Luke's Sleep Over --- continued...

So Luke's sleepover is done...the boys have gone home and it's just us now...it's quiet, which is awesome...

They had a good time I think...we started by looking at the sun (using solar glasses), all the boys got a good view...

Here's the sun through the solar glasses, though it looks better when you're doing the viewing...

After a pizza dinner, I took all the kids (yeah, 5 total) to the Central Girls (#3 in the state) Basketball game in Jordan....the ticket takers must have felt sorry for me, they decided they'd only charge me for four of the five kids...

The game was never seriously in doubt, it was 35-18 in favor of the Raiders, before a final score of 74-59....

I sent Kieran off to get popcorn and some gatorade for the kids, what he came back with was sort of impressive (yes, he brought back the popcorn and gatorade)...

Near as I can tell...it's a Swedish 1 krona...what ever that is...what it's doing in the Jordan High School concession stand, no idea...

I tried to get a few pictures of the kids during the second half...I thought taking pictures of 3 kids was tough...5 is darn near impossible...

Thanks Lex, Luke and Lincoln for messing that one up...well, we tried again...

That one wasn't terrible...

If you haven't noticed...I document everything...including the boys sleeping...I'm calling it the 'triangle of trust'...

Interesting way to sleep I suppose...the boys were up way too late (according to Kieran) and were also up pretty early this morning...they'll be tired tonight I bet...

Luke's Sleepover

So last weekend, Luke was wondering if he could have his two friends sleep over this coming weekend.  I had just seen one of his friends post a picture of herself and husband on vacation somewhere warm, so I told him that he probably couldn't come, but we could ask his other friend Isiah.

Isiah's mother immediately agreed that he could sleepover this Friday night and I told Luke that we could have Lincoln sleepover sometime later....

Well...on Monday I got this note from Lincoln/Luke....

Turn's out Lincoln's parents are in town...and he is coming to sleep over with Isiah and Luke...

Going to be a busy Friday night...all the kids and I are going to the Central Girls Varsity BB game (currently ranked #3 in the state), I'll come home and go to bed, the boys have plans to play Playstation...who knows how late they'll stay up...

Saturday morning we'll have pancake breakfast before taking the boys home around noon --- that's when Kieran has two basketball games in Norwood...wish us luck!  Should be fun...

St. Anthony Falls

The kids and I have been meaning to get down to Minneapolis and see St. Anthony Falls, we were going to go after Kieran's basketball game a few weeks ago, but Lex got sick just as we were dropping Kieran off....this past Sunday was around thirty degrees, a good time to go...

Kieran and I had attended a 3rd grade field trip to the Mill City Museum and part of that trip took us to an outdoor overlook of the falls.  Kieran's wanted to visit it ever since...

The falls were the only natural waterfall on the upper Mississippi River until an concrete apron was poured to keep the city from losing the falls in the late 1800s...the city needed the falls to run the mills (hence Minneapolis is the Mill City)...

If you want more on the geologic history of the falls, there are lots of signs in the area describing it...like this one...

Kieran's a bit of a history buff, so he loved reading the signs...

All the kids enjoyed seeing the ruins of a much older Minneapolis...

All the tunnels heading under city makes you wonder what is all there...

Here's Kieran reading another sign...under the Stone Arch Bridge...

Luke really enjoyed learning about the lock (this lock is now closed permanently to prevent Asian carp from reaching the upper Mississippi River basin)...

With little or no snow on the ground, we took a side hike down along the Mississippi, giving us more views of tunnels coming from under the old mills...

And getting us closer to the Stone Arch Bridge...

Turns out, not all ducks fly south for the winter, there were at least 50 ducks hanging out enjoying our warming climate (a new study says more and more robins are no longer migrating or migrating less far south due to the warmer climate)...Lex liked the ducks...

We got as close to the bridge as we could and it was time to head home...

A good day spent outside in January...

Luke - Star of the Week

Luke is the 'Star of the Week' this week in his classroom, which apparently means he needs to complete an assignment at home and have some special responsibilities at school....

The assignment he completed at home this weekend is shown below:

Everything on that page was his idea and in his own words (even the picture...we went through lots of pictures, but he wanted the T-Rex picture with dad)....

He has to take two objects in a special bag from school (they're in his backpack now) and discuss them with the class this week.  He'll also get a short write-up in the weekly update e-mail from school....

Sledding....

Last weekend after Kieran's two basketball games, the kids and I went sledding on the church hill here in town, while Sarah stayed home to bike.  One of them (Luke, I think) asked at breakfast if we could go and the answer was yes...so after lunch, we grabbed the sled and the neighbor kid and we were off for an hour or two...

Our first run was all four of us in the sled....tight fit, but it worked just fine....after that we took turns...

Kieran was a good brother...took Lex down the hill...

It's a double hill...with a long runout directly towards those houses...most of the people living there are good people who don't mind kids...

Luke and Lee (the neighbor kid) also had fun...

The boys even showed how much they love Lex...they agreed to go down the hill, just the three of them...

Too bad that as soon as the sled started moving...Luke bailed out....

And shortly after that...Kieran bailed out...

But Lex continued on her way and had a blast....

At least it was a good picture at the start....fun afternoon...

Frozen Minnehaha Falls

On the way home from the Science Museum yesterday, the kids and I make a quick stop at Minnehaha Falls to see the frozen falls....it was quite the site...

The view upstream from the falls...the creek still hasn't completely frozen over...

Looking over the falls from above...you see all those people down there?  It's technically illegal to be there in the winter (the park closes the paths to the bottom by putting a board across the trail) and you can be sited for trespassing if you go there because of safety concerns.  Park police were at the bottom yesterday telling people to go back to the top...(see the news story link below)...

The kids and I love waterfalls, frozen or not...

Here's a picture without the kids...see that open gap just to the left of the falls?  There were at least 50 people who came out from behind the falls when they were told to by the police...

Why is it illegal to go down to the base of the falls in the winter?  Check out this news story from yesterday:  http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/01/08/woman-hit-by-falling-ice-at-minnehaha-falls/ and make sure you watch the video.  This happened within 30 minutes of us being at the falls....wow...

Science Museum

This is the first post of 2017 (the 297th post overall)....I started this back in the fall of 2010, not sure who would read it and I still wonder who reads it...I do know that Kieran has starting reading it, which is kind of cool.  He's been enjoying looking at some of the old pictures of himself...

We went to the Science Museum today in order to check out the Sportsology exhibit that just opened Friday...boy did the kids like it...it's filled with the science behind sports --- including racing against MN athletes, a slow-motion camera that allows you to compare yourself against the pro's, examples of early native American sports and a nice manipulative on how concussions occur among others...

Of course the kids liked the racing the best...here's Kieran racing against TC Bear (who isn't difficult to beat)...the start...

And he's off...

Luke had a bigger race on his mind....against a T-Rex...get ready...

Go...

Even Lex wanted the Rex...

They both lost....huge...many times...

The slow-motion camera comparing yourself against pro's was cool...here's Luke taking a shot like Lindsay Whalen and Kieran throwing a football against Tayler Heinicke of the Vikings...

You could compare your 'wingspan' to that of an average NBA player (we do this at the zoo too, but it's comparing your wingspan to that of common MN birds)...

There was also a place to jump and determine your maximum jumping height...it went all the way up to 12 or 13 feet I think...we didn't need that much...

Of course we went to an Imax movie (A Beautiful Planet -- which we've seen before and enjoyed a lot) and saw a lot of fossils...

An early therapod...

The two Allosaurus'...

The Triceratops...

A large fish found in Kansas...

The Pleistocene giant beaver..

And the T-Rex...

We will be back...