Were those the Full Size Mentos or the Mini Mentos?

Last year we had a Memorial Day party and tried to amaze the kids with the Mentos fountain. With subpar results.




Well, the dog liked it.

For Your Reading Pleasure

I was just looking at L's screensaver, which is all of our family pictures and this one popped up.


This was the magazine selection in my room at the B&B I stayed at on Staten Island for Jen's wedding. This picture always makes me laugh.

Art is everywhere

The composition of this picture of Sam and Stella has been nagging me for a couple days now. I flipped the picture (the original one is in the Sculpture Garden post)



And the layout echoes Wyeth's "Christina's World."


Kinda cool, huh?

Fooling the kids into learning once again.

Saturday we were wondering what to do with the fam. Movies were out of the question as marauding hordes would surely be flocking to see Batman.

L though the Geek Factor would shift and create a geek vacuum, or a geekuum if you will, away from the Science Museum of Minnesota, which has a StarWars exhibit for an extra fee. So we loaded up the kidlets and headed out. We really didn't care if we saw the SW exhibit or not, which was fine as when we got there (at 1pm) the next ticketed showing was at 5:45 pm. So no. Also the cost was a little prohibitive.

So, we meandered through the exhibits and there were geeks galore. Apparently the geeks can cram a lot of geekdom into their weekends, which offers opportunities for Batcinema and viewing costumes from a movie made in 1977.

L and Sammy went into an older kids exhibit (ages 8 and up) and made slides of a fruit fly's saliva gland. Of course, Sammy reported this as "Dad ripped a head off a fruit fly." I was on Stella duty and we flitted about from one area to the next. I thought she'd like the dinosaurs, but they were a little too overwhelming in scale and in sharpness of teeth. Go figure, she liked the weather exhibit best of all.

When we were leaving, there was a guy in full stormtrooper gear walking around greeting guests. Stella looked at him, and then excitedly shrieked, "Sammy! It's the guy from your Video Game!" So there's her context.

I had a great idea to walk to this candy shop in downtown St Paul, Candyland, that L and I had gone to when the Sci Museum was at it's old location.

I had L enter in Candy Store on googlemaps, and it was just a pinch away from the museum, which translated to a few big city blocks in real life. I was getting a little worried, but then we caught a whiff of freshly popped popcorn and followed our noses.

Stella especially loved the Snoopy, Lucy and Linus statues out in front. We got 1 1/2 lbs of taffy, cheese corn and a small lollipop. Yum!

We headed home amid ever blackening skies and hit CiCi's pizza buffet, which was "eh" okay. Not great pizza, but okay because it was right there for the kids to eat. The skies were getting blacker and L took a look on his cell phone at the radar. We quickly finished horking down the chow and tried, and failed, to beat the rain. Wow, it just dumped!

Saturday night was low key - Sam L and I played Rock Band (using our 2 person band: "Red for Revenge" - singer and guitar, instead of "Cupcake Misteak" or 3 person band with drums. Red for Revenge allows for us to take breaks now and then.

Sunday we cleaned - woo. And went to Wagner's Drive In for burgers. Pretty tasty. Stella had a hot dog with a poppy seed bun. She did not appreciate poppy seeds.

Have a great week, everyone!