Busy Weekend

The family had a very busy weekend. After getting our haircuts on Saturday we went out to dinner with Shereen's Parents and Sister at Donatellis (http://www.donatellis.com/). I had the bakes lasagna with an antipasta salad. Shereen had the Spaghetti with a meatball and Andrew had the mini corndogs. It's always a great meal at Donatellis. Then we dropped off Andrew and Anika at the babysitters and went to a play at Lakeshore Players(http://www.lakeshoreplayers.com/). It's a community theater in White Bear Lake. We saw "Cheaper by the Dozen". A funny play about a family with 12 kids and a dad that runs the house like he runs a factory. Always looking to improve the efficiency of the family. It was well done. Better then some of the plays at Lakeshore.

Sunday we went to the Twin Cities Bronze(http://www.handbells.org) concert at our church in Shoreview. It was a very good concert. Very musical and very emotional. For a full review of the concert, listen to this week's Handbell Podcast (http://www.handbellpodcast.com).

I Love Cake

What more needs to be said. It was Chocolate. 

Anika's Birthday Party

This is a little late in posting. Here is a picture of Anika opening her presents at her bithday party. Its amazing with all the gifts she received, the thing she wanted most to play with was the orange envelope. She would not let it go. She is now enjoying her new toys. Andrew plays with some of them more then Anika does. I'm not sure who was more excited about the presents, Andrew or Anika. 

Touching the Cloud Gate

Andrew is touching the "Cloud Gate". "A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.
Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high. Cloud Gate sits upon the At&T Plaza, which was made possible by a gift from AT&T. " Quote from the website: http://www.millenniumpark.org/

"Cloud Gate"

Here Andrew is standing in front of the Cloud Gate. "Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. " The quote above was taken from this website: http://www.millenniumpark.org/ 

Andrew is digging for Dinasaur Bones. This was a pit surronded by rock like walls that you see in the back of the picture. The floor was a skeleton of a dinasaur molded into the concrete. The "dirt" that Andrew is standing on is made from ground up tires. Small little chuncks of rubber. They provided smocks, gloves and brushes so that the kids could uncover the bones. Andrew had a blast. 

Anika at the Chicago Children's Museum

Anika had her own play room at the Children's Museum. There was a lot of different things for her to do. I was impressed with the different rooms at the Museum. The Chicago Children's Museum is located on the West end of Navy Pier. 

The Train to Chicago

Andrew and Anika are playing while we took the train to Chicago. We left about 8:00 AM and got into Chicago about 4:30 PM. Andrew was so excited to be on a train he was unable to take a nap. We got seats right behind the stairwell so we had a little room for Anika to play. We put her carseat so that it blocked her in and she played most of the way to Chicago.