After we celebrated Christmas Morning at home, we quickly packed up the kids to catch our flight up to Minneapolis, MN. More precisely, our final destination was Mound, MN, on the shores of Lake Minnetonka. On take-off, the sky was a beautiful burning deep red color, with only the thinest sliver of a new moon perhaps only hours old, but the entire moon disk was visible. Red sky at night, travelers delight, so they say.
We arrived at Uncle Bob and Aunt Gretchen's house on Christmas day evening. The next day, Grammy and Pa, with cousins Jack, Ella and Ellise from Greenbay in tow, arrived in town. I'm sorry to say, Don and Amy were not able to come, but enjoyably, their kids were able to hitch a ride with the GP's With the addition of the Greenbay clan, to the home town clan, twins Robbie and Jake, all the Chilson cousins were accounted for. Then the craziness began.
Hold on Robbie & Ollie, this ride is a bit bumpy.
While we did have some great adventures during our time in the Twin Cities, including a visit to the children's museum, a giant play center, and the Mall of America (more on those later), the greatest fun happened at Uncle Bob's Carnival Cornucopia in the upstairs bonus room.
The fun started with the kiddie rides: namely the stair coaster, followed by the jumpie castle, the obstacle course, the bouncing wall, and climaxed with southern sledding. That's right, we went all that way to go southern sledding because there was no snow in the Great "White" North, which apparently is nothing more than riding down a hill in a wagon. In addition to the roughhousing fun, there was a rousing game of hide-and-go-seek, simon-says, and much much more. Check out the photographs below of all the fun had by all. Don't miss the video at the bottom of this posting staring our own "Air Drew".
This is typical for our kids, sitting on the sideline observing the craziness.
Once the crazies left, Drew jumped right in though.
The "Obstacle Course," Drew loved this from the get-go.
Drew also quickly figured out the "sit-n-spin"
and rode till he was dizzy.
This was Drew and Ollie's favorite, running, jumping, and bouncing off the wall. In fact, I think they instigated this one, and got everyone else doing it.
Jack knew all the best places to hide...where is he?
Naturally, being Christmas, Grammy did not show up empty handed. The gifts she brought for the kids were certainly a hit, the biggest and most appreciated of them all was the quality time they spent with the kids. Ollie and Drew absolutely adore their grandparents, and were very sad when it came time to say goodbye. The two gifts that were the biggest hit, other than themselves, were the fake light-up aquarium and the large blankets, Drew got a Lightning McQueen, and Ollie a Snoopy blanket, and they've asked to sleep with them every night since our return. After setting up Drew's light-up aquarium in his room, he agreed that it was no longer necessary to leave the hallway light on outside his room. That is progress.
Our visit climaxed on the last day with Grammy's surprise grand prize game. The winner of the raffle got to take home a very special gift that sat wrapped under the tree since our arrival. The winner of the grand prize game was the one who talked about it the most, and who was the most anxious to see what was in that last gift of the year...Ella! What did the grand prize turn out to be? It was the most precious Chilson Family heirloom: the elephant cookie jar that sat atop the fridge in the Chilson household as long as I can remember. May she eat from it for years to come.
Thanks for being such gracious hosts, Bob and Gretchen!
All the kids were mesmerized by the light-up fish tank.
Jack and Ellise hauling the "sled" back up the hill.
The kids huddling in front of the IPad watching
Charlie Brown Christmas before bed.
Frozen Lake Minnetonka at high noon. Well, as high
as the sun gets so far up north.
2 comments:
I love those Chilson kids!
That was a Christmas that will last forever thanks to your great pictures. Loved every minute of the mayhem
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