Bike trip

 We went back to the Elroy Sparta Bike trail for what has started to become something of an annual trip! Garrick's goal for the year was for us to take the tandem out of Winona on the top of our car. I only wish I had gotten a picture of that! It is really big up on top of my little car. We also left with this little beauty. A new bike trailer for Peter to use to haul books from the library, watermelons from the Farmer's Market and his little sister around as needed.

 We just did a little ride to one of the closest tunnels so that the kids could walk through the tunnel on their own, play in the creek on the other side of the tunnel and then Pete could ride his bike back. Which he did. Almost 3 miles (mostly downhill) on his little Skut bike. 3 years old. He is a stud!

WSU

We have been having a lot of fun at Winona State this summer-- one of the reasons may be that we keep a container of fish food in the stroller and we also have learned where to buy ice cream on campus. Both of these reasons lead to lots of fun and games!

 Walking around after ice cream

 Clapping for the fish eating!

 Walking on the wall- because she is a big girl.

To the Fair!

 We went to the state fair this week and tried to participate in as many of the features as possible! We were among the first people in the baby animal barn and saw piglets, lambs, a calf, chicks and ducklings.

 Pete had a photo op with this guy.

 We tried out a LOT of tractors. No big surprise, but there were a lot bigger and better tractors than we had at our county fair.

 Worked at a farm for a while

 And got AWESOME hats!!

 Garrick's cousins and aunt and uncle came and met us at the fair too-

 Pete got a beef stick almost as long as he was.

 And participated in the group sing a long by yelling as loud as he could into the mic. We could hear him for sure over the other 100 people singing.

The girls also took the kids on rides! A big slide, a train and some really annoying tractors that had horns that beeped. Pete double up on the horns for his whole ride.

Sesame Street Live

We went to LaCrosse to "go to Elmo's house" as Pete put it! Julia and Shana also went with us and it was such a fun date night with our friends and just the big kids.

There was a play area in the basement of the LaCrosse Center to check out and I think that if we had gotten there earlier some of the actual characters from the show also would have been down there.

 The show was really cute, after the intermission it started to get a little long and the audience was pretty loud- so not just our kids were ready to go.

Julia fell asleep on the way home, but lucky for us, Pete stayed up the whole way home singing to us.

Our trip to Plainview

 We walk to the hardware store around the corner weekly to watch the trains. One night we were walking there and I warned Pete that it might be closed since it was after 6 on a Friday night. He didn't care since we'd go to the river afterwards to bike anyhow. The store was open and we ran in to only see that the train set was gone! The guys told us that they had brought it up to the train show about 40 minutes away and that we should go. So the next morning we went for a run, played at the park and got donuts at HyVee. Then we headed out of town up to Plainview.

 The phrase of the day was "mom, pick me up!!" most of the time Pete was too short to see what was going on up on the tables- except at this one- This guy didn't have buildings or grass or anything but a big train and track but that was all we needed. Until...

 He brought Pete back to the controls and let him blow the whistles, stop the trains and showed him how to make the engines go backwards. He also showed Pete another engine that he had which wasn't running at the moment and Peter told him that it looked like Hank the Tank which we saw last summer and have since read the book 1,022 (and counting) times.

 When we left the train show there was a tractor parade going down the road. Emi had lots of fun waving at them all! We then had lunch in the park and headed home for naps!

We

Camping and Racing

 We went camping this past weekend at Willow River State Park which was a little ways outside of Hudson. It was perfect camping weather- cool nights and  warm sunny days! The only downside of the camp ground was that the beach was really scummy- especially for kids that drink lake water like it is chocolate milk!! But we played and played and played in teh dirt at the site, went on some nice hikes and also the park had nice playgrounds all over.

 There was a big hill off of our site that Emelia loved scoooting down and getting caught.She was my early bird this time and would wake up ready to play at 6 or 6:30 each day- she usually sleeps til 8 at home- so we would go off on a long slow walk each morning in our jammies. I think she walked 2 miles on our second day's walk!

 We also went out for ice cream one night. We all had our own execpt Emelia who just walked around the circle getting her share of everyone's icecream! I wish I had gotten a movie of it- it was adorable! She definitely lived up to her nickname!!

 We were up there becuase Garrick was doing a race on Sunday. The series that he is doing also has a kiddie race that we asked Pete if he wanted to try. He was all about it until we got there and got his number (3- they let him pick) and then he was a little nervous. But when he saw all of the other kids lined up he was all about it and had big smiles. He plugged along behind all of the kids and had lots of fun. Of course the best part was getting his medal at the end.

Garrick won the single speed division which was awesome as well. When he came home and showed Peter his medal all Peter had to say was "Why aren't you wearing it?" since he still had his on hours later!!

Pete's Vacation

We left Pete at my parent's house for two days on his own last week- here's what I got out of what he did... trains, bikes, swimming, trains, snacks, cousins, trains, trains. You get the picture! He had so much fun and LOVED the idea that he was a big kid getting to stay on his own at his "happy place." After looking at a few pictures of what he did, can you blame him?

Here is a link to the trains that they rode in the Dells: http://www.randgn.com/