A little road trip and little green soldiers!

Hey Ya'all!
We have been road trippen it! All the way to Ely, Minnesota, to visit my dear grandparents.
Matthew, Benjamin (my brother) and myself all went last year and had a great time visiting and sight seeing. I knew I wanted to go again, and bring Patrick along for the fun.
It is a 12 hour drive, which may sound horrible, but honestly I love road trips. I am really lucky to have a son that doesn't mind them either. I always talk up the place so much, the car ride doesn't even bother him, besides I can handle a few "why is it so far away?" We left at 5am on Wednesday and arrived around 4:30 in the afternoon.
My grandparents have a beautiful house on a lake. Last year, we couldn't of asked for better weather. This year it was hit or miss, but we still had fun.
We went hiking, shopping, sight seeing and mostly a really relaxing time. My grandparents always make awesome food for us and then fill us so full you can't help but pass out after the meal.
We did go and visit the north shore of Lake Superior, which was about 3 hours away. We had so much fun there! We went down an Alpine Slide (3 times), ski lifts, and on a Gondola ride. We then traveled to a pretty tourist-y town and ate some awesome pizza, did a little shopping and fed the ducks. All in all it was a great family vacation with my "lil" brother.
Here are a few photos documenting the trip.
I almost forget we visited the North American Bear Museum. We went last year, but Matthew really wanted to go back. It wasn't as fun this year. Last year they were roaming around in a huge area. You could see them actually playing and relaxing. However, they are redoing that big area for the bears so each bear is in its own very small enclosure.
          This year....                                                                     Last year....

Ben not too impressed.

 Matthew already tired of photos and not really interested in the bears either.

 Hiking.

 Ski lift to the Alpine Slide.

 getting ready...

 Gondola's

 Beautiful

 Grandparents

 Matthew, beyond naptime!

 back on the Gondola.

 Time for pizza at Sven & Ole's.

Feeding the ducks.

 My little boy is growing up. 

I think I may see this face a lot over the next few years.

 Being silly!

 Cheesin' it!

 After the 12 hour drive home we were greeted with a bit of a surprise!

 Green army men EVERYWHERE!

 

They were are still everywhere! Matthew loved it! He keeps on asking how they got there. 

He asks"did  they walk there by themselves?"

Anywho, back to the normal grind here at the Kirby household.

Thanks for stopping in and catching up!

Anniversary Trip - STL

We had an awesome time in St. Louis celebrating our anniversary. It was a spare of the moment trip, but we are so glad we went through with it. We needed the time together and had so much fun. We left Monday morning, of course, it was a little later than we had scheduled and of course there were many stops involved. Especially, when you leave without Matthew's shoes! The first place we hit up was the City Museum.

Arriving at the museum! Happy to be out of the car.

This museum is so much fun! I highly recommend it! Patrick put it best "it's a life size game of shoots and ladders!" If you haven't been GO and if you have been I know you agree with me! It would even be fun for a group of adults...hmmm...small group trip...I think so!

Matthew had a blast and so did we!

The entire museum is an old deserted building

and all of the building materials inside are recycled.

(Sorry for the not-so-great picture quality. The lighting inside wasn't ideal.)

Yes, this is an old plane and firetruck just literally hanging out!

Yes, this is wayyyyy past Matthew's nap!
There were several walls covered with old stamps.

There must of been 1,000,000 metal restaurant containers lining the walls.

Matthew on the train, of course!
Going down the slide!

Apparently, there is an entire roof to the museum with more things to do, like a Ferris Wheel. We did not venture out on the roof or see the World Aquarium but I have a feeling we will be going back soon.

We then went to check into our hotel. To be completely honest I was scared to death because we had booked it on Hotwire. I guess Patrick has always booked hotels through Hotwire but it is a little scary. When you search for hotels it doesn't actually tell you the name of the hotel you are looking at. Apparently, that is how they can get them for cheap, because you aren't buying the name. I was for sure we were going to end up at some dirty, scary place but it wasn't at all! We stayed at the Crown Plaza, downtown St. Louis, right across from the arch, and the pool was on the roof! I couldn't of asked for a better place to spend the night.

Our room was huge and had a great view.

We were on the 22nd floor and Matthew loved pushing all of the buttons on the elevator!

View out our window.

We enjoyed a great dinner with one of Patrick's good friends from Valpo, Al Clark.

She took us to an Irish Pub not too far from our hotel and we had a great time catching up with her. We will be seeing her, and many more Valpo friends very soon, when we take a long weekend vacation to the Dells in the beginning of August.

We went back to the hotel and enjoyed the rest of the night in the pool.

We were planning on hitting the Arch Tuesday morning before we headed back but it was just too hot. It was 105 with a heat advisory of 115. TOO HOT! So we went back to the pool and then got home just in time to eat dinner and take Matthew to VBS.

A little photo collage!