We Made a Flip Video

It makes us laugh.

Baker Boo

Yesterday was Baker Boo at Baker Park near Plymouth. It's a fun event planned by Baker Park each year were campers come to camp and during the day there are activities planned such as: pumpkin carving, rock climbing, mini golfing, and other carnival like games. Beck and Mark evidently do this annually and decided to invite James, Jeanne and Natalie - I just tagged along for the fun. What a great event! The day activities were great and then in the evening they have the kids do a costume parade and then after that they go around to each camp ground trick or treating! It was a great day.

Natalie and Alex along the parade route, we saw another mother stopped so we had to also:

Natalie, Alex and Tony in costume:


Natalie and Alex showing off their face paintings:

And since they showed off their face paintings so did we:

Pumpkin Carving!

We have finally carved the 71 pounds of pumpkins.

Here is how they started:


Brian's pumpkin #1, carve time = 2 hours:


Kate's one and only pumpkin carve time ~30 minutes:

Brian's pumpkin #2, carve time < 10 minutes:

The complete family of carved pumpkins:

The Christmas Tree Hunt was successful!

Today we traveled all the way to Wisconsin to St. Croix Valley Trees, LLC to find the 'perfect' Christmas tree for us. We headed out with Pops, Sandy, and Aunt Shelley to the tree farm to pick out four trees - everyone but us picked a Fraser Fir we ended up with a Balsam Fir. I'm quite happy with our decision. It was a great day with lots of laughs and many stories...

Pops, Shelley and Sandy - pictured with Sandy's magnificient Fraser

Brian and Me - Pictured with our wonderful Balsam Fir.
Sandy and Me - I took this picture while walking....

Fall and Winter Collide

I took this photo out our front window. I believe it truly expresses how crazy fall in Minnesota can be - especially this year.

Pumpkin Patch

On what was probably the coldest weekend this fall we decided to visit Apple Jacks Orchard (and pumpkin patch) in Delano. The weather was in the 30s and boy was it cold! We did however manage to go through their 5 acre corn maze, eat some great apple dumplings and we loaded up on around 100 pounds of pumpkins....oddly Brian and I came home with around 70 pounds worth - even though we only purchased 3 pumpkins.

SoDak

Day 1:
- Wake up 4 am - leave Oakdale 5:15 am
- Drove threw pouring rain
- Stopped in Mitchell Sd to see the oh so a-maize-ing Corn Palace
- Also in Mitchell we drove on a road that wasn't a road - GPS's do lie sometimes
- Stopped at Al's Oasis - guys got Buffalo burgers, I ordered Potato Soup and half turkey sandwich which became half turkey sandwich and turkey soup and then came the offer of hot dish - then pudding which I accepted but then later was told they were out of and then was finally given hot dish and chow mein noodles
- Wall Drug
- Dinosaur Park
- Pizza with Jeremiah's brother and then camping in the Black Hills in 24 degree weather


Day 2:
- Mt. Rushmore
- A drive by of Crazy Horse
- Arby's with Sonic Limeades!
- Reptile gardens (they have more reptiles than any where else)
- Custer State Park
- Camping in the Badlands




Day 3:
- I woke everyone up at 5:00 am, with a pre-wake up 7 minutes to 5
- We then packed up all our gear and headed out to watch the sun rise
- Drove back to Sioux Falls and ate at Granite City for Tom's Birthday
- Arrived home around 8 pm