Kieran's 9th Birthday

Kieran's birthday was last Sunday and he wanted a sleep over birthday party.  Three boys came over Saturday afternoon and three of them slept the night.

They spent most of the day outside, but came in first to open a few presents from the boys - Kieran received a basketball and two footballs.  That meant they were off to play basketball and football outside somewhere...

Dinner was pizza and it was time for cake...of course he wanted an ice cream cake...

Nine candles and off they went back outside...

They came inside around 8:30 or so, then started playing the Playstation and watched a movie until who knows when.  Sarah walked downstairs to turn the tv off at 4:30 am and they were all out cold.

After we took the boys home we took Kieran to get his new present.

He scored a new bike!  He had outgrown his sometime last year or the year before.  He's happy with it (but not nearly as happy as he is from the gift from Grandma and Grandpa - a street hockey net with two sticks - he's played that every day since).

Best part is that Luke scored a new bike too!  (Kieran's old bike - good thing Luke doesn't mind hand-me-downs too much)

Mother's Day - Race for the Cure

On Mother's Day, we went to the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure at Southdale.  Kieran, Luke and Sarah were walking the 5K while Lex and I were watching.

Lex and I had a while before we expected them to finish, so she saw the Vikings Cheerleaders and wanted a picture.  She walked up to them and asked for it (though I'm not sure if they understood her).

We figured that the three of them would be walking together....um no...Kieran came by first.

Then it was Luke and Sarah.

Afterwards, Luke was tired, hungry and generally cranky, but he finished and did a good job.  Till next year...

Quarry Hill Nature Center

It's been a while, but back in April while we were in Rochester, we visited Quarry Hill Nature Center for the afternoon.  It was free admission and they had everything....snakes, turtles, fish, salamanders, bees, birds, fossil hunting in the old quarries...the list goes on and on.

They had multiple species of snakes...here's bull snake.

Who wouldn't expect to randomly find a T-Rex replica skull in Rochester?  Luke loved it...

There was a large pond/lake with all sorts of things, Ducks had recently returned to MN...

The turtles had just come out of hibernation and were enjoying the spring sun...

And the nature center has miles and miles of walking/hiking paths for you to enjoy...if you walk far enough, you'll find this small creek...

Several paths go back to the old limestone quarries, the limestone was used for many buildings in the area...basically, everything that is water in the picture below (it had rained a lot recently) was where limestone was and quarried out.

It's in these quarries that you can fossil hunt and take home what you find (though they ask nothing larger than your fist)...Luke really wanted to find a dinosaur, but it took some real convincing that it wouldn't happen.  The Limestone was deposited when MN was covered by an ocean and is Ordovician in age, meaning it pre-dates the dinosaurs by a couple of hundred million years....

But there are some cool things to be found, heres where a Cephalopod was until it was removed by someone...

This particular cephalopod was related to and similar to today's squid, some of the real big ones found in MN can be 15 feet or longer...

After Luke realized he wouldn't find any dinosaurs, he realized fossil hunting would still be okay.  Here's one of his finds...it's filled with bryozoa, brachiopods, corals, etc.

It's a great park...plus it's free!