Minneapolis

We decided to celebrate the end of the school year by taking a weekend trip over to Minneapolis to try out Valley Fair and the Mall of America.  Grandma and Grandpa came to the rescue and offered to keep Madison and Kennedy for the weekend so that we could enjoy these two places with a few less tantrums and tired toddlers.  We are so grateful they did, although we aren't sure which group had more fun together.  The twins were so good for Grandma and Grandpa and the Bigs really enjoyed having mom and dad to themselves for a few days!

Reagan was pretty brave and tried a few fast rides and even one of those old rickety wooden roller coasters.  Harrison decided he only likes rides that "don't leave the ground," which left us over by the go carts and train rides.  We did manage to trick the kids into going on a "boat ride," which in reality was the log flume.  Needless to say, when we got up to the top and they realized what was about to happen, Harrison let out quite a yell.  Both were in tears by the splash at the bottom and Mom and Dad just giggled.  As you can see from this picture, though, they weren't totally traumatized by it...just soaked!  Both were happily enjoying watching from the splash zone afterwards as well.

 We took Harrison on a kiddie coaster....turned out that was not something he enjoyed as you can see by this lovely face when we got done :)

 Quite possibly the best picture of the weekend, though, is this one that Corey captured of Harrison on a ride that looks much more frightening judging by the look on his face than it was in reality.  Hilarious...

In the end, it was a very fun day for all of us.

We headed back toward the hotel and decided to eat dinner at the Mall of America so that we could scope out the place and decide on our plan of attack for the following day.  The kids absolutely loved eating at Rainforest Cafe!

The next day we fit as much of the Mall in as we could.  We visited the aquarium in the mall and hit the kids' two MUSTS: the Lego store and the American Girl store.  We took in some rides (Harrison again decided to stay on the ground and skipped the ferris wheel view). Corey even entertained the kids in the mall for awhile to allow me time to get some shopping in.  Again another great day.  It was a wonderful vacation but we were happy to get home to the girls (who ran and gave us hugs after staring at us for a few minutes and then gave us a little bit of a cold shoulder for the next day!).  It was a nice warm up for our big vacation next month to see the Shaws!`