Apple Valley/Minneapolis,MN-Lebanon Hills Regional Park Campground

This was a BUSY week! While here, we stayed at Lebanon Hills Campground. It was a nice campground with an awesome location. You felt like you were out in the country but we were only 2 miles from the zoo and 6 miles from the Mall of America.

It was also not too far from the Edina office of Mattersight, that Greg works for. So for 3 days, one of the employees picked Greg up and took him to the office.

On Tuesday, Jordan and I headed to the Mall of America to take advantage of the Back to School sales and get some cooler weather clothes. As a bonus, I learned there is no sales tax on clothing and shoes in Minnesota! 

And then I had a couple of surprises for Jordan. I had made reservations to have lunch at the American Girl store. She loves that store and giggled with joy at every display.

We had a fun lunch and the food was surprisingly very good! Jordan was in her favorite dress and Emma (her doll) was dressed for the occasion as well. And I got a surprise too! It was toddler Tuesday and 5 and under eat for free! Woo hoo!

Then we were off to the next surprise: getting her ears pierced! That very morning, while shopping, Jordan was complaining that her ears were not pierced and asking when I was going to let her get them done. I wanted it to be a total surprise, so I was a little disappointed when she began asking about it, but on the other hand it was good to hear that she still wanted it.

We had it done at a piercing store and they used needles instead of a gun. I was nervous for her and it is definitely a little intimidating when they lay all of the equipment out on the tray right in front of you! She did so well! She was nervous but so brave. There was no crying and it was over very quickly. Now for the long aftercare process. But she looks so cute :)

The next day, I took the kids to the Minnesota Zoo. It was a pretty typical zoo and the kids enjoyed it as they always do.  Here are a couple pics of the kids favorites..

Then, because we spent enough money shopping, we got free tickets to Nickelodeon Universe, the amusement park in the mall! The kids and I went in the morning and then Greg joined us after he got off work.

It was great fun! Jordan was JUST tall enough to ride the majority of the rides. 42” is the magical number and she is probably 42 ¼”. The lines were short and we rode the rides over and over. Then when Greg arrived we rode everything again plus a few of the rides that Jordan couldn't and Jacob didn’t want to without one of us.

And Jordan got to meet a few costumed characters.  Her eyes light up any time she sees one and then she runs to hug them and have her picture taken.  It's so cute!

On Friday, Greg was off work and we went to the Minnesota State Fair. 

We should have better planned out what demonstration and shows we wanted to see and do but we still had a pretty good time. It was a HUGE fair! I think you could get anything you wanted to eat on a stick, including bacon, pizza and smores. Ironically, though, they did not allow drink vendors to hand out straws.

We tried a deep fried Milky Way (on a stick of course). It wasn't as good as I hoped. I wanted some bacon on a stick but not enough to pay $4 for one slice. Smores on a stick were fine but really just a chocolate covered marshmallow with a graham cracker coating.

Looking around, it seemed like EVERYONE had a big bucket of cookies and they looked so delicious! I cannot recall the name of the cookie place, but the bucket they put the cookies in is about 1 ½ times the size of a big tub of butter and they don't just fill it to the top. It was mounded with cookies! You had to eat about a dozen cookies just to be able to walk away and not have a bunch of your cookies fall off! Well it looked like fun and pure yumminess but we decided to go for the smaller cone of cookies. Imagine a cone cup a little bigger than the one you would find at an Ozarka water bottle station. And then imagine 12 cookies going into it. Their balancing acts were impressive!

The cookies were very gooey and warm! And what goes perfectly with cookies?? How about ALL YOU CAN DRINK MILK for a $1!

Jacob guzzled down his milk and went back for two refills ;)

So while we were enjoying our cookies and milk we turned to find that we were standing in front of a stand that sold Poutine (that's the dish we tried while in Canada). The guys talked us into trying theirs since it was actually made with cheese curds like it is supposed to be. It was definitely better than the first one in Canada, but still not on my list of faves.

The kids rode a few rides (but it was so incredibly expensive and there was no all you can ride wristband option like we usually find at fairs) and we took a look at many of the booths that had items up for sale.  (BTW that is Greg and Jacob in that roller coaster car.  It was a really cute ride but a little hard to see in the picture)

Jordan got to meet Smokey the Bear

And Jacob's favorite part was observing the fish in the pond at the DNR (that's Department of Natural Resources for those of you, like me, who cannot read that without thinking that it stands for Do Not Resuscitate) Visitor Center.

And our final surprise for the kids was on Saturday. Jacob has a few DVDs that are from Animal Planet's Growing Up series. Two of the episodes on bears and wolves were filmed about an hour north of where we were staying at the Wildlife Science Center. So on Saturday we drove out there. The taping was done about 10 years ago and so many of the animals on the video are no longer there but it was fun to see some of the familiar things and they provided a great tour as well.

I feel like I have walked about 50 miles in the past week! We were on the go everyday! I am ready for some relaxation time. We'll see if I get it as we head to the Wisconsin Dells and our next school year begins!