A good weekend

We spent our weekend up in "the cities" for some special time with our daughter. See, we haven't done a lot of kids stuff this summer with her.
On Saturday we went to Stillwater to have a day out with Thomas the Train. Seriously-I've never seen my daughter so happy. She had a smile that I've never seen before! After walking around and looking at all of the activities and the Thomas store, we heard the train come back to the station, and we ran over to see the REAL Thomas up close. We stood in line to have her picture taken with him and when it was our turn, I set her up on the step and stood back, and that's when it happened...the scared kid just cried and cried and I immediately came back to her but she wouldn't stop, we couldn't get a good picture, so I guess this is what we'll have to remember this moment by.

There was tons of stuff to do there-tattoo's, meeting Tophem hat, coloring, stamping (which Cassidy is totally familiar with, and almost couldn't believe she was touching stamps without being told "be careful!!"), playing with the train sets, games, etc.
The whole day was pretty fun and we even talked about going next year.
Later that day we went to MOA and shopped and ate and walked around Camp Snoopy (I know it's not called that anymore, but I don't know the new name & I'll always refer to "camp snoopy") and hit Ikea for some organizational things for when I move my stamp room upstairs. Can you believe I spent less than $15 at Ikea? I also was with my husband, so I usually try not to spend any $$ when he's with. ALTHOUGH he did tell me I could get my CRICUT EXPRESSION for my birthday next month!! I am totally psyched!




On Sunday we got up early and went to Minneapolis to see the I-35 bridge. We went to the Gold Medal Park Hill and there was a very nice memorial for the victims and families. Lots of people were there and seemed to come from every direction. An observation I made right away was with so many people around, there was almost silence while viewing the bridge. It was hard to see the bridge entirely, but I tried to get a picture showing what we saw, you can click to enlarge it. (I think this one was taken from the riverside.) Click on picture to enlarge, you'll get a better idea of how close we could get.



After seeing the bridge, we went to Como Zoo. Cassidy's favorite were the Seals. We went to the seal show, so that may be why she liked the seals so much. When we went to see other animals like zebra, giraffe, or lions, she would stop and look for about 3 seconds and say "okay I'm done"! It was pretty funny. That kid sure knows what she likes!