Day 1: Como Park Zoo and Rainforest Cafe

The first stop on our Minneapolis adventure was the Como Park Zoo. Como Park also has a conservatory, a theme park, a carousel and a mini-golf course. Its a pretty cool place! The zoo is small like the Madison zoo, so we figured it would be a great place to start our adventure. In reading about the zoo, I was glad we went on Friday afternoon. Apparently it can get pretty crowded, but on a Friday afternoon in the fall, parking was plentiful and it wasn't crowded at all.

First stop was the primate house, where Allie was delighted when this tiny primate came up to her and ran along the glass. We had to convince her to go see the rest of the animals instead of just camping out here!

She got up super close to this gorilla! He didn't move much though so Allie wasn't as interested. I don't think the gorilla was interested in Allie either.

The seals are a favorite display in Madison, but this big pool only had three of them! There were a couple other seals in a different pool.

 Allie and Dada were delighted to watch the zebras.

And she really liked when the giraffe came up to the fence.

The big cats had huge enclosures. Allie liked watching the tiger go for a dip in his pool.

While we couldn't get too close to the big cats in Como Park, we got close to the polar bear!

Como Park was the perfect place to spend a couple hours outside on a beautiful Indian Summer October afternoon. It wore us all out, but even as we were heading out to the exit, Allie was still running strong.

But about a half hour later while sitting in traffic, she got a little shuteye. The ride to the hotel was supposed to only be 20 minutes, but in the traffic it was an hour! We didn't mind though as Allie hadn't yet napped. And Allie without a nap is pretty unpredictable.

 Once we got up to our hotel room, Allie was on the go again exploring the room and having some snacks.

We went to the Rainforest Cafe in the Mall of America for dinner. Silly Mama thought this would be a highlight of the trip. 

Well... I felt like a terrible parent when Allie got scared of the gorilla dances and thunderstorms! She seemed into it at first, but went downhill after this picture was snapped. I was asking her if she was having a good time and with her face still in my neck she kept nodding her head "yes."

It had been a long day and I do wonder if she would have liked it better if she'd been better rested. We headed back to the hotel where we were sure Allie would crash... but she didn't. She always came back to life whenever we got back to that hotel room! We had some of the most fun times in the hotel room! Allie finally went to sleep around 8:45 and day 1 of vacation was complete.

Sneak peak

We had a great time in Minneapolis. We learned that Allie is still a little young for some things (and nap time is important!), but we all had a great time. Here are a few pictures to start with. I will hopefully post a bunch more in coming days.

I'm having some issues switching my photo account as my original one is full! I deleted some photos from the blog to make room, and then ran out again. Instead of paying for more storage, I'm creating a new account and thats been a challenge. Photos are missing from the beginnings of my blogs that I'll have to restore at some point. But hopefully I've gotten some storage space to post the photos from our trip!

Spooky decor

Tonight we got out the Halloween decorations we bought a couple weeks ago. We bought them in September but wanted to wait until it was actually October to put them up. We got some window clings, two ghost wall hangings, a lighted pumpkin and some pumpkin lights. We put up everything except the lights. We need to get another string in order to plug them in.

Allie LOVED putting up the window clings.

 She enjoyed taking them off the paper...

... and putting them on the windows!

Then she also had fun pulling them off the windows and putting them back on.

Dada and Mama agree, she loved putting up these decorations, thus she will definitely love decorating the Christmas tree.

Finally!

After hearing rumors and getting the "unofficial" confirmation a month or so ago, I finally got the official word in the mail today that my project position has been extended to July 31, 2013!

I actually got this news a month ago because when someone in HR was putting the extensions in our timesheet system accidentally terminated me! That was kind of funny at first, but it got old when I started getting letters about continuation of insurance coverage and unused leave payments. So at the time I was told we had gotten the extension but to keep my lips zipped.

Well now they don't need to stay zipped anymore! I don't know why it took so long to get the official word, but I'm glad to have it!

I have been interviewing for some other jobs over the last month as well. I haven't been talking about it much here just because I don't really have anything to say about them yet. Five weeks ago I interviewed for an overpayment collections job and I still haven't heard anything yet on that one, though I do know they checked my references. Then last week I interviewed at the call center last Tuesday and for a delinquent tax collections position last Wednesday. That week was stressful! I have heard from all three of my references that they were called on the collections position. I haven't heard anything about the call center, but I'm 99 percent sure I'd turn it down if offered.

So its Wednesday night, but my Friday! I am taking tomorrow off as a Mama day. Then Friday Doug is taking off and we're headed to Minneapolis! We are so excited for this trip.

Just Mama and Allie

Poor Dada is sick again. :-( Some kind of stomach thing. He went straight to bed when we got home from work yesterday, so it was just Mama and Allie.

I decided to be daring and let Allie have the run of the house while I made dinner. Since Dada wasn't eating, I could have just made us something quick. But I needed to make something that would have leftovers to take for lunch. So I made this pasta with Mexican black bean sauce.

She loved standing on the step stool watching me put things in the pan. I chopped onions and opened cans and put in spices and she looked at everything and smelled it before I put it in. She handed me the cans and thought it was really neat when I drained the pasta and when I used the food processor to blend the beans with the rest of the sauce.

The sauce doesn't look all that appetizing, but its really good! We love black beans in our house and the combination of the black beans with tomato and the spices is quite tasty. Its a nice protein alternative for hamburger in regular marinara sauce.

Allie liked it too! She ate a bowl of just plain pasta but then wanted more with the sauce. She even used a big kid spoon. But she's really funny with the big kid spoon, she put the pasta on the spoon and then picked it off and ate it with her fingers.

It was a nice night together, but exhausting. I have a few mama friends who's husbands travel a lot for work. I don't know how they do it! Unfortunately Dada is still sick this evening and I got to do it all again. But this time we got home from work late and then Monk got out and decided to take a run around the block. She's never done that before! Then it was a quick dinner, bath and cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry. Now I'm finally sitting down!

Vacation time

We just booked a hotel in Bloomington, Minn., for our first real family vacation this weekend!

This fall is so crazy, but we've really wanted to go on a family vacation and October seemed like the perfect time to go. We went to Minneapolis two years ago and have really wanted to go back. There's a database conversion happening at work this week so the work we can actually do will be limited. So people could take vacation if they wanted to. Thus we're taking our first real family vacation to Minneapolis this weekend! And it seems that we're going to have some great weather!

We'll be going to the Mall of America for sure. We decided to stay closer to the mall because it will be easy if other plans don't work out. I've been worried that we may try to do too much. But we can go to the mall the whole time and be entertained. We want to do Build-a-Bear and go to the big Lego store where Allie could play with tons of legos. She loves playing with blocks at home. We also might check out the aquarium and the American Girl doll store. The pictures here are from when we went the last time. Above is from the aquarium and below is the big Lego airplane above the Lego store

In Minneapolis we'd like to perhaps go to a sculpture park I read about and the Como Park Zoo. There's also the stone bridge pictured above and some other things in the riverfront area. And of course there's are a few museums we can get into free using our Madison Children's Museum membership. And I'm sure there are other activities I've looked at but not listed here. We're really excited to take Allie along with us on a family trip. We can't wait!

Allie's first haircut

Allie has a lot of hair. We've been talking about getting her hair cut for a long time. Well, gulp, today we finally did it! Jeni's friend Becky does hair and today on her day off, she cut Allie's bangs.



Here we are before starting. Notice how her hair is a mess and all over her face.

For reference, here's a cute picture from this time last year. Its not really a good view of her face, but its a cute picture and you can tell there's a lot less hair!

Allie didn't know what to make of the haircut process.

She sat pretty well though.

But she was definitely confused by the scissors and cutting, looking at Becky like, "what the heck are you doing to me?"

But aside from asking what the heck she was doing and being somewhat wiggly, she was really good. And the haircut was a total of three cuts to the bangs. Quick and painless!

And Becky even made a certificate for Allie to commemorate the occasion!

It does make me sad though. My baby's growing up! Just look how much more grown up she looks with real bangs instead of messy hair all over her face!