A Wednesday with Mommy

On our vacation week we had a fun day planed each day.  On Tuesday night, we baked cookies for a few people.  We made two types, one picked out by Marcus (a chocolate dipped cookie) and one my mommy (a traditional chocolate chip).  We made them as a thank you gift to a little boy (Charlie) down the street who gave Marcus is old bike.  We also made them as a grandparents day gift for all of his grandparents and for Great-Grandma.

 

On Wednesday we did our first cookie delivery, to one of Marcus' favorite people, Great Grandma!

 

After our visit with Great Grandma, we were off to a lunch date and cookie delivery with Grandma Cheryl.    Marcus was so excited because he hadn't seen her since she left for Germany a month earlier.  We found a cute little old school restaurant in Edina and had a yummy lunch.  Next we planned on going to Paint Your Plate but their website was wrong and it was actually closed.  We quickly figured out what to do and ended up at Edinburgh Park to play.  

 

I was wearing sandals, with no socks, so Grandma Cheryl had to follow him in.

It was sure a lot of fun!

The Rainbow Playground Store

The week of labor day was a very special week.  It was actually a transition week for Marcus.  We did his last day at Creative Kids Academy the Friday before Labor Day weekend and his new school didn't start until a week later.   I took the week off to spend some time with Marcus and just have fun.  It we a fun week and we did lots of fun things.  On Tuesday we started the day by cleaning his bedroom.  It was actually a kind of fun time.  We did it together and Marcus was excited to find some of his "missing" toys.

 

 

That afternoon we tried out a new activity.  The Rainbow Playground store has a play time from 10:00 am - 2:00 pm on Tuesday- Thursday. We have heard about this before but because I am a working mom I don't have the ability to attend a lot of activities like this.  However on this Tuesday, I was home with Marcus and it was raining.  This was the perfect day to check it out.

 

We had a fun day, and plan on going back some time!

Forestville/Mystery Cave Call of the Wildflower Geocache

After we finished the cave tour we headed over to the actual state park section of the park to check it out and do the geocache.  On a side note I have realized that I say "check it out" a lot, I learned this because Marcus now says it a lot as well- funny boy!

 

Forestville State Park is an interesting one because it has so much going on, the caves, a historical society location, and all of the park itself.  We potentially were going to camp one more night but I totally wussed out on this one.  Since it had rained on the tent this morning, it was wet and I hate dealing with a wet mess.

 

But we still had a geocache to do.  The battery on my phone was dead so once again we had to borrow a GPS from the state park to complete the geocache.  I didn't do a very good job of taking pictures of this trip because I was fighting running lower on power the entire time.  But we did complete the geocache!                              The first stage was actually at the exact same spot it was last time.  But the follow up coordinates were different.

Since we were at the part we spent a little time looking around to see what it all looked like and it was pretty!

If we would have gotten there a bit earlier we would have visited the historical site but with the cave tour it just wasn't possible (I have to say our cave tour lasted over 1.5 hours).  But we still walked around.

 

Once we finished looking it was off to do the geocache!

1.5

The hike was beautiful!

And it didn't take us long to find the cache.

 

And then it was time to hike out again!

As always Sandy dog led the way.



When we got back to the road (still probably 1/3 mile from the car) Marcus quite and decided to sit down wait.  Luke, being the good Daddy, ran ahead and got the car.

 



Marcus loves Caves! Forestville/ Mystery Cave State Park

When we left the Beaver Creek Valley State Park we headed across to another park in this part of the state.  Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park.

We had a very special intention in going to this park.  Marcus LOVES caves and he has talked about the Oregon Cave ever since we visited it in May so we thought it would be fun to take him back to another one.   Sandy on the other hand was just happy to get out of the car and drink some water!

While we waited for the cave tour, it was crazy, the sky suddenly got really dark and just a few minutes later the rain pounded down!  Poor Sandy wasn't too excited about that!
 On the other hand, Luke, Marcus and I spent our time checking out the cool displays in the building.  I didn't get a picture but they also had this soap walk that you had to walk over before you could go in the cave.  This is just one of the ways they are trying to keep a bat disease away from the cave.  Marcus LOVED that (but for some reason I didn't get any pictures of it).

And finally our wait for our cave tour was all over and our guide found us!

Saying that Marcus loved the tour would not be overstating it as all.  He thought it was GREAT.  We saw all kinds of cool cave formations and now he just wants to go back!