Looking California and Feeling Minnesota.

Ha ha. I am funny.

Anyway......so we did some touristy things while in beautiful Minnesota. First up was MOA, Mall of America. We met up with Shari and Lori, my mom's sisters, who came over from North Dakota to visit while we were in town. At a mall this big, the best thing to do is to split up. Shari, Lori, Mom, and I went off to do some shopping. Ben, Khan, and Lily went to Nickelodeon Universe, the theme park in the middle of the mall.

 

I left my camera with them with only two instructions: 1) find and visit Dora, and 2) take lots of pictures. I'm really impressed with their pictures! I love this picture of Ben and Lily.

 

From the pics, it looks like Ben got to go on all the rides and Khan was the camera man. Love this shot, too. 

 

Lily got super spoiled. Candy, ice cream, and rides. 

 

When we all met back up together, I asked about Dora. Ben told me that they didn't find her, but they found her sister or cousin or something.  Puzzled, I asked for clarification.

"I don't know," Ben told me. "She looked like Dora except she had crooked bangs."

So I went to the pictures to figure it out. They didn't find Dora's sister. They found Kai Lan. Dora's Chinese counterpart, I suppose. No wonder Lily didn't seem too enthused. She's never seen her before and she was told she was going to meet Dora. According to the website, Dora made appearances hourly, so I figured it would be easy. Turns out there are several character meeting spots.  

 

A few questions to people in bright uniforms and a few minutes later, we found Dora's appearance spot. And all was well with the world. And also very yellow. 

 

Last stop on the way out was the American Girl store. I had already promised Lily that she could pick out a new outfit for Kiki (her Bitty Twin). We've been to the store without much trouble as of yet, though I've seen plenty of tantrum-ing girls and angry moms in that place. I guess 3 is the magic age. For the first time, Lily was really awestruck with the giant store full of overpriced dolls and overpriced doll things. She wandered all over and wanted to play with every doll she could find.  And this time, she wanted everything, too. 

Uh-oh. She was already overtired and cranky. I saw the whole disaster in my head. Not much to be done about it, except to power through and hope for the best. We were already inside, and we had to get out of the store one way or the other. 

We eventually steered her to the Bitty Baby section and told her to pick out something. A doll! No, pick an outfit. Still, with that much  free reign, she couldn't pick and wanted everything. I narrowed it down and asked her to choose one of the three items I picked for her. I held my breath as I waited for the tantrum. 

She looked thoughtfully at each item. Two dresses and the birthday set. Finally, she said, "I think Kiki have enough clothes," and she picked the birthday set. 

Shocked and pretty proud of my little girl's decision-making, we left the store without incident. I have learned, though, that tantrums can be an unpredictable force, but that's a whole 'nother story.

The next day,  we went to the Minnesota Zoo. The weatherman called for rain, but he was wrong. The weather was absolutely divine. Cloudy, at worst.

 

At the zoo, I busied myself with pictures, as usual. Found a mommy and baby horse through the bushes.

 

Hello, Kitty.

 

And some random wildflowers along the way.

The rest of the crew were pretty happy to just check out the animals and enjoy the beautiful day.

Except Lily, that is. Our luck with a happy, easygoing Lily ran out. She was tired because she didn't nap in the car like we had hoped. And she was cranky.  This is when she plopped herself on the middle of the sidewalk and decided she didn't want to go. She didn't want to stay, either. She just didn't want.

 

Khan and Ben lured her out of that almost-meltdown with a spraying cool-down fountain. Later we lured her out of a playground to look at the little barn. The little barn turned out to be a little store. At the little store, Lily found and fell in love with a giant toy snake. How is this girl my child?

With crabbiness temporarily subdued with lunch, we headed to the indoor portion of the zoo. Here's a picture just for photographic proof that I was actually there.

 Last on the way out was the aquarium. Aquarium pictures have been as much a challenge for me as fireworks, though I think I'm making better progress with the fish.

 

Another day, and completely on a whim (seriously), we went to the beach. You might think Lily would be disappointed with a lake beach in Minnesota. Nope, I may be a beach snob, but she's not at all. Sand is sand to her, and she was ready to start building her castle.

There's something about her in this picture that makes me stop and think, "Not only is she not a baby anymore, I don't even think she's a toddler anymore. She's a little girl." I don't know if it's her long hair or her skinny legs, but it's there.
Again, I kept myself busy with my camera. I really adore macro and close-up photography, and one day, I really want to learn how to do it well.

After a while, Nana, Ben, and Lily went into the water. They found something. (No, not a shark, silly.)
They found fish.

Bread-eating fish. So they fed the fish in one of Minnesota's fabled 10,000 lakes, and I decided that I'm never going back to crappy Florida summer weather, even though the sand here sucks. 
Unrelated: I did some more tinkering with the blog, though I'm not sure how to make a new header, so that still looks wonky. I wanted to make the pictures bigger because they seemed too small before, and now I'm wondering if they look too big. But I did learn how to put them side-by-side finally. Yay!