Whirlwind weekend

We had a fun, busy, stimulating, exhausting weekend. On Saturday morning we headed north of the Cities for Dan's dad's side of the family's Family Reunion. We saw a ton of relatives and had lots of great food and conversation. We saw a lot of people we haven't see in far too long, so it was a really good day.

This sort of ordeal wears Elijah out more than I can explain. He simply does not do well in large groups of people. Not at all. He gets tired and uncomfortable and clingy and crabby and out of sorts and I find myself constantly telling people, "He does not do well in large groups of people." More on this another time, as it is something that weighs on my heart pretty heavily.

After we left we decided to go on an impromptu adventure. We headed east toward Taylors Falls and explored the beautiful trails along the river. The stroller limited our exploration a bit, but that was probably for the best because our little boy was utterly exhausted.


This is as close to a smile as we could get from him.


I have lived in Minnesota for many years and I cannot believe I have never visited this beautiful area before. The scenery is gorgeous!


Here is the Exhausted Elijah Face. We tried to get him to look at the camera, but he wasn't in a cooperating mood.


Daddy and Elijah cruisin' along the trails.


Gazing at the pretty river while making a silly kissy face.


We went out for pizza and malts afterward and Elijah spunked up a bit. You can see the "erd" (mustard) and "up" (ketchup) sitting in front of him, keeping him entertained. It's the strangest things that keep him happy sometimes.

We found a motel that looked old but decent (and affordable). After we got our room key, we drove around back to find our room in a different, much sketchier building than the one that could be seen from the road. Dan and I both gasped. We wondered what the name of the horror film would be that would be named after our experience. Ok, it wasn't quite that bad. We didn't feel unsafe there, it was just a very old motel. We put Elijah to sleep right away and Dan and I stayed up and watched a movie on our laptop before going to sleep ourselves.


The paneling on the walls is a good indicator of the type of place we were at. If only I could attach a smell byte to this post!

The next morning we found a cafe in town where we ate breakfast. We all found it to be satisfying and yummy. Before heading home, we stopped and walked around a very cool sculpture park that I never even knew existed. I majored in Art in college (along with English) so this was right up my alley. It was a nice little surprise on our already surprise trip.


Elijah made friends with a giant lizard.


I realized that I have seen photos of this very pink blob posted on other blogs recently. So I figured that warranted a pink blob cameo on Elijah's blog, too. (My sunglasses were extremely interesting, making a glance at the camera a difficult task.)

We got home and went out for ice cream and then took naps and decided our weekend wasn't finished yet. Dan and I brought Elijah to Grandma's house while we went to see the new Harry Potter movie. I loved it! We had an interesting experience at the theater. A father decided to bring his baby to see the movie, so we all got to hear loud baby babbling until another movie-goer asked the guy to take his child and leave. Then, after listening to a teenage boy who was sitting directly behind us talk throughout the entire movie, Dan finally asked him to be quiet. He didn't like that one bit, so he called Dan every bad name in the book. Hearing such totally disrespectful and inappropriate words come out of a teenager's mouth was shocking!

We couldn't come up with another possible way to extend our weekend, so we went home and went to sleep. Elijah "slept in" till 6:40 this morning. A small miracle!