Pink Playgrounds and Ice Skating

Becky was in the wars this week, we have these armless rocking chairs that sit on the floor which are meant for watching TV in (probably as this is America) which the kids do anything but sit in , mostly they use them to jump off of or knock over etc.. and Becky came off of one of them straight onto the window ledge. Et voila, one black eye..
In order not to put our children at any more risk of injury we decided at the last minute to start Dan having some ice-skating lessons.
Dan absolutely loved ice-skating, and despite falling over countless times he is desperate to go back and do some more. Its pretty much compulsory for kids here to ice-skate so they are quite chilled about getting kids in the rink by themselves on their first lesson, they did quite fun things too like getting them to catch bubbles, playing 'heads' shoulders' knees and toes' etc..

The tree in the front garden (the one with the red leaves from the last blog entry) is now looking like this.
Just to remind you it looked like this a week ago.
Which meant another opportunity to use the leaf vacuum/shredder

Then we headed to a local lake we'd not been to yet (as there are 10,000+ lakes in Minnesota there will always be lakes we haven't been to yet, and the blog could get repetitive but this was a close by one). As it had a beach Dan was straight off with his shoes before realising how cold it was.


Still warm enough to play with buckets and spades for a good hour before heading off for dinner. We went to a buffet restaurant called Q-Cumbers which was insanely good value as it was an eat all you want which included a brilliant salad bar, ice cream, biscuits and muffins, mexican etc all for less than £11 for the 4 of us! I have to say, we hadn't seen that many really large people in Minnesota, now we know they were all hiding in Q-Cumbers.

On Sunday we headed to Minneotonka after church in one of our, 'find somewhere that looks good on the map and let the details look after themselves' expeditions. These typically have a sub 50% chance of being an unqualified success, the usual pattern being

• drive somewhere nice
• look at the scenery
• try to find something to do with the kids
• circle around a lot
• keep circling
• have a replanning session by the side of the road somewhere
• get lost
• buy some sweets
• go home

This time however we got lucky at the penultimate step and got directions to a small park by the side of a lake. Despite it being really cold again Dan decided to paddle in the water and spent 20 minutes getting wetter and wetter.
And climbing up the outside of climbing frames
Andy is right on top of the kids when they go on climbing frames to avoid any more accidents :-)

After a change of clothes we got lucky again and came across the girliest play area ever, not sure if it was designed for girls or if they just got a great price on some left over stock, but it was a huge pink play area (picture hardly captures the size or pinkness of it) where we stayed for a while.

Best Signpost in Washington

One of the differences between the US and UK is obviously the supermarkets. We're lucky in that we have one of the nicest supermarkets really nearby. The supermarket hierarchy here goes

• Lunds/Byerley's (top tier)
  
• Rainbow
• Cub

The best thing about Byerley's is that you always get your bags packed for you and you don't even have to put them in the car, after you've paid you just collect some big plastic tags and then drive round the corner where your shopping is placed into your car for you. This is a little disconcerting the first time; as you pay for your shopping then you're busy working out how to get a legible signature on the electronic signature capture pad and wondering if it will it get accepted as it looks nothing at all like your normal signature, then you look round and your shopping has been swiped. No-one tells you that its been taken to load into your car, its all a bit weird, then you get used to it and you quite enjoy it and forget that it means everything costs you more than it would do otherwise.

They also have the best toffee apples probably in the known universe, really thick soft creamy toffee around a nice crisp apple. I don't even like toffee apples but it was 'awesome'. You have to say 'awesome' a lot if you are from Minnesota.

They are also just about the only place you can buy Heinz Baked Beans ($2.00/tin) and digestive biscuits. American biscuits are pretty bad really so it is a treat to get proper ones. Anyway, Andy was in Byerley's last week and she was paying for her shopping with a cashier she'd never had before when the woman asked her' are you the bean lady?'. So it seems we have a bit of a reputation here already.

Winter Approaches

The trees have almost given up their leaves now, here is a picture of one of the trees in our front garden about a week ago, it is pretty much bare now.
And here is a picture taken from our living room across the lake, you can now see one of the main road through the trees.

The next few months are allegedly white and brown only. In anticipation of the white part we're taking Dan for his first ice-skating lesson tomorrow, and either Andy or I will also take an adult class. I'm thinking that we'll get Dan into Ice-Hockey. Andy is worried about the fighting aspect of it but they're actually not allowed to fight in a game until they are 15 so I don't see what the big deal is.

We've got a lot of trees around and in our garden so I ended up getting a leaf blower and vacuum, Dan and I spent a fun-packed couple of hours last weekend getting rid of as many leaves from the garden as we could.

We also went for a lovely walk round a small lake about a mile from our house that we never even knew was there before.



This week I had to go to Washington DC on business where I was shown 'the best sign in DC'.

Here is another fine sight, the Ronald Reagan museum

And finally the awful car I got as my hire car, the funny thing is is that it is worse on the inside but you wouldn't believe it was possible from the outside.

The heating is on

This week the weather has turned a bit and it now looks as though we're staring down the barrel of winter. Cycling in is takes a lot more effort with cold legs and I finally relented and gave up wearing sandals and bought some SDP clip on cycling shoes. The first day I wore them in I jumped straight on the bike cycled a mile or so until I came to some red lights, pulled alongside a car and found I was completely unable to remove my shoes from the pedals and fell over in front of the traffic. The lights changed to green and I was still lying on the ground trying to get the shoes off of the pedals. As it was not overly comfortable lying on the cold ground with a backlog of traffic waiting for me to magically flip upright I had to unstrap myself from the shoes and carry the bike, with the shoes still attached to the side of the road. I have since loosened the tension settings on the pedals.

We went on the first parent organised school outing at the weekend (just as England were beating France in the rugby - not that you it is shown anywhere in MN) at the Minneapolis arboretum. Did anyone spot the typo in the last sentence, it was of course 'parent disorganised' trip as the instructions of 'arriving at the arboretum you will be directed to the meeting point' should have been 'arriving at the arboretum you will be let in and must wander helplessly around for several hours trying to spot other small people in the hopes that they go to the same school' It would be different if it was a school for people with two heads or for smurfs as you'd be able to recognise them from a distance but this was hopeless. Still the weather was brilliant, the arboretum was lovely and we got a picture to use a t Becky's wedding - see below.



On Sunday we joined the Minnesota children's museum

and the kids had a great time playing with all of the interactive exhibits and I also got to BBQ twice - I'm going to have to see if there are any breakfast foods to BBQ so that I can do it 3 times a day.

Work is going a bit better, we finally got approval to do what we wanted to do more than 3 months ago which I think is quick progress for Best Buy. Not sure what the corporate slogan is but my suggestion would be 'Run By Committee - Powered By Meetings' . Nothing seems to move quickly here and I still don't have my corporate discount so I can't get my hands on all the nice shiny things.

Becky has learned to say 'Daniel did it' which she uses even if caught red handed doing something naughty - such as eating toothpaste. This is the difficulty with children, either they are running around screaming which is painful or they are quiet, which is worse as it means they are up to something.

Andy is having a bit of a 'what am I doing here?' phase which is hard, but the 44lbs of chocolate she ordered a while ago arrived today which may answer that question, or at least prove a diversion.

Dan is still busy using the camera whenever we leave it in reach, this is one he took of Andy hard at work in the kitchen.

Weekend in Duluth

So the plan for this weekend is that after having to wait 6 weeks for a slot both of us take us our driving tests at lunch-time then we head off to Duluth to see the peak colours of Autumn - but as we shall see, the best laid plans of lice and hen....

The first spanner in the works was that I had a v.important meeting rescheduled to the same time as our driving tests, so I was not a popular bunny when I told Andy and we had to reschedule, for early November :-(

Then later in the day the meeting was rescheduled again, this time to 3pm which meant we could have done our driving tests and also we'd be late in setting off on holiday - this went down like a cup of sick with Andy but I really needed to go to the meeting. Fortunately the meeting went really well and all the work I'd been putting in for the last few months got the go-ahead! It's now all systems go on the work front so rather confusingly I headed into the Autumn weekend full of the joys of Spring.

The weather forecast (and this is October mind you) is for a sunny 85 degrees in the twin cities (which if you haven't been paying attention are Minneapolis and St. Paul) - Duluth is 160 miles to the north, surely pretty much the same weather. We got to Duluth late Friday night stopping at Moose Lake for a bite to eat. We had originally planned to stop in Moose Lake itself as Duluth was pretty much full and the only places available were in a hotel which was a 'bit spendy' for my liking (a bit spendy is a popular Minnesota saying which I quite like - try it at home and we'll see if it catches on by the time we move back). but in the end I relented as Moose Lake is 43 miles from Duluth and the biggest attractions are an Agate 'museum' (read shed) and a correctional facility (nice). Food was good but we weren't really in the mood to be murdered so we quickly headed off to our hotel in Duluth. Weather lousy in Duluth, but kids happy jumping from bed to bed in the hotel room. Looking forward to lots of sunshine in the morning as it was misty, cold and rainy when we arrived.

Good weather was obviously involved in a collision with a deer on its way up as it is still cold, rainy and misty on Saturday. Far too tight to get breakfast in the hotel so we headed into town (one of the top 10 towns in the US apparently). We are obviously in the more salubrious part of the town as we walk past a 24 hour casino, strip club, and various rather run down establishments, the kids are getting colder and its all looking a bit grim. In an effort to get some cash out so we don't annoy anyone who tries to mug us we discover the skywalks - these run around the city centres and take you from place to place so you don't die from exposure in the winters (not even joking). As you can see, it is still misty and unpleasant out.

This was taken at 9am from inside a skywalk!

This was an hour later from the skywalk, brightening up a bit!

Not to be deterred by the weather we decide to head up the North shore of Lake Superior (of which more later). We stopped for a while at Two Harbors (American spelling as its a proper noun) where we went out onto the spit, it was not pleasant and the kids were not amused.

As the saying goes 'when your kids go blue, back in the car for you' so we did and they thawed out in no time - thereby reminding us of the corollary to the previous saying 'if your kids move again get them out in the rain'. So we headed up the shore some more to Gooseberry falls. When we got there we had a quick look at the big waves.


Difficult to keep hold of Dan, he kept rushing off.

But he eventually froze on the spot allowing us to take this photo.

So the thing is that even when you know the water in the photos behind us is a lake, its difficult to believe, but it is, Lake Superior is bigger than the next three biggest great lakes put together and is so large that if it froze over (which has happened twice in recorded history) there would be enough room for everyone on the planet to spread out a 12ftx12ft picnic blanket and have a picnic (whoever worked that out hadn't taken into account the lack of parking spaces).

Gooseberry Falls
Pictures will tell it better than words, the only thing they won't tell you was how much Dan was intent on jumping from rock to rock near the falls.
The views were pretty limited on the whole given the weather so the best shot we got on the colours was from Splitrock Lighthouse car park - we didn't even go into the lighthouse as we wouldn't have been able to see anything.
In the evening we headed into a very misty and sinister looking Duluth town centre - so far we're not sure why you'd ever want to come here. Didn't get any photos but imagine Gotham City.

The next day was just as misty, we went to the lakefront playground to let the kids run off their breakfast (I relented and stayed in the hotel but I made sure we got our money's worth)
The weather was no clearer but a little warmer so we decided to do a bit of the lakefront walk.

Kids overjoyed to be in the rose garden at Duluth


Me hanging out with Leif Erickson the so called discoverer of America (haven't they heard of Christopher Columbus)

After a while of lakeshore frolicks we headed down South again and decided to see some more sights rather than heading straight home. We went East a bit and ended up in Wilsconsin at St Croix park. Dan tried his hand at photography

And so did Andy - we'll let you be the judge of who should be allowed behind the camera :-)

Being as this is the Cheese State I even managed to get both children to say 'Cheese' at the same time - this one is worth blowing up as behind Dan and Becky you can see a rather splendid view.
There were also some sinkholes here (where a swirling mass of water has ground a circular hole in the ground)

The weather here was completely different to Duluth, where it was 56F , in Wilconsin it was 83 at 4 in the afternoon!We had a nice walk in the woods

Followed by a paddle in the lake
Dan thought I said 'let's have a nice battle in the lake'

Becky pretended not to hear me say 'let's not get too wet'

And at pm we headed back home, having not seen as much of the Autumn colours as we might have liked but having had a fantastic weekend nonetheless.