Decidedly Picky

Autumn is officially here in Madison. This past week we've celebrated the changing seasons with family bike rides.  Indy is finally big enough to be in a bike seat, so we spent last Monday putting it on the back of my bike.

Indy was not a huge fan of his helmet

It took ALOT longer to put on than I expected and required several modifications. But after two hours of everyone being as cranky as possible, we were ready!


 When I first got on, I was quite unsteady. The weight distribution was a bit different than normal but then I realized my real problem was that I hadn't ridden a bike in over 2 years! But as they say....

The ride was glorious and we repeated the experience every day that week. I hope to do the same this week and for as many days as the weather stays marvelous.

Just before Labor Day weekend, we were reminded by our awesome friends who live in North Dakota just how awesome they are by them sending us this amazing blanket for Indy!

This is Indy's 'Back away from my blanket and no one gets hurt' face

 It's Beatles themed and glows in the dark! I'd steal it for myself but they, wisely, labeled it as Indy's and he LOVES it! I put it up next to his bed so he could see it but not smother himself in it but he just pulls it down to snuggle with it every night anyway.

We'd been wanting to hang out with our awesome friends, The Lowes. However, they live about 13 hours away and it would be over 17 if we wanted to hit Mt. Rushmore along the way. So we decided that Labor Day weekend would be a great time to meet up at the crazily huge Mall of America!

Mall of America is the biggest Mall in America and has an amusement park with full size roller coasters in the middle of it. So we spent most of our time there, which is kinda ironic considering none of us are mall people and we went into very few of the stores. We did however, go to the aquarium and the boys went on a ropes course.

Vanessa and I thought about going on a few of the rides but they were like $6 a ride. I am way too much of a cheapskate for that!

Our main pursuit while in the mall was chatting and finding every single game store, which suited all of us just fine. At one of the game stores, we found a great new expansion for Arkham Horror, called The Lurker at the Threshold.

Excited to try the new expansion out, we spent our Sunday afternoon walled up in our awesome hotel room. (It actually was pretty cool. We got a two room suite so that we could hang out together all the time. The main room, which Steven and Vanessa were kind enough to take, had a pull out couch, some comfy chairs and a desk. Lewis and I took the bedroom so that we could put Indy down for naps. It worked great for us! I don't know if the same could be said for them...) We got way too much chinese food and stuffed our faces as we horribly lost the game and everyone died. It was really so pathetic. I've never seen Lewis take it so hard.

Now this whole weekend we had put together an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) for the Lowes. The premise for this game was that on our way to meet up with them, we had died in a car crash and in order for them to win, they had to come up with this realization. We were supposed to drop hints until they got it. For instance, one morning we woke up early and played a loud screeching tire and collision noise, the next morning we put a picture of a horribly smashed car that looked like ours with  our license plate photoshopped in on the bathroom mirror with blood all over it, and every time they said certain key words (dead/die, accident, drive, emergency, and car) we would pretend to be thrown out of this world by mouthing words to each other like we were communicating on another plane where they couldn't hear us.

However, all of this went horribly awry. The "loud" noise wasn't loud enough for them to wake up. The awesome picture we put on the mirror fell down and what we used for blood dried into a pretty light pink. And we forgot all of our key words. Even during the Arkham game, which was the perfect time for it since we kept saying "We're gonna die!", we didn't remember. We didn't succeeded in being creepy we just succeeded in acting a bit odd. It's a miracle that Steven got it on the last day. And even that didn't go according to plan. He asked "Are you guys dead?" and instead of falling down dead and then jumping up and congratulating on winning, we just started clapping and then looked at each other and then said "oh!" and fell down dead. Which made us look even stupider than the plan would have. Good thing it was for a good cause. (My thrilling tale of our latest ARG has, no doubt, left you yearning to join our ARG group. You can find us on facebook here.)

But even with all the mishaps we had a fantastic time because we were with some of the funnest people we know. We could have fun with the Lowes doing just about anything, even walking around an overcrowded mall.

Before

After

Indy's first time trying to walk in shoes

 

Couldn't he have at least waited until I made the bed?!

For the last month I have been planning, cleaning, organizing, and talking about nothing else than my mom coming to visit. I've been wholly consumed by the excitement of my mommy finally coming to see me! It has been 7 long months since I've seen her and now she's finally come!

My mom arrived at my brother's house in Burlington, IA on Sunday after having an awesome family reunion in Nebraska for the Koskavichs (I think that's my mom's dad's mother's maiden name but I'm sure my mother will jump on and answer any questions anyone might have and a few no one did.) She stayed with Adam's family (It's ok to sing and snap. I do it every time.) until Wednesday morning when she, Julienne (my sister-in-law), and Madeline (oldest child, age 12) met up with me in Dubuque.

Dubuque is a surprisingly charming town and we spent all afternoon exploring it. First, we went to the Historical Society where we picked up some clue tokens about my great-grandfathers, had to make a lore check to find the needed records, and a speed check to leave the building due to a fire alarm. Thankfully we were not kicked out into the street or delayed for a turn. (That is how the narration in my head went as I imaged we were in a game of Arkham Horror, since that's what I think of any time anyone uses the word 'Historical Society'. But if I  were writing this in plain English it would go something like this:
First, we went to the Historical Society where we were met by a lovely young lady who showed us the archives there. We were able to find some index cards that were references to the document we were looking for but not the actual documents. We did, however, get to see an awesome antique wedding dress and some other old Declaration of Intent documents that were pretty cool.)

Next,  we moved to the Court House, where we entered the records vault.

Again, we didn't find what we needed but we did find some other interesting information. The library also did not have it and we finally gave up the search since they were all closing for the night.

Then it was finally time for fun! The four of us walked all around downtown, looking at cute stores and taking pictures.
 We rode the 4th Street Elevator. It's this cool elevator/train thing that pulls you up a super steep hill by way of pulleys and you get to look out over the whole city and the Mississippi. It was beautiful.

 Afterwards, we had dinner at a great Chinese place on main street and then we parted ways. Julienne and Madeline returning to Burlington, and I bringing my mom up to Madison to see my beautifully clean and organized, darling apartment.

We had a lovely day and a half all to ourselves. We played Scrabble, watched movies, went shopping and tried to go see the new Star Trek movie but the stupid theater had it on their website but was not actually showing in it, (grumble, grumble, grumble...) and just had an over all great time. I missed my mom so much and it was great to catch up with her. I just wish she could have stayed forever...