. He is only 3 1/2 months old so he couldn't quite run around like the rest of them.

We all enjoyed the birthday party and got to see family we don't often get to see. It's too bad we had to leave by 8:30p.m. but Charlotte was exhausted and to be honest so were we. It was an incredibly busy day and frankly I don't even know what we did on Sunday. I'm pretty sure I worked somewhere in there and we caught up on some sleep.

Apple Orchard

Charlotte and I finally got a chance to do something fun today and we went to the Minnesota Harvest Apple Orchard today. It was a perfect afternoon to go to the Orchard. Charlotte had a lot of fun on the Hay Ride and even more fun picking the apples all by herself. Some of the apples were just small enough for her to handle eating by herself too. We will definitely be back soon!

Also, Charlotte's cousin Sammy had an overnight with us on Saturday evening and the both of them had so much fun together. They got to have their own little slumber party and then they both snuggled in bed with Kevin and I and we watched a fun movie. They are going to be such good buddies growing up together.