Dinosaurs and monsters

Since Adam was off school (again!) we went to the Bishop museum to see the Dinosaurs exhibit. It was a lot like the exhibit that we saw back in St. Louis before we moved. There were lots of animatronic dinosaurs along with some smaller fossilized pieces. Adam thought it was great, but Cole was not quite so sure. Some of them he would check out and others he gave this suspicious look at or ran away. There were quite a lot of moving, roaring dinosaurs in one section, so he was a little freaked out.

Then today we went to the MOMS Club Halloween party, so I dressed up the little monsters for the party (ok, so they were a skeleton and a robot, and they didn't act too monstrous today). But Adam managed to find something to be mad about even on his way to the party, and thus the grumpy picture. Oh well.
Now on to the real candy-fest tomorrow - - Halloween! We're heading out to trick-or-treat the neighborhood with friends. It should be a good time.

It's almost Halloween!

I got some things on clearance after halloween last year, so we spooked the place up a little bit for Halloween this year. MOMS Club took a trip to the pumpkin farm to get our pumpkins for the year too. And some cute pumpkin pictures!!
Mom's little pumpkin :)
Little strongman...
This pumpkin that he picked out just happened to be rotten inside when we went to carve it. Eeewww. Good thing we got two pumpkins.

Trip to MN

My blogging is so far behind now it is pitiful. Taking over the MOMS club presidency has taken a lot of time and energy. I think I've got a handle on things but it still just takes a chunk of time each week.

So I'm finally blogging about the trip we took in early October. Well, at least october isn't over yet before I post. The weather was nice when we first got there but then they were predicting a freeze, so grandpa, grandma and the boys went up to pick all the tomatoes off the plants. Since it was such a cool summer there were still tons of green tomatoes there.
I took the boys on a little hike up the hill behind the house and they had a really good time just walking through the woods and exploring. Something they don't get much of a chance to do anywhere else.

We went out on the Friday we were there to see Split Rock Lighthouse. The boys had never seen it and it had been years since I had been there. And the weather was absolutely beautiful that day. Here's a view of Lake Superior, it certainly is gorgeous scenery (and this comes from someone living in Hawaii!).


The next day was Katie and Josh's wedding. It was a very nice ceremony and they had the old union hall all decked out for the reception. It looked great! It was FREEZING this day and really windy though!
Dan and I at the reception
Mom & Dad at Katie's reception
All the siblings together...
It was nice to have everyone together to catch up and see what's new. Here is Cole below with cousin Laura.We had a nice relaxing visit, but since it was so cold at the end of our visit, it was nice to come back home to warm up!

Now we'll see if I can make some progress catching up on some more blogging!

Honolulu Century Ride 2009

A little late, but here's the ride report for the Honolulu Century Ride we did at the end of September. It was an early start, I think we left the house at 4:30 or some very early hour like that to drive downtown. We met up with the Hawaii On Tandems group and we headed out at 5:50am, a little before the mass start. It was still dark heading out:
We had a little rain early on in the ride, but we didn't get too wet. It cleared up quickly to a rather nice day. It was kind of crazy windy early on in the day, we were riding into it for portions of the ride out. Somehow I don't remember having a tailwind on the way back though...
The scenery was spectacular as always. Looking out over Manana island in the morning sun:
Everyone got to the first rest stop at Sandy beach in good spirits. We had a few snacks and generated a lot of interest on the triple. A couple from India stopped us to take our picture there, his wife stood by us and grabbed onto my arm like we were old buddies.

We hit every rest stop along the way to make sure everyone was happy. They had oranges, pretzels, sports drink and bananas at pretty much all the stops. The kids filled up on LOTS of oranges. More comments and pictures at the second rest stop. At least we got someone to take our picture with my camera:

Here we are at the rest stop that is the 75 mile turnaround. Everyone still in good spirits and there really has been no whining up to this point.
We found a nice little playground park tucked in amidst some condos. The kids really had a good time on the equipment they had here since it was different from the rest of the playgrounds around.

We did 75 miles and the kids did absolutely great. Nobody complained and I didn't even break out the bribery snacks (suckers and fruit snacks) until literally the last few miles of the ride. Adam chatted away the entire ride and sang the entire repertoire of songs he has learned in Kindergarten (over and over). We met the goal I was shooting for and so I was very happy with the ride. I was a little disappointed in the pictures that the ride photographer took, but he got great shots of us last year.
Now maybe soon I'll catch up on some more blogging!