Mindy Carlson

I’m so hip I can’t even type out all the words. Just abbreviations for me. But for you woefully un-hipsters, we are on vacation in the Midwest for 4 weeks visiting the Grandparents.   The Minnesota grandparents (Grandma and Grandad) live in a town, have a fabulous attic to explore with tons of toys,  a huge screened-in porch to play on and a swimming pool.  The Iowa grandparents (Grammie and Papa) live on a farm, have E and H’s cousins nearby to play with, and supply tractor rides, cows, and fresh baked cookies.

Minnesota is hot and humid in the summer, but Grandma and Grandad have a pool and we are spending many, many hours in the pool.

Minnesota also has Nelson’s Ice Cream and the child-size is the size of an actual child.  We are visiting there often.

The visit to the steamy north has been fun.  The kids have had a great time with this set of Grandparents and we’ll be traveling south to Iowa to visit the other set shortly.  In E’s mind Grammie and Papa live on a farm and have fresh baked cookies.

We went fishing with Papa and the cousins.

Then we went hunting for fossils from the Devonian period at a fossil field in Rockford, IA.  Mark and I took the big kids and left the younger ones with Grammie.  The fossils were all over the place! Just sitting on top of the ground. There were a lot of sea-life type of fossils like shells. Everyone brought home a plastic bag with quite a few rocks in it.

It was 4 weeks of fun, but we were grateful to be home at the end. And we got home just in time for the first day of school!