We're Baaaack....

Are you ready for the longest blog post EVER? If so...then grab a cup of coffee, water, diet dr pepper or whatever you like and settle in for a great read....a summary of our trip to Minnesota....I certainly don't have the writing talent in the family, so hopefully you'll keep reading :)

Tuesday, July 29th

I finished working in the a.m. and then packed for our trip. Around 3pm, Brian, Anthony & I left to go downtown to say goodbye to Pappy and to pick up Grandma and say goodbye to Diana. Then it was on to the airport. We flew to Cincinnati and once we found our gate, we stopped to grab a bite to eat. After dinner I realized I had left my Ipod on the plane!!! Long story short....I got it back. I was lucky though because the plane was getting ready to leave pretty soon. Anyways....we left around 9pm EST and headed for MSP...Anthony was really good on the plane and we enjoyed seeing MSP as we got close. Dave and Jenny picked us up at the airport in her parents Jimmy because we had so much stuff - one of their cars wouldn't have worked. After the 20 min car ride home, we stayed up chatting for awhile and then headed to bed.

Wednesday, July 30th

We got up early (around 7:15ish), got showers and packed up the car. We went to breakfast at Perkins with Dave & Jenny before they had to go to work. Anthony had some yummy pancakes and bacon.

After breakfast, Jenny went to work and Dave took us out to the airport to pick up our rental car. We got a good deal on the car by using Priceline. As soon as we got to the car, my darling child threw open his car door and dented the rental car (OMG!!!). Luckily it wasn't too noticeable because the car already had quite a few dings and dents..whew!

After saying goodbye to Dave, we had some time before we were going to leave for Rochester so we decided to go to the Mall of America. I got some GREAT deals on some clothes which I desperately needed and Anthony got a pair of PJs too. Anthony was so patient while we shopped so we took him to the park in the center of the mall so Anthony could go on a ride and of course we had to stop at Legoland for a bit.

     

After leaving the mall, we made the 90 minute drive to Rochester. We arrived at Grandma's around 3:45pm and Ann, Grandma and Minnie (Ann's dog) were waiting. Mom & Ann had made plans to go to a 4pm Weight Watcher meeting, so Mom barely had time to pee and she and Ann left. We stayed and played with Minnie and visited with Grandma.

After having dinner with Grandma, Ann & Joe....Emily & Jim came over. Emily had just returned from Europe about 2 weeks ago, so she had tons of pictures to show us....plenty of stories to tell and she also had her senior pictures taken at the beginning of June so she showed us those. I didn't get any pics because I was too busy looking at pics and we were pretty tired. So after they left, we headed to bed.

Thursday, July 31st

My Great Aunt Hazel lives in Chatfield and in the last few months has really taken a turn for the worse. She has suffered numerous strokes, has fallen many times and is suffering from a bit of dementia. One of the main reasons for taking this trip to Minnesota was so that we could go visit her. She is in the nursing home now in Chatfield and it was really hard to see her. Just last year when we visited, she was "running" around her apartment and even went to Rochester with us for our cousin Jana's graduation party. This time, we could hardly understand her because she spoke very very softly and didn't always make sense. In any case, I'm so glad we were able to visit and we took a few pictures. It was really hard to say goodbye to her, not knowing if we will ever see her again in this life.

  

Ohh...also...we ended up going to Chatfield kind of late because there was a really bad storm when we got up. I wish I would've taken some pics of the sky because it was soo so dark and I love a good storm! But I was still kind of groggy. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a morning person.

Anyways, after our visit with Hazel (Grandma and Ann went with us), we went to the house in Chatfield which is over 100 years old and we always love to go there. Most everything is gone from the house now, but it was still fun to stop in there one more time. After that, we headed back to Rochester (about 25 miles away) and met Megan at Culvers for lunch - yum! We then made a stop at Walmart for various things including ingredients for the fruit salad I was making to go with dinner. When we got back to Grandma's house it was about 4:30ish and I was exhausted (I guess it's because I was finally taking a break from work)...I made the fruit salad and then I decided to take a little rest. Mom, Ann, Anthony & Megan went to the Rochester Athletic Club (RAC) where Ann & Megan are members. They have a couple of indoor pools and an outdoor pool with a big slide. Anthony managed to get Mom to go on the big slide! Then we had dinner at Grandma's with Joe and we just hung out the rest of the evening and visited until almost 10:30pm.

Friday, August 1st

Wow, it's August. Really?!? How did that happen? That means my baby is starting school in 25 days! Ok, I'm done crying now....on with the rest of the story....

We had kind of a slow start because I didn't want to leave the house...I was enjoying sitting around at Grandma's, Anthony was watching tv...I was just being a bum....but we headed out a little after 10 to go to the RAC with Ann & Megan. The slide sure looked like fun and I figured if Mom could do it, I could, so up I went - it was fun!! I went down a couple more times and then I got to spend some time just lounging on the chairs outside the pool and reading my book. The weather was gorgeous!!! Not much humidity at all and a nice breeze.

Our time at the pool came to an end rather quickly - time flies when you're having fun right? It was time to meet Grandma and Joe for lunch (at 12:45pm) We went to a restaurant called "Noodles" that Megan works at. For some reason I was thinking it would be something like Macaroni Grill or Olive Garden, but it was more like fast food. You order and then sit down and they bring the food to you. It was soo so yummy!! No wonder Megan likes it. I don't think you could get anything there that tastes bad because I took a few bites from everyone else's plates and it was divine - especially the Mac n Cheese!

After lunch, we all took a ride (in 2 cars) down to Stockton, MN. You might remember last year when there was really bad flooding in Southern MN...houses were swept down the river and the whole town was covered with water (unless you lived up on a big hill like John). Ann's boyfriend John lives in Stockton on a beautiful piece of land. I had never been there, but had heard great things about it. When we got there, we lounged underneath a big weeping willow tree. John had a picnic table there already and we had a bunch of lawn chairs to sit in. The weather was still gorgeous, especially in the shade of the tree. We watched Anthony and Minnie play and I took pics (Shocker!) I eventually ended up laying down on the grass and we took some silly pics, because down here, the grass kinda sucks. It's mostly dirt down here...so it was nice to sit on cushy green grass.

   

After a while, it was time to make the hike up the ginormous hill. John has some beautiful gardens, but the trip up the hill is a bit treacherous. Especially for somebody with a bum ankle and wearing flip flops. But I did it and it was so fun! Along the way, John picked fresh raspberries for us. Once we got to the top, we had John's friend Dean take a pic of us. We were pretty hot by then, because the sun was beating down pretty good at that time of day.

    

After the hike up the hill, we hiked down the hill and John got out the old tractor for the trek down to the gardens that had yummy food in them :) Corn, peppers, cucumbers, etc. Anthony didn't want to ride on the tractor when it was moving, but he did sit on it for a bit for a picture. We had the corn 2 days later at a picnic (which you'll read about soon) and it was so good!!! Thanks John!

We left the farm around 6:30pm and we were hungry, so we stopped on the way back at Subway. We ended up just eating our sandwiches in the car on the ride back because the Subway didn't have AC - well, I think they did, but it wasn't working...it was hot n stuffy in there! Also, we were racing back to Rochester because Mom had promised Anthony that we could go back to the RAC! So back we went. Unfortunately, by the time we got there they had already turned off the water for the big slide, so we decided to swim inside (it had also cooled off quite a bit by then). After a dip at the RAC, Mom, Anthony & I, met Ann & Megan over at Fed Ex. Mom wanted to ship some stuff back to herself. On the way out of the RAC parking lot (which is in the middle of the city of Rochester)...I saw all of these cows across the street. It struck me as kind of funny to see cows in the city, so I made mom stop the car so I could grab my camera from the trunk. Then I continued to play paparazzi as we drove through Rochester at dusk and then again when we were waiting in the parking lot at Fed Ex.

   

Here's Anthony walking like an Egyptian in the parking lot at Fedex, lol!

After Fed Ex, we all headed over to Kohls for their late night hours....(yes, it was a long day..haha). We called Grandma and told her she could head to bed and that we'd be quiet when we got home. We didn't have much luck at Kohls, but it was still fun to look around. After a quick stop at the golden arches on the way home (Anthony didn't eat much earlier at Subway), we headed home to bed!

Saturday, August 2nd

We woke up early and packed our stuff (again). Ann & Megan met us at Grandma's and Megan rode in our car, while Ann & Grandma went and picked up Joe. We drove to River Falls, Wisconsin for the Duane Family Reunion. My grandma was a Duane before she got married, so that's how we are all a part of that.  We drove through Red Wing on the way - a city where my Dad spent a lot of time when he was growing up.

When we got to River Falls, we went to the hotel where most of the family members were staying (a lot of them lived close by so only came for the day like we did). We saw the rest of the Heydon's there (my Mom's maiden name) and then we went with the Kansas Duanes to a town called Prescott, WI (about 10 miles down the road). We went to a restaurant called Muddy Waters. It was kind of a biker bar I think, because there were lots of bikers and "their women" there. It struck me as funny to take my 86 year old Grandma to a Biker Bar, but she seemed to enjoy it just fine. We sat outside and they had big fans that had hoses hooked up to them that blew mist on us....it was actually kind of nice. Dave & Jenny met us there after a late start in the Cities because Jenny ran a 5K and Dave was helping with the water stations and was also there for work.

After lunch, we all went to look at the St Croix river and I got everyone to let me take a group picture....

Here's the back side of the restaurant - you could enter from the front or back. The food was really good!

After lunch, we went back to the hotel where more of the family members had arrived (or had come back from other outings). While Mom visited, I took Anthony swimming with our cousins. He loved that - and I didn't mind hanging out in the hot tub!

Around 4:15ish....we went up to the rooms and got showers and got changed for church. The whole family/reunion went to Mass at St Bridgets and then we had dinner at the local supper club. It is tradition to get a group picture after dinner.

After dinner (it was around 9pm)...we had to go back to the hotel for "a few minutes" to get something....a few minutes turned into an hour! Finally, we were on our way back to Dave & Jenny's hotel, I mean house :) where we would be staying for the remainder of our trip. (They live about 45 min away from River Falls so it wasn't too bad). When we got home we hung out for a little bit and just enjoyed relaxing and talking with each other and then headed to bed.

Sunday, August 3rd

We  were so lucky that my brother and his wonderful wife decided to have a BBQ for us when we were there. Over 40 people stopped by throughout the day to see us! In the morning we all helped get things ready and Mom and I ran to Walmart and the gas station for some last minute supplies/food. The first guests arrived around 11am. We had lots of yummy food...Dave cooked brats on the grill, after soaking them in beer....he cooked the corn that was from John's garden and people brought lots of desserts and other things to share. We could definitely feel the love people had for us....some people drove over 2 hours from Duluth and many stayed for 4-5 hours! Anthony played Twister for the first time with the flower girls (from DJ & Jenny's wedding) - their nieces Emily & Amanda. Anytime we go to MN, he usually gets to play with them at some point. There was also usually a concert going on in the living room thanks to "Rock Band." Anthony got a hold of the microphone anytime he could and sang "I am a rockstar," over and over and over for the duration of the song! Jenny's Dad got a kick out of the game too so I had to take a picture for her Mom (she's in the background laughing).

      

The weather couldn't have been any better. It was overcast all day and had a wonderful breeze. People were probably sick of me saying over and over how wonderful the weather was. It was about 75 or 80, low humidity...oh it was so great! Anyway, a few of us took the kids swimming around 3pm at the pool in their neighborhood. There was only one other group of 3 there so we definitely didn't have to fight the crowds.

Later in the day, we took a few pictures with Grandma before she left. It's always hard when we have to say our goodbyes especially when we don't have specific plans for when we will see each other next. Dave & Jenny are going to hopefully come down for Christmas, but we don't know when we'll see the rest of the family. I love living in Wilmington, but I hate being more than a 24 hour drive/plane ride away from the rest of the family. That's what makes it even more special when we do get to see each other.

Around 6pm...everybody had left, except for Dave & Jenny (of course), Mom, Anthony, me and my cousin Megan (who was staying over night). We got everything cleaned up and then around 8pm, some more people got there! Two of the Dobos from Duluth (Dianne & Katrina) and Bryan and Andrea Reese (used to be Dobo) came over. We visited for a bit all together and then Mom & Dianne went for a walk around the neighborhood and the rest of us played "Apples to Apples." I had never played it before, but it was a lot of fun!! Anthony "played" too....if you've ever played the game before, then you know why it's so funny for a 5yr old to play. We had a lot of laughs and Katrina won the game!

 

They left a little after 11pm. Now that is love! Katrina and Dianne still had a 2.5 hour drive home and Dianne had to be up around 6? to do daycare all day! The party had lasted 12 hours!!! After they left, we were all exhausted and headed to bed. I slept on the couch....Megan slept on an air mattress on the floor in the living room...Mom had the guest room and Anthony slept on a couch in the loft.

Monday, August 4th

None of us had set an alarm clock and apparently we were all a wee bit tired because I woke up about 9:15am and the rest of them woke up soon after! That's the latest we had slept in so far on our trip. Dave & Jenny had the day off because we went to VALLEYFAIR!!! I hadn't been there since I was in high school, so I was super excited to go back and take my son. I was probably acting more obnoxious when we got there than Anthony...I kept saying how excited I was..lol. The park opened at 10am and it's only about 3 miles from Dave & Jenny's house, but it took us a while to get going, get our stuff packed, stop on the way to get cash, etc. So we got there close to noon. The very first ride we went on was the Antique Autos (if you've been there, you know what I'm talking about). The next ride was called the "monster." Guess who went on it? Megan, Jenny and ANTHONY! Yup, my son wanted to go on big boy rides. This thing moves clockwise while the cars move up and down in a counter clockwise direction. Jenny said that she asked him if he wanted her to put her arm around him (before it started) and he said no. As soon as that thing started, he said "Aunt Jenny, you can put your arm around me now!" haha  He did good though and he said he liked it.

Next was the Ferris Wheel and we all went on it together. I've never been particularly fond of them and Mom definitely isn't either,  but we braved it and it was a blast :) Luckily all 6 of us could fit in the same bucket.

The view from the Ferris Wheel....

Don't worry....I'm not going to give you the play by play of every single ride we went on....but one of the next ones worth mentioning was The Foam Ball Factory. I had never been in anything like this. It was a 2 story building (in the kiddie area) and the bottom floor had foam balls EVERYWHERE....there were all kinds of contraptions/toys to play with that used the foam balls. Foam balls were flying everywhere. On the 2nd floor, it was basically a deck that went around the perimeter and had guns built into the railing and you could shoot foam balls out of them. That was Dave's favorite (of course, Mr Army Man)

I don't EVER go on roller coasters anymore...I'm a big wimp. But my baby wanted me to go on it and it was a 4 seater car, so I had to. Megan, Jenny, Anthony and I went on the Mad Mouse. That sucker was FAST and jerked us all around. It was fun though! Oh, by the way...all of these Valley Fair pics were taken using Mom's camera, so various people took the pictures. I just think they look better with the frame, and I tweaked a few in photoshop so I might as well put my logo on there :)

Hmm...let's see...oh...we went and had some lunch and I remembered why we had seen people in the parking lot having picnics at their cars. Cuz it's expensive to eat in the park! A fairly nasty hamburger....some mushy fries and a mountain dew (with no refills of course) set me back $13.80!!! Crazy. Anyways...after lunch, Jenny & Megan saw that the line wasn't too long for the Extreme Swing, so naturally after filling your belly, you should go on this ride, NOT!

 

We went on a lot of other rides including Thunder Canyon. I don't have a pic of it, but it's the ride that Anthony was trying to grow taller for, all summer. He needed to be 46 inches and was only 45 inches. The guy was being super picky too, but we basically hid Anthony between us and managed to get him on the ride ...woo hoo!  One of our other favorite rides was called "The Wave." From the name, you can guess that you might get wet. Uh yea. You cannot go on that ride and not get drenched right down to your undies. Then you go over a bridge to get back to "land" and you have to walk over the ride/wave and you get soaked again. Since we were already drenched, we decided to go on it like 3 times and stand on the bridge about 4 times...lol. While we were doing that, Anthony got to get his cotton candy.

While Anthony was having his cotton candy with Aunt Jenny and the rest of us were on the Wave, Dave went out to the car to get our swimsuits/towels/etc to go into the water park section of Valleyfair. (You'd think we already were in the water park based on the last ride..haha). Anyways....we all went on the lazy river together. It was veeerrry lazy. Then we went down some water slides (Anthony wasn't tall enough so he had to go in the kiddie part with Grandma). Dave & Jenny went on some speed slides. They pretty much went down at a 90 degree angle...I can't believe they did it. Then Dave, Jenny, Megan and I decided to go on "Hurricane Falls." My first warning to not go on this ride was that we had to go up 97 steps to get there! On this whole trip, I did a TON more walking than at home, because of my leg/back but I really pushed myself. Well these 97 stairs were a major hurdle for me and I made it up there and kept up with the rest of them. My heart was ready to jump out of my chest, but whatever. I made it. We waited for our turn and then got into our 4 person raft which starts at 70 feet up. It then shot us through the ride and we took high-banked turns and sudden drops and then exited into 18 inches of water. I was so freakin scared! I thought the raft was either going to fly over the edge or flip over. We were pretty close to the weight limit so we went faster and flew in the air further. OMG. That's all I can say. We didn't take the camera in the water park, but here's a pic I found online to give you an idea. You see in the picture that these people were going up on the edge and their raft wasn't going above the edge. Yeah about 1/3 of our raft was over the edge. My butt flew up in the air numerous times and I had to have been 12-18 inches off the ground and I landed on my raft buddies; at some point, somebody landed on me too. It was crrrrazy.

Around 8pm, we finally left the park and headed back to Dave & Jenny's. We were all so tired, but in a good way. Poor Megan had to drive home to Rochester (90 min away) and go to work at 11pm at the hospital/labor and delivery tech. She lucked out though and they sent her home at 5am. Jenny & Mom went and got Chipotle takeout for us for dinner. I sat on the couch with ice on my ankle and took a vicodin while Anthony played a video game and Dave went to get stuff to make home made ice cream (he tried hard, but it didn't work). Around 11ish (I think) we all went to bed.

Tuesday, August 5th

Are you still with me? Really? Dave had to go to work at 8:30am. I was sleeping so good and then my phone rang at 9am....Pappy called to say hi. He felt bad he woke me and told me to go back to sleep but I was already awake. So I read the end of my really good book and enjoyed an hour of quiet time before everybody else woke up. Then I checked email and read a few blogs...we took showers and then we went to a place called Murphy's Landing in Shakopee. Jenny got us a pass at the library (we drove there before going to ML) so we got in free (that's my kind of price!)  To explain what it was, I took this little blurb from their web site:

"Experience life in Minnesota from the 1840s through 1890 with a visit to The Landing, a recreated living history museum nestled along the beautiful Minnesota River Valley near Shakopee. Costumed interpreters and authentic buildings show how 19th-century Minnesotans established their lives on the frontier, farmstead and in villages."

We had a tour guide and there was us and 2 other families that went on the tour. It was really cool to walk through all of the houses, the general store, the churches etc and to hear the history and see the way things were "back then." As we got closer to the turn of the century houses, we started recognizing things that were in Hazel and Alta's house (in Chatfield). This place was on the Minnesota River, so we took some pics there after the tour. It was sunny with a nice breeze, but it was pretty hot! Did I mention we had to walk a mile from the visitor center down to the houses and then a mile back? Not to mention walking around the area with the houses. We definitely got our exercise in!

     

After going to Murphy's Landing, we went to McDonalds for a late lunch. Anthony told us that he was an international spy and we had to go to McDonalds to get another spy toy in his Happy meal. We humored him. We were up for a cheap/quick lunch. After lunch, we went to the post office to mail Grandma her sweater she had left at Dave & Jenny's and then we went to see Dave at Gold's Gym where he is a sales person. He gave us the tour and we met his boss (who gave us free water...woo hoo). They have a really nice gym - I liked the pool (I wish our Gold's had one) and the movie room (they have exercise equipment in a "movie theatre" and it's dark in there while you exercise). After that, we took a drive out to Jenny's sister and brother in law's house (about 30 min away). I took a few pics of her nieces, but it was a short photo shoot because the girls weren't in the mood for pics and it was National Night Out and Becky & Steven were hosting a get together for their neighborhood at 6pm (and it was almost 6pm).

 

And here's the thermometer in their backyard to show you..it really was hot!

We headed back to Dave & Jenny's to wait for Dave to get off of work. I wanted to do a photo shoot with Dave & Jenny and the weather was kinda crappy on Sunday evening when we had originally planned to do it, so we did it on Tuesday night. We headed to a local park (close to Jenny's parents house) and did some pics...we had to hurry because the sun was going down fast. After doing pics of the 2 of them, I took some pics of Jenny in her wedding dress. We thought it would be fun and then I could also use 1 or 2 of them on my website. We had a blast. There was a National Night Out gathering going on at the park and Jenny changed her clothes kind of in the woods so it looked pretty funny when she came out wearing her dress. All the little girls wanted their picture taken with the princess. (I'm not posting any of them here because I don't have permission from the parents, although Mom got their info for me so I can get it, so I'll post it eventually hopefully).

 

 

We finished with pics around 9pm and we hadn't eaten dinner yet, so Mom took us all to DQ - it's one of the ones where you can sit in there and they have food and ice cream. After that we had to run to Walmart to get Famous Dave's BBQ sauce and Gedney pickles to take home...and finally we went back to Dave & Jenny's to pack for our trip home. We hadn't gotten a chance to take pictures of Dave and Jenny and the dogs so I took a couple of quick ones in their dining room at about 11pm!

We said our goodbyes to Dave & Jenny (always hard) and tried to get some sleep. None of us really succeeded at that. First I couldn't fall asleep and when I did, I kept waking up to see what time it was. We had to get up at 3am to get to the airport and return our car and get checked in and ready for our 5:30am flight to Atlanta. About 20 min into the flight....I took some pics of the sunrise.

 

Anthony conked out for about an hour....I couldn't sleep so I just read....mom rested a tiny bit and then we were in Atlanta. We had a 2 hour layover and then headed home to Wilmington. We got in at 12:39pm. Daddy picked us up and Papa and Grandma Judy came too. Pappy even stopped over on his lunch hour and surprised us with a hug and a kiss before he headed back to work. We had a quick lunch at Wendy's and then Daddy dropped us off and he went back to work. It was such a great trip. I pushed myself harder than I have in a long time - physically and mentally. I've been home 2.5 days and I just feel incredible. I feel like I can do anything. My injuries have held me back for awhile, but no more! I'm excited to get back in shape and get healthy again. Anthony starts kindergarten in a little over 2 weeks and that same day I drop him off I'll be heading to the gym - I can't wait. I'll probably post my progress on here to keep me accountable too. Anyway, here's one last picture of my baby on the plane ride home. He was so tired. Look at those eyes. If you've gotten to the end with me - thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it :)