Banning State Park

President's Day weekend, the kids and I took off on a day trip to a new state park for them, Banning State Park.  The last time I had been there was at least 15 years ago, it's halfway to Duluth, just north of Hinckley.  It's a great park focusing on an old sandstone quarry along the Kettle river.  We went north looking to avoid as much mud as possible (it had been around 60 degrees for five days), and though we found some mud, we found some snow too...

It was awesome hiking in a winter hat and gloves (maybe), without the heavy jacket.  Any slope facing south was free of snow and generally dry...

The river had opened up too...

When we hike, the boys are generally out in the front...

They talk so much and so loud, we don't wonder much why we don't see animals...though we saw lots of woodpeckers and other birds that day (I told Lex we'd never sneak up on a deer...more on that later)...

Lex is generally going her pace at the back...

I'm in the middle somewhere trying to get the boys to slow down or just walking with Lex...

The old sandstone quarries are pretty cool...

The boys were standing in front of one in the picture above...though it's hard to see the quarry with all the trees, we had to walk in a bit to see the quarry...

We had two goals for the day --- complete the hiking club trail and see a new waterfall along the way (Wolf Creek Falls)...but we found a trail we just had to take...

Any trail called Deadman Trail is one we're going to take, plus it only detoured us 3/4 of a mile or so...eventually we got to the still frozen waterfall...

Turns out we could go under the falls themselves...so we had to...

We are pretty curious what these falls would look like in the summer...

We could walk all around the waterfall because of the creek being frozen...

On the way back, we had some tired legs so we went looking for a place to sit down...we found one just Lex's size...

But while walking back...the boys were talking just as loud as they normally do, we they passed at least three deer no more than 50 yards to their left...once they got stopped and turned around the boys came back to see what Lex and I were looking at...

From there, it was time to complete the hiking club trail back through the old quarries...Kieran really likes reading the interpretive signs...

We found a nice frozen feature alongside one of the quarry walls...

The sandstone was used for many buildings in the metro area and beyond...

In case you were curious about what a fresh surface of the sandstone looks like...

We found the password we were looking for, of course it's covered in the picture...

From there, we went on completing the hike along the river, which included a couple of stops...

And more signs to read....

And a group picture...

It was a busy day...take a look at Luke's and my fitness trackers...they indicate 24,000 (mine) and 17,000 (Luke's) steps, though I had run six miles before we left...a busy day for all...

Just like any first trip to a park, we finished the day with the usual pictures --- the stamp book was stamped and the kids in front of the park sign...

Another great day outside with these three kids...

Mythical Creatures at the Science Museu

The Science Museum has a new exhibit that takes a look at the origin stories of mythical creatures like dragons, the kraken, mermaids, etc.  A week ago, Luke and Lex went to the museum with me to check out the exhibit...Lex wanted to see the unicorns...

The exhibit started with dragons...largely stemming from fossils of dinosaurs found in Europe and thought to be living dragons (to bad they were extinct for 65 million years...)...

It then moved onto sea serpents like the kraken...mythical creatures stem from things that the human mind can't fully explain.  What's more misunderstood than the ocean?  Three humans have been to the deepest part of our oceans, and for a very short time.  There were cool manipulatives showing how a pod of porpoises or dolphins jumping could be mistaken for a long reptile swimming in the water or how the kraken could be early glimpses of the colossal or giant squids...

Mermaid stories date back centuries and then come the recent frauds that were used in the circus...

Unicorn stories are largely based of the narwhal of arctic waters...

The cyclops of Greek legend was based on the misrepresentation of dwarf elephant fossils found in the Mediterranean...the mistook the large opening in the center as a single eye socket (in reality it's were the trunk was found)...

Even bigfoot is based on fossil evidence...this time on the largest ape species ever to exist...Gigantopithecus....

After checking out this exhibit, we went to the Sportsology exhibit to race against some T-Rexes again (we lost...again) and to the Dinosaurs.  This is where I found Luke spying on Lex using the Diplodocus cam...Lex was checking out the Tricertops (she's got pink pants in the picture) while look was watching her from above...

Later, I spied on both of them...Luke saw me doing it just before I got a good picture of the two of them...he had to try to run away...

After all of that, Luke wanted to take a picture of him spying on me...

After that fun, we built some hovercrafts...

Explored the aerodynamics of paper airplanes...

Held several examples of saltwater invertebrates...

Had a close encounter with a Eastern Screech Owl...

And took our usual picture of Luke and the T-Rex...

It was a fun afternoon...

Central Basketball

Valentine's Day, Kieran really wanted to go to a girls basketball game....Central versus Mayer Lutheran.  If Central won, they would clinch the Minnesota River Conference.  We've been to several games in the last few weeks and all the kids enjoy going....so off we went.

Kieran really enjoys watching the game....no surprise...

And the girls team is really good....and going to games is giving the kids a 'sense of place', they enjoy rooting for 'their' team...

Luke likes the game too, but if a friend is there...he likes that better...

The girls team has been to the state tournament the last two years...

Believe or not, Lex really likes going to the games.  She likes her go-to chant "lets go Raiders...."  And she likes popcorn...

Central was ahead by 30+ at one point, the game was never really close, even after the starters got pulled from the game...

It's the 5th year in a row that Central has won the conference....and we're all going to another game tomorrow night in Le Seuer...

Patriots

So...the Super Bowl was last week...and this is how Kieran started the game...

He was a bit excited...most of that gear was off by halftime though...(we set out our clothes for school the night before, he initially had a Brady jersey, but switched to a hooded sweatshirt by halftime)...

But that's why they play the game (I tell Kieran that all the time...).  Kieran's anger and tears turned to euphoria as the Patriots came back from 25 points down to win in overtime...

And he wore Patriots gear to school the next day....

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...