Minneapolis with the Bradbeers

We took a fun trip up to Minneapolis and squeezed as much as we could in to a very long, very fun day.  Unfortunately Lily started feeling really sick around 4pm and was pretty miserable for the rest of the day, but we managed to make it work.  Here are the highlights!

 

The Como Zoo

The Como Zoo is a FREE zoo up in the cities.  It is really great, and though it was HOT, we all had a great time!

 Kate's favorite was the polar bears, she really, really loves them!

 The two monkeys below were fighting/wrestling/playing King of the Hill.  There was a huge crowd watching them and they were very funny/entertaining.  The kids especially loved it.

 Poor Kate must've brushed against something because she had a horrible reaction to something.  Everywhere on her arms and legs that was exposed broke out in a red rash/hives/welts.  Luckily I happened to have children's Benadryl on me, so we gave her some, and gave her a baby wipe bath.  After a few hours they went away.  It was pretty bizarre, and we didn't think to take a picture.  I still have no idea what caused the reaction.

 Blowing dandelions, waiting for the shuttle

 Some of the animals

After the Zoo, we headed over to the Science Center, which is a really cool place!  Here are the highlights!

 

The Science Museum of Minnesota

We had a GREAT time at the Science Museum.  It was really wonderful.  Unfortunately about halfway through Lily crashed hard.  Shivers/aches/exhaustion, the whole nine years.  We ended up putting her in Kate's stroller where she laid comatose for the last hour, poor thing.  If it'd just been our family, we definitely would have left and taken her home to bed, but since it was the Bradbeer's one day in Minneapolis, she was a trooper and hung out.  I felt pretty bad for her, but we gave her meds and let her fade in and out in the stroller and she was a total champ.  It just came out of nowhere and hit her hard.

 

The kids got to weight themselves on a scale that showed them how heavy they were compared to different fish in the Mississippi river

 View of the Mississippi from the Museum windows

 Seeing just how heavy and hard to reel in those 60 pound fish are

 This picture was just minutes before Lily crashed.

Kate was so funny about this baby dear.  There was a little baby deer in this interactive kids section and she sat on the ground next to it and hugged if fiercely for probably 15-20 minutes.  She couldn't be pulled away from it.

 

After the Museum, we went to IKEA for dinner, because we needed a few things.  The Bradbeer's ate with us then walked next door to do the Nickelodeon Universe theme park in the Mall of America while we did our Ikea shopping.  We finished a little before them, but by then it was well past our kid's bedtime, so we just sat in the car, in the blessed air conditioning, for a few minutes and all rested after the LONG, hot, busy day.  The Bradbeers came out, all thoroughly invigorated with big smiles after having a blast riding rides. 

 

Then we made the hour and 15 minute drive home!

Fun with the Bradbeers, Part 1...of MANY

So as you may have noticed in my previous posts, Matt's sister and her family came to stay with us for 2 weeks, we had a TON of fun!  They left this weekend, and left me with over THREE THOUSAND pictures to sort through.  That's a LOT people.  Ain't nobody got time for that!

I managed to whittle the pics down to just under a thousand, but that is clearly still quite a lot.  I am slowly going to be making my way through what makes it on the blog, so I've decided to post as I go, probably making SEVERAL posts about the fun times that we had while they were here.  I'll do my best to keep the posts reasonably short and entertaining, but be prepared for picture overload!

As my last post mentioned we found out our baby would be little girl #4 right after they got here.

 I've had several people ask me how my pregnancy is going thus far, so I thought I'd put in a quick note about that.  I am doing pretty well now that I've passed the halfway point.  I was ridiculously sick in the beginning.  My wonderful mom was here to help and I desperately needed it!  Throwing up was pretty much constant and I was feeling horrid.  In the very beginning I had some bleeding and a lot of cramping for a few weeks before it cleared up.  I went into the clinic several times a week for the first few months for "infusion therapy", AKA getting IV fluids and meds.  I was usually gone for several hours at a time, so it was REALLY nice to have my mom here to watch the kids, so that I wasn't having to find a baby sitter for that amount of time several times a week.  By the end of the first few months I felt like a human pin cushion.

At one point I really wanted to take a picture of my arms, they were a bruised mess from my hands to my biceps, like probably around 7 bruised old IV sites on each arm. I really wish that I would have documented it, I just felt too crappy at the time to really care enough to take a picture.  The nice thing about it staying FREEZING here until June is that I was able to wear long sleeves every day to try and cover them up.  I had IVs in places that I literally didn't know it was possible to have.  But, I survived and since I started (mostly) feeling better, (I'm still taking over the counter meds, but only vomiting occasionally) I have been eating non-stop and packing on the pounds.  In general, I am not someone who enjoys being pregnant.  I LOVE having babies and would do whatever it takes to get them here, but the actually pregnancy period is usually a pretty hard and miserable time for me.  That being said, it's WAY better than it was a couple months ago, and I am just so happy to be able to have another baby, that I try not to complain.

 

My sweet husband brought me some bright and beautiful flowers. 

 

 

And back to our fun with cousins!  Here's what we were up to the first couple days.

Backyard fun!

 Matt taught Brax how to make homemade pizza.

 He even used basil from our garden!

 We all went to Lily's Tball game

 

 

 This picture below of both my girls lying on Uncle Tommy perfectly sums up how they spent most of the week.  They're all completely smitten with Uncle Tommy!

We all had fun cheering for Lily and playing at the park!

We continued to pick veggies from our garden and enjoy them while our cousins were here.  Somehow homegrown veggies just taste better!