Saturday Adventures: The Children's Museum

Chris and I have lived in South Dakota for almost 5 years and we realized that we just about never leave Sioux Falls.  Ever.  We have no reason to.  Everything we need is here and, well ... there's not much elsewhere.  But there is a children's museum in Brookings that I've heard is fantastic.  And we've never been.  So on Saturday, we packed a lunch, grabbed the boys and made the hour drive north to Brookings.

(And in case you're wondering, South Dakota is a terribly boring state to drive in/through.  Even if it's just an hour.  Good thing I had good company!)

First up was the farm & grocery area.  It was amazingly interactive!  Carter was a bit stunned by everything at first, but eventually warmed up to "playing".

Brooks did a good job shopping.  With the exception of Teddy Grahams and margarine (which I made him put back), he picked out all real, whole foods.

There was this wonderfully tall climbing thing (descriptive, huh?) that had petal-like platforms and netting around.  Wish I had taken a picture of the whole thing - it reached all the way up to the 30' ceiling!  Brooks was quite intimidated by it and didn't want to go in.  But after some convincing (and me agreeing to go with him) we made the climb to the top!  I was super proud of my normally-cautious child.

Carter and Daddy climbed up a little ways, but soon left as there were several "big" kids running over Mr. C.

The water room was, as expected, a BIG hit!  In fact, after we made our way through all the rooms, we stopped one more time to play in the water!

And there was lots of music opportunities.  Brooks has taken a huge interest in music lately, so it was fun for him to play and explore the different instruments.

A whole music room!  With the SDSU marching band music playing!

Every Saturday, they have crafts available for the kids to make.  Brooks was designing a quilt square. 

In the little cafe, they serve SDSU ice cream.  And so to end our day out, we enjoyed a special ice cream treat!  It was delicious! 

Carter clearly liked it!! :) 

Yep, we wore them out! 

Normally we enjoy our Saturdays at home, just being lazy.  But I'm really glad we ventured out.  We'll definitely be going back to the Children's Museum - it just wish it wasn't an hour away!

Saturday Adventure: Pumpkins!

This last weekend, we drove out to Valley Spring, SD (or is it in Iowa?  I don't know) to a farm called Garden of Weeden'.  I had heard about it from  few friends and since we didn't have any pumpkins (and didn't have anything to do) we made the 20 minute drive to the farm.  It was really a low key place - but they had a bunch of pumpkins and a ton of produce!

Carter kept calling the pumpkins "ball ball".  I guess it's close enough :) 

Then inside the produce barn they had a ton of little gourds.  I mean, a ton!!

Each of the boys picked out a few little pumpkins and I grabbed about 25lbs of acorn and butternut squash.  Our whole family loves squash, so I'll put a bunch in the freezer for the winter.

Then on Sunday we let he boys paint their pumpkins.  We thought about carving them, but let's be honest, it's a whole lotta work for us and not that much involvement for them.  So, painting it was.  Yes, Carter tried to eat the paint.  Yes, Brooks eventually covered most of his pumpkin in black paint (despite my urging him to use "bright" colors) and yes, we had a great time!

check out the tongue!

The end result?

Carter's on the left.  Brooks' on the right.

our mini pumpkin creations

Saturday Adventures: The Apple Orchard

I have so many blog posts swirling around in my head right now and I need to write about Carter's birthday still, but I wanted to post this before I totally forgot about it.

Saturday morning we all headed down to Country Apple Orchard just south of Sioux Falls.  It's our fifth year going, so I guess it's kind of a tradition.  The apples are terribly overpriced, but we try to tell ourselves that we're paying for the experience, not the fruit.  Then it seems worth it.  We met our friends Eric and Katie and their two kids, Jake and Celia there.  The weather was 65 degrees and sunny - perfect!  Here's a few pictures from the day!

This year Brooks rode the "train" aka wheeled rain barrels pulled by Santa on a riding lawn mower.  Yep, Santa.  He loved it!  Not the Santa part (he doesn't even know who that is) ... the train part.

This has to be the BEST picture of the day.  Brooks asked for some of Jake's ice cream and like any good friend would, he shared :)  It was so cute!  Oh, and the fact that Jake is dressed in a flannel shirt, bibs and a conductor hat?  Hilarious!  It's like country mouse and city mouse!

After the ice cream was finished, we rode the wagon out to the orchard and picked some apples.

"Look how tall I am.  I can reach the apples!"

"Mama!  Look at my apple!"

We stopped for a little snack break.  We had to sample the "fruit" of our labor :)

This kid may only have eight teeth, but he wasn't about to be outdone by the big kids.  And wouldn't you know, he actually got a few bites off that apple.

Tonight I made my first apple pie of the season.  I. love. apple. pie.  Love love love apple pie!  And really all things apple.  I'm so excited for fall baking!

Saturday Adventures: Downtown, Juggling & Baseball

To be accurate, this should probably be called "Weekend Adventures".  And yes, although very random, all of those things were included in our weekend.

Downtown.  For once, the temperatures around here have dropped below 100 degrees.  Friday night was beautiful outside.  I mean absolutely beautiful.  And I wanted to get out. of. my. house.  And to some place other than the park.  I like the park.  Just was tired of it.  So we headed downtown.  They have a sculpture walk and Brooks has been interested lately in statues.  So that was fun for him.  They also had some live musicians along the sidewalks.  We learned that Brooks has no problem with a guy and a guitar but four saxophone players are somehow frightening.  Who knew.  Then we walked to the toy store, which to my surprise was open at 7:00 at night.  So we went inside and played with balls and scooters and trucks.  I love Child's Play Toys!

Juggling.  Chris heard on the radio that the World Juggling Federation was having their annual conference right here in Sioux Falls.  Juggling is fun.  So we decided to go!  (Random, right??)  They had events going on all week, but Saturday night there was an event called "Juggling Games".  We had no idea what that meant, but it sounded fun and it was free.  So we went!  Immediately upon arrival we realized that these "juggling games" were not necessarily meant to be a spectator event.  Because there were quite literally eight other people there.  All of which I guessed to be parents of the teenage jugglers below and they all apparently were familiar with each other.  We received many "who are these people?" looks.  We were the outsiders.  We sat down anyway.

And within a few minutes we learned what "juggling games" were.  A group of teenagers (mostly boys) were gathered with all of their juggling apparatus.  I'm guessing they all participated in the workshops during the week.  And over the course of the next hour a gentleman set up different challenges and competitions for them to complete.  Some for prizes, some not.  They were not professional jugglers, but when the "easy" challenge was "Whoever juggles 5 balls the longest, wins" ... we knew they would be good.  And they were.  It was actually really fun to watch.  They juggled 5 balls.  Then 7 balls.  Then 5 clubs.  They juggled on chairs.  They juggled in pairs.  They threw them in the air.  They juggled on stairs.  (Ok, not really on stairs.  I got caught up in the rhyming.  Sorry.)  Brooks watched for the whole hour!  Carter "watched" for 10 minutes.  All in all.  A pretty fun event for a Saturday night.


Baseball.
Brooks completed the library's reading challenge this summer and one of his prizes was a pair of tickets to the Sioux Falls Fighting Pheasants.  Never heard of 'em?  Don't feel bad.  They're a (very) minor league baseball team and they're not very good.  But Brooks was excited to go see baseball guys and Chris was excited to take his boy to a ball game.  So Sunday night they donned their baseball caps and sweatshirts (it was pretty cool and rainy) and headed to the ballpark.  Chris said Brooks sat through a whole inning!  That's not too bad for a three year old.  He was, of course, asking for food the whole time but Chris made him sit for at least one inning :)  After that they bought hot dogs, chips and lemonade (which Brooks promptly spilled) for "dinner" and watched some more baseball.  They wandered around the park for a while and then headed home.

Chris and I have both learned to temper our expectations when it comes to these kinds of events.  If you go thinking you're going to sit and watch a whole baseball game, you will be sorely disappointed.  Life with little kids just doesn't afford you those kinds of opportunities.  But I was proud of Chris because he went and just enjoyed the experience of being at the game with Brooks ... of spending time with his son - even though they didn't see much actual baseball.  (But remember that they're not any good, so it wasn't a huge loss :)

Brooks hangin' with the pheasant!!

Saturday Adventures: The Outdoor Campus

It was a beautiful Saturday night last night and we decided we needed to get out of the house.  Chris wanted to go the Outdoor Campus, so we made that our destination.  The OC is run by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks department.  They have an indoor building with different activities and learning stations for kids and they runs all kinds of outdoor/nature classes.  When we arrived the building was closed but we walked around back to their outdoor activities and walked along some trails.  There's also a small pond on the grounds.  First we started by picking rocks on the "beach" and tossing them in the water.  Then we had our shoes off and were wading in the water.  Then before we could stop it, Brooks was sitting in the water.  With his clothes on.  I wanted to be mad but he was giggling and laughing so much I could hardly be upset.  Carter would have plunged in too, but I kept him at a dry distance.  We had a lot of fun and captured some pretty good photos too.