Summer Vacation

Last week we traveled to Minnesota and Kansas City for a summer vacation before I go back to school and Abby back to daycare.

This was last Tuesday before we left. Do you like her new playboy pose?
The drive took about 10.5 hours. Abby did amazingly well. She took several naps (she somehow managed to be asleep for every state line (we crossed four on our trip). We only stopped three times on the way up. It would have only been two times, but just 30 minutes into the trip (at 5:00 in the morning) Abby had a massive explosion in her pants. Let's just say that the disposable didn't hold it all, and mommy ended up with some on her hand, sweatshirt, oh, and the carseat, and the changing mat. It was everywhere and it was gross. Once we got to Minnesota, she was very happy to be out of the car and crawling everywhere.

On the drive up (which goes through northern MO and Iowa), we decided we would love to be farmers. Yeah, some of you might think this sounds crazy, but we could totally move to a farm. We decided that we would like to have an animal farm with cows, chickens, llamas, goats, etc. And maybe we could grow some corn too. This lead to talk of a combine. Every farm store we passed, I threatened to stop and buy a combine. This lead to Peggy asking if I even knew what a combine was. Luckily, I do. Oh, and peach and apple orchards would be necessary as well.

All the farm talk made me want to hear the country song "International Harvester." So, I listened for it on the radio. You can hear it about every hour in St. Louis, so I didn't think it would take long. 1500 miles of driving later (listening almost exclusively to country), I still never heard the song. Oh, and we listened to lots of country at Grandpa Bo's house too. Still never heard it! It became sort of a running joke throughout the trip. Peggy was sick of country by the end.

First stop was Grandpa Bo's. Abby liked his low windows. They were just the right height.

On Thursday we went to Grams house for lunch with Grams, Jon & Anna, and Sally & Steven. It was a full house.

Abby had a private photoshoot in Gram's garden before lunch.
Shortly after taking these photos, Abbsters broke out in hives on her face.... now she is seeing an allergist in September. She still has hives a week later. The nurse told us after being exposed to something that sets off the hives, they can continue to appear for two weeks. Hopefully they'll be gone by Monday when she starts daycare. We gave her children's benadryl once to see if it would help. That cleared them up overnight. But, we don't want to be medicating her for just the hives since they don't really bother her. So, we haven't given her any since.

Apparently Abby LOVES watermelon. I fed her several pieces. She's getting really good at taking bites from fruits. She started helping me eat some peaches a few weeks ago. She's also good at bananas. Apples she just gets tiny bits from since they're so much more firm.

After that we stopped at the most awesome store in existence. I'm still mad at Peggy for not telling me about this place five years ago. I probably would have already taken a few flights up there just to go. Ok, so maybe I'm exxagerating a bit on the last point. But, seriously, there's a store called Ax-man, which is just awesome. They have the most random collection of assorted stuff (aka "Junk") you've ever seen. Some things new, some things used....but just plain awesomeness.

Abby found a hat:

A box full of separated baby doll parts with a sign that says "Make your own baby $5.95." I could insert some joke here about making babies being free, or a different joke about babies costing much more than $5.95 once you assemble them, but I digress. Also notice that I am holding the most awesome and largest screwdriver I've ever seen and a motor (they had a huge section of them)

Anna and I tried on some jetpacks. Ok, so they weren't really jetpacks, but they looked like it (even had a hand controller thing).....and they were HEAVY! (Oh, and $300).I loved the store so much, we even made time a couple of days later to go to the other location Ax-man in town. And we will be going when we return to MN next year, and the year after that, and the next one....

You may notice Abby's nose looking a little red in some pictures. Well, she HATED her pack n play at grandpa's house. She just wasn't familiar with where she was and was scared. So, she didn't want to sleep. We think she rubbed her nose raw on the mattress. It scabbed over, but is pretty much gone now.

We found Peggy's letter(wo)man jacket at Grandpa's house. Abby of course had to try it on.

Then it was on to the playground. Abby was lovin' on Grandpa Bo, as is clear in this adorable picture (I set it was Grandpa's desktop picture):

CUTE!:

Then it was time for a bath in Grandpa's kitchen sink. Notice the super long ponytail!

Here's Abby enjoying a book:

And Abby just being silly:

And more cuteness:

On Saturday morning, Grandpa had a race. Abby was there and cheered him on. After that, we had a delicious pancake breakfast at the firehouse in Lake Elmo (where Grandpa lives).

Later that day, we went to downtown Stillwater. Grandpa took us to Teddy Bear Park. Peggy and I were envisioning trees, a lake, and a playground (a typical park). Teddy Bear Park is anything but. This picture gives you an idea of where the park gets its name. They have tons of slides and other playground equipment. Abby had a good time, but I think will have a lot more fun there next year.

Here's Abby sliding all by herself! She didn't want to lay her head back, so I had to stick her feet straight up in the air.

Abby the spider:

I think the only family photo we got on the entire trip (in downtown Stillwater):

Then, we went to Kansas City on Monday and Tuesday. Again, Abby did fantastic on the car trip (and slept through the two border crossings).

Our first stop (before going to the hotel) was the Federal Reserve, which we were totally disappointed to realize was not a money mint. We were expecting to see money being made. But, alas, it was simply a place where banks from around the midwest send their money. They verify the amount, and shred the old bills. If I remember correctly, they shred about $4 million every day at this one location (or maybe it was every hour, I'm not sure).

Apparently this is Abby telling us how much she's going to cost us before she turns 18 (little does she know....the cloth diapers have already paid off.....hahaha).

Each visitor gets a bag of shredded money. Peggy decided we needed three bags. When I asked her what we were going to do with all that shredded money, she replied "I don't know, wrap presents with it?" Apparently she means to use it like tissue paper. So, if you see some weird, shredded tissue paper in a present from us over the next couple years, you'll now know what it is.

Here's Abby and I with $40 million (in real bills). Don't get used to it kid.

That night, we went to a fantastic BBQ dinner (KC is famous for their BBQ) and swam at the pool. Tuesday, we started off the day with a trip to the Hallmark visitor's center. It was somewhat disappointing. We were expecting a tour of where they actually produce the cards, but no such luck. It was just a walk through museum of their history. One cool thing was they had a die maker who was molding a piece of metal that will be used as a cutout for cards. Hard to explain, but the guy was amazing at it.

We then went to the Crown Center. It's basically a mall, but had a couple of cool stores, and a pretty fountain out front:

They also had a really cool Lego exhibit:

After the Crown Center, we were off to the National World War I Museum. After being somewhat disappointed at the Hallmark center and Money Museum, we were hoping for something good. And we got it. The museum was amazing.

This is the Liberty Memorial (the tall thing in the background). You can go up to the top, but we didn't. The foreground is a gate where you enter the facility. The Museum is housed underneath the Liberty Memorial.

Despite being super tired, Abby did amazing at the museum. Since she was so tired, and sick of being in her stroller, we moved through the museum pretty fast. I'd love to go back someday and spend a good four hours (at least) there. We just got a brief overview of everything.

Abby in the gift shop:

After this, we went to Union Station, but were not too impressed. We walked around a bit, but then headed back to the car. We ate lunch under shade by the car. Abby was zonked out. This is the first time she's ever fallen asleep in her umbrella stroller (even with the sun beating down on her face on the walk back).

By this point, we had pretty much seen everything we wanted to. There was a mall right next to our hotel, so we bummed around there a bit (after going to Chipotle and Bass Pro Shop). They had a pet store. In case you don't know, Abby is in LOVE with woof-woofs (dogs). She says oof-oof. It's cute.

We needed gas, so we went to the Sam's Club gas station. We still had some time to kill, and didn't want to go back to the hotel too early (so that Abby would stay up later), so we went into Sam's. We had been looking for a large stuffed animal that can go on the floor in Abby's room that she can crawl on. Plus, Peggy said she needed some sort of souvenir from vacation. She had been soooooo good all week, she needed something. So, yeah, we went all the way to KC to buy something from Sam's that we could've gotten three miles from our house.

I named him "Footsie." I think we found the perfect animal. She's in love, don't ya think?

When we got back to the hotel, we went swimming (again....one of three times in two days....Abby loooooves the water).

One super cool thing about K.C. was that all of these things we did were within about 1/2 a mile of each other. You could park at one place and walk everywhere (although Peggy didn't appreciate the walk back to the car from Union Station....it was one big long hill)

The next morning, we headed home (only a four hour trip). We stopped in Columbia on the way home at Cosmo Park (the place where I proposed). Abby enjoyed the break from the carseat.

Overall, Abby did so much better than we could've hoped for. She put up with 1500 miles in a carseat (with only one 30 minute meltdown) and "boring" museums that Mommy and Daddy went to. We know that she'll have more fun next year (wherever we go) because she'll be able to do so much more.

Amazingly (you'll probably think we're crazy), Abby knew when we were home. I'm not sure if she just knows the feel of the turns and the bump of pulling into the driveway or what. But, after 1500 miles, as soon as we turned into the driveway, she squealed with excitement like she hadn't done for the entire drive. It was pretty cute. She was clearly happy to be home.