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!

Goldy's Run - 10 Mile

Last weekend, Sarah had two classes down in Rochester.  The plan was for us all to go with and spend a night in a hotel down there, but before we left the cities, Sarah had to do Goldy's 10 mile on/near the University of Minnesota campus.  We had to get everyone up and we left by 6:30, the start was just outside TCF Bank stadium and the finish was on the 50 yard line.

What do you do if your visiting a stadium for the first time?  Kieran had to check it out..

When we finally (in his words) got down to the turf, of course he had to lay down on it...

Lex had to dance...I tried to get video, but as soon as she saw me try, she stopped dancing...

Kieran had to do a (really multiple) 40 yard dashes...like they do in the NFL combine.  Kieran clocked in at around 8 seconds...Luke was around 13 seconds...when he lost he started walking...

Of course we were keeping an eye out for Sarah...

After the race we always need pictures...

There were a lot of people at the race...

And then we were off to Rochester...

Lex's First Dental Appointment

We just got back from Lex's first dental appointment, the boys also had appointments but like Luke said "we're pros" so it wasn't a big deal for them...

Lex was a little concerned going in and sitting in the big chair.  She said several times "I'm scared" as she began to well up with tears.  It didn't help that Luke was telling her that it would hurt and be really loud.

She really paid attention when the hygienist walked her through what was going to happen (in real kid friendly terms)...

And pretty much giggled the whole time her teeth were cleaned...

She got more and more comfortable and was very excited to learn she had 20 teeth (one less than Luke and probably more than Kieran -- though we weren't in with him during his appointment).

By the time the dentist came in, she talked his ears off with all sorts of information on teeth, school and Elsa...

Best part for me was there were zero cavities with all three kids....

Happy Easter

Cologne did have an Easter egg hunt yesterday, it was put on by a local 4-H group and we had to go (sunny and 40s helped).....

The boys were not very excited to get pictures with these two 'rabbits'...Lex was very excited.

Each kid had their own age group hunt.  Here's Lex (just left of center and still on the infield dirt)...

Luke carrying a yellow bag (on the left side of the picture)...

Kieran is ready to get started...

And he's off...

Here's Luke's haul...

And Kieran's....see that large blue 'stylish' egg?

It's a prize winner...

It was a huge prize...

Afterwards (or before the hunts) you could make some rabbit faces, touch baby rabbits or chicks and look for money in corn...

Here's our two finished rabbits...

Happy Easter.

Minnehaha Falls

After leaving the Science Museum Wednesday, we decided to stop at Minnehaha Falls.  Sarah doesn't think she's ever been there and it's been a couple of years for the boys.  Plus, it was 83 or 84 degrees out - we had set a high temperature record that day.

The first views of the falls.  It's been a dry spring, with very little snow melt, not what the falls would typically look like in April.  Pictures were tough with the sun in the western sky, right behind the falls.

Ice lingers in the gorge with the little direct sunlight.  People were still walking back behind the ice.  Minnehaha Falls is formed as the creek falls over the Platteville Limestone and excavates the soft, St. Peter Sandstone underneath.  The limestone is undercut and occasionally large chunks of limestone breaks off and the falls migrate up stream.  But between the limestone and sandstone is a small layer of shale (essentially impermeable clay).

If you look closely, most of the ice starts to form at approximately the same level or layer.  Groundwater soaks through the soil, glacial material and limestone until it hits the shale, the water then moves horizontally along the shale until falling out into the gorge.  In the winter, it's obviously cold enough for the water to freeze.  You can see these frozen springs at sites all throughout Minneapolis & St. Paul during the winter, anywhere this combination of bedrock is exposed.

It was a pretty nice day for us (even though I felt sicker and sicker as the day went on - I ended up staying home from school the next day...).

Science Museum

Spring Break was this week for the kids, so Sarah and I took Wednesday off and we went down to the Science Museum.  One of the first things that we had to check out was the mummy.  Lex was impressed that it still had teeth and fingernails...so much so that later on she kept pointing out the things that still had teeth and fingernails.

Something new to the museum was TapeScape a traveling piece made entirely out of packing tape that kids can run around in and tire themselves out.

The tape is stretched across a steel frame and essentially gets stronger as the kids weight is applied to the structure.  Lex had the 'under 5' version all to herself.

They were all tired and sweaty when they were done playing...

It was the first time that we had seen the 600+ year old tree cutting...it was huge.

From there it was time to see some fossils...Luke likes listening to the exhibits (many have phones you can put up to your ear), Kieran just plays along.

Dinosaurs are the best...says Luke.

But theres more than just dinosaur fossils at the museum, here's a fossil rhino from North America.

And here's 1.8 billion year old fossilized algae from Minnesota's Iron Ranges.

There's a space theme at the museum for the next few months - we saw an Omnifilm show on the end of the Space Shuttle and the future for the Orion program that everyone liked.  There is also a 3-story astronaut that you can have your face projected onto.

Astronaut Kieran -

Astronaut Lexy -

Astronaut Luke -

But of course, we couldn't leave the museum without checking out the T-Rex...guess whose idea that was...