Fall at Minnehaha Falls

The month of September 2012 was the second driest month of September in recorded history for the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.  Officially, just 0.30" of rain fell (during the record September of 1882, only 0.27" of rain fell).  Because of the lack of rain and the fact that I knew the falls were nearly dry, we had to go spend a few hours there (plus, I wanted to gigpan the falls, check out the gigapan below if you don't know what that means).

See the full size version of the gigapan here.

Now the kids just wanted to run and they found lots of space to do that.  Below the falls and near the abandoned waterfall, the creekbed is dry, which provided the space needed.

They could do silly poses and throw some rocks....

Of course there is a great picture of the three kids that should make the Christmas card....

Did I mention it was fall?

Of course Kieran always has to be the one who climbs the highest...

We finished the day with a short picnic lunch.....Luke and Lex fell asleep about 100 yards away from the parking lot, they were pretty worn out.

Luke's Second Day of Pre-School

So apparently getting on the school bus for the second day was not as big of a concern...

Hopefully the day went as well as the smiles indicate...

Luke's First Day of Pre-School

Luke's first day of pre-school has been coming for awhile.  Lately, he's been talking about how he'll be riding the bus with Kieran and about all the fun things he'll do at pre-school.

But...remember...he's Luke and he does not like new people or even new routines (not sure where he gets that from).

Quoted from a text by Sarah:  "I feel sorry for Rich (the bus driver, great guy) as Luke was screaming as I actually had to physically put him on the bus.  Rich said it was the 2nd one this morning and he wasn't at the least fazed."
Quoted from an e-mail by Sarah:  "When I put Luke on the bus, I looked at Kieran and said hold on to him, and I ran off quickly so he couldn't follow."  (hope Kieran can hold on tight!)

Another text from Sarah:  "Betsy (the pre-school teacher) had to take him off the bus & I left him with Betsy screaming.  Hopefully the day will get better."
I'm sure the day went just fine and Luke had fun.  These first few days may try the patience of those involved, but Luke will do great!

Luke's 4th Birthday

We asked Luke what he wanted for his birthday a few weeks ago and he came up with four ideas.  He wanted two Transformers (Arcee and Bulkhead), an Ironman costume for Halloween, and a Bow and Arrow set.  Well.....he got some of that....

Up first is the Ironman costume, of course he put it on and of course he wanted to sleep in it (no he did not get to sleep in the costume).

Then came the Transformer Bulkhead (well technically Bulkhead is an Autobot, but.....) to go along with Arcee that he got earlier.  Arcee transforms into a motorcycle and is a female Autobot for those interested and Bulkhead transforms into some sort of an SUV.  These go along with the Decepticon Soundwave (Decepticons are the evil Transformers and Autobots are the good guys) that he received from Grandma and Grandpa earlier in the weekend.  As you might be able to tell, we're going through a bit of a Transformers phase here.....

We're also just a little bit into the Avengers as well.  Luke's favorite is Ironman, he also has Avenger underwear (just in case you wanted to know)....

Dinner at Pizza Ranch and all the kids in bed, hopefully they're sleeping because I'm certainly tired...

Kierans First Trip to the Dentist

It was Kieran's first dentist appointment this afternoon.  Considering how well doctor appointments can go with him (not good), I was certainly curious how well it would work out.  After talking about this for two months, I was fairly comfortable that it'd be fine, but you never know.

I knew that they would be handed him some sunglasses, but I just had to take the picture because he was so relaxed.  Not a tear, whimper or whine the entire time at the dentist (and no cavities), it went extremely well.  Sometime after leaving the dentist, Kieran did say "I was a little worried about the dentist, but I'm not anymore", which is great, because his next appointment is already scheduled for March 5th.

While the dentist reviewed the X-rays, the dentist said "wow, I've never seen this except in pictures", which got my attention.  Apparently Kieran has something called mesiodens, which is quite literally an extra tooth on the upper front.  At some point in the future, probably between grades 6-8, this extra tooth will most likely have to be removed.  It'll be watched with follow-up X-rays at future appointments, so we'll see what happens.

Annual Von Ahn family picnic

The first Monday in August has traditionally been the annual Von Ahn family reunion/picnic in Yetter, Iowa (population 34 in 2010 census).  We took the opportunity to take an unique picture of my Grandfather Pete (well his actual name is Clifford) and his eight Great-Grandchildren.

Back row:  Charlie (Cathy - 4 years old), Owen (Leah - 10 months), Lexy (Brian - 2), Kieran (Brian - 6), Claire (Cathy - 6)
Front row:  Henry (Cathy - 3), Luke (Brian - almost 4), Grandpa Pete holding Olivia (Leah - 10 months)

Of course we should have taken another picture with Pete's son/daughter and four of five grandchildren to make it a four generation picture, but of course, no one thought of that.

Wisconsin Dells - Chula Vista Resort

As part of Central Elementary's fall fundraiser last year, each student who sold five items had their names placed in a drawing for a one-nights stay at the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells.  Kieran won the drawing and last week we headed to Wisconsin for three days and two nights.

The resort has an indoor and outdoor waterpark, when we got checked in, we sampled both.  The slides there have names like - Flying Mayan, Ruby Run, Matador Mat Racers, Jungle Adventure, Durango Drop, and Python Plunge.  Some of us went of some of these slides, not necessarily all of them.

Luke loved the waterslides at both the indoor and outdoor kiddie areas.  The boy is a fiend, he would be content to climb up/slide down for hours.  Of course, our first day there wasn't bright and sunny, but the kids still had fun.


I went down the Durango Drop (the yellow one next to the twin red slides) at the outdoor waterpark, I'm pretty sure I was pulling the lining from my swimsuit out of my keister for the rest of the trip...but it was fun.

Unfortunately, after about an hour of swimming (maybe a little more) that first night, Kieran got really cold, so we went back to the room.  After we got back to the room, we realized he was running a fever, after running to the store for some medicine, we had an interesting night of little sleep.
Luke ended up running a fever the next morning as well.  Swimming was really out for the one full day that we would be spending at Chula Vista.  Kieran spent most of the day laying in bed sleeping, hoping he'd feel better so he could swim before we left.

The next morning, Kieran woke up feeling much better, Luke slightly better.  Kieran said we needed to 'rock the slides', I'm not sure where he picked that up.  We spent about four hours flying around the area, Luke and Lex spent considerably less before they got cold and hungry.

The picture below shows Mount Montezuma's Mayan Temple that has water flying in every direction and three slides.  We had tried all three slides out two days earlier, so Kieran decided he was only going down the 'blue one', it was the highest.  We went down tube slides, mat slides, body slides, etc.  He would have kept going for the rest of the day.

At one point he realized that he was tall enough to go down the Python Plunge and was very intrigued.  It was the fastest slide that I had gone down at the resort so I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't listen.  So I had to demonstrate how to go down the slide safely and had to go first.  After Kieran came roaring down the Python Plunge, I asked if he had fun and he said "yes, but it was too fast, too crazy".  We didn't go down that slide again.

About a day and a half after returning from Wisconsin, Lex spent the next day running a fever, hopefully we're done with that sickness!

Carver County Fair

Yeah....that's right, if the picture above doesn't get you excited about the Carver County Fair, you're missing out.  Even the bee was excited enough to come in at the last moment to be included in the picture.

We spent about four hours at the fair doing the usual things - climbing the tractors on machinery hill, cow and horse barn, poultry (too loud for Lex) and other small farm animal barns, most of the buildings, and we even saw a baby giraffe.  Luke wanted to go on the Ferris Wheel, so we did....here's a picture from somewhere near the top.

Turning the picture around the other direction and pointing it at the ground, we can see Kieran, Lex and Sarah patiently waiting for the ride to end.  Kieran and Sarah are sitting on the picnic table in the middle of the picture and Lex is holding two balloons near them.  Kieran is wearing a red shirt, Sarah and pink one and Lex is wearing a pink dress.  Yeah....Luke and I were quite high in the sky.

Luke, Lex and Sarah eventually rode the Merry-Go-Round, apparently Lex likes to say "Yee haw" a lot on the ride.

Almost the best part of the day was scoring popcorn and two cotton candy bags from Kris at 'Papa's Work'!

Minnesota Viking Training Camp

With the Minnesota Vikings playing there first pre-season game tonight in California against the San Francisco Giants, it reminds me that the boys and I took uncle Craig to training camp last Tuesday.

I'm not too sure what the boys were saying at this point, but it was probably something like "wow....those Vikings are huge."

Here's the starting offensive unit for the Vikes.  Please....Please.....Please.....let them score a lot of points this year.....

Luke says "hey look at me, I'm sitting at watching with Craig."

Meanwhile, Kieran is fixated on finding Viktor, one of the two mascots for the Vikings.  Viktor is by far the most uncool of the two mascots, though Kieran doesn't know that.  Ragnar is the other mascot.

Now where did Viktor go?

Of course the boys saw this huge inflatable and we just had to take a picture.

Camping - Blue Mounds State Park

The weekend of July 20-22 we went camping at Blue Mounds State Park, near Luverne.  The name of the park is due to a 90-foot ridge of 1,700 million year old  reddish or purplish Sioux Quartzite, as early settlers approached the area from the east, the ridge appeared blue to them.

It was the first time that we had used a cart-in campsite.  We had to cart all of our materials a couple hundred of yards from the car to the campsite.  Since Sarah and Lex were camping with us, we needed another tent.  Kieran refused to leave his tent, so he slept with me (our tent is the yellow one on the left).  Luke jumped ship and slept in the borrowed tent with Sarah and Lex...oh well.

It was a great campsite with a couple of large boulders nearby and isolated from the other sites.  Unfortunately the weather for the weekend was about 95 degrees with dewpoints pushing 70.  The campsite was also down a slight hill from the other campsites, ours was about 15-20 feet in elevation below the others.  There was a nice breeze for most of the weekend that made things feel okay, but in our campsite, we didn't feel it.  We saw the leaves blowing in the breeze about 15 feet off the ground with great envy.  It's the first time that I slept in the tent with the fly partially taken off, though both nights I had to put in on in the early morning with a threat of thunderstorms.

Saturday morning, Kieran said he wanted to see a bison and it's skull.  The park has a resident herd of bison, but we didn't see them until we left Sunday morning (and it was at quite a distance then).  So we went to the interpretive center on the other side of the park.  It's a unique buidling that was built into the side of a quartize cliff.

They have lots of displays in the building, but we were after the bison skull.  Here they have the skull and horns of an evolutionary ancestor to today's bison.  Bison occidentalis lived during the Pleistocene and was much larger than the North American bison today.  They also had the tusk of a mammoth, both of these had been found nearby.

Lately, when we've camped at state parks, Kieran has been reading signs about kits that they loan for use.  The kits include birding, geocaching and others, so Kieran got to borrow one for a few days.  He carried it everywhere, you can see it over his shoulder....it was the birding kit and including a pair of binoculars and a few bird identification guides.

Hiking isn't really Lex's thing yet with the little legs of hers, Sarah basically carried her on her back for most of the time.  That was fine with me, because I was too busy sweating already.  Luke digressed quite a bit this weekend as well.  After doing a lot of impressive hikes through rough terrain in late June, he didn't want much of hiking at the park.

Near the center was a couple of nice stops.  The first was a large boulder of quartzite sitting atop of the prairie.  Of course I had to climb to the top when the sign said that it was 300 feet above the city of Luverne, seen in the distance.

The other is a 1,250 foot long line of quartzite rocks that have been aligned in an east-west direction.  On the spring and fall equinox, the sunrise and sunset are in perfect alignment with this stone line.  It's unknown who took the time to arrange these rocks into this line.

Saturday afternoon we drove the short distance to Pipestone National Monument in Pipestone.  We took the 3/4 mile hike along the paved trail to see most of the sites at the monument, Lex went along for the ride.

I had previously told the boys that we would be seeing a waterfall here and they kept talking about waterfalls with Sarah.  She kept saying that there weren't a look of waterfalls in the area and they should expect too much.  I should have told her there is a 10-15 foot waterfall of a ridge of Sioux Quartzite.

Though the biggest hit of the day was seeing the large snapping turtle at the bottom of the waterfall.  Glad it was in the water and not on the trail....

The Sioux Quartzite weathers along vertical fractures and can form interesting features.  Can you see the faces in the two pictures below?

The monument is there because Native Americans have historically (and continue to do so) quarry pipestone (technically called catlinite) out of the Sioux Quartzite.  They use the pipestone to create pipes and other materials, many of which can be bought in the area.  The catlinite is beneath about 10 feet of quartzite and dip to the east about 5-10 degrees.  Which means that to keep quarrying the catlinite, Native Americans have to remove more and more of the quartzite (which is a very hard rock).  The park service has cleaned out one quarry for people to walk into, the catlinite is about 10-15 inches at the bottom of quarry face.

Near the entrance to the park we had to stop at the Three Maidens.  Native Americans recognized that these boulders were different from the area's bedrock and gave them spiritual significance.  In reality, these boulders are a glacial erratic that has been weathered via the process of ice wedging.  Glaciers carried a granite boulder from the north only to be deposited here, over time, water has seeped into the fractures in the granite and expanded when the water froze.  This has broken the original boulder into 7-10 boulders now.  Kieran is there in the picture some where, can you find him?

What do you do after a long hot day of camping and hiking?  You eat!

Sunday was Lex's 2nd birthday, but she was in no mood for celebration.  Pretty sure she did not like the heat, pretty sure she hated it more than me.  So Kieran and went for a hike, the birding kit came along.  It wasn't too long before Kieran said "dad, there aren't any trees on this hike, it's not the same as by Lake Superior", which made me explain the differences of a prairie and the coniferous forests of the north.

It wasn't too long before Kieran noticed a difference of his own, numerous outcrops of quartzite have Prickly Pear Cacti growing on them, one of two species of cactus found in Minnesota.

The trail took us to the bottom of the 90-foot cliff of quartzite, through some pretty easy walking.

What did Sarah, Lex and Luke do while we were gone?  Apprently they played at the park's playground and hung out and the fishing dock.  The park also has a swimming beach that the kids used a couple of times during the weekend as well.

Leaving the park, I had to take this picture.  For some reason I have to have a picture of the boys sitting in front of signs indicating places that we've been.

When we got home Sunday night, Lex was in a much more celebratory mood for her birthday.  As you might be able to see while wearing her brand new, birthday sunglasses!