Spice Girl

Before I headed home from work on Thursday I received a text with a picture of Riley lining up our spices at home. I was impressed at her precision and creativity, but she's my daughter so it doesn't take much for me to be in awe of her.

I was especially impressed when I got home and found every spice lined up in an arch.

Look Mommy! I even put the sugar packets out!

Jesse and I proceeded to step over and walk around this masterpiece until Riley knocked some of the spices over when she was practicing her jumping. She's pretty good at that too except for her balance or lack of ability to actually get her feet off the ground. But man she does it with flair!

Saturday

Saturday wasn't that eventful, but I completed what I set out to do for the weekend (or at least what I proclaimed to my co-workers I would do with my weekend). What's that you ask? Do laundry, change diapers, and buy printer ink. Multiple people had left work early on Friday to do exciting stuff like hiking in nature so I had to keep it real. Although leaving the house to buy printer ink was pretty crazy sh*t for me.

We did go to see grandma Ann and grandpa Frank at the nursing home in the morning. While there my dad decided to go pick some apples off the apple tree in the enclosed courtyard. My step-mom lives at a memory care facility so when certain doors are opened an alarm goes off. Usually they are set off by one of the residents, but this time it was by my dad when he went into the courtyard. Staff finally got the alarm off after setting it off a couple more times and we got some apples. My dad gave one to Riley and she gobbled it right up. It was pretty impressive. I'm pretty sure she ate part of the core, but it didn't seem to phase her.

Sunday

The nice days are getting rarer and rarer around here and I am anticipating three feet of snow on the ground any day now. At least that's how I recall previous seasons. Keeping that in mind we attempt to get outside when we can. Our first outside excursion for the day was a stroller walk with a stop at the park.

Stopping for a snack... because sitting in a stroller is hard work.

Riley has never been much of a swing lover... until recently that is. Usually she begs to get out of the swing, but this weekend Jesse and I were the ones doing the begging. "Did you say 'all done'? No? Are you sure?" The only time I think she really wanted to get out of one swing was to try the one right next to it. And to be honest I love that she loves the swing.

On this contraption you bounce up and down. Up and down, Up and down. She loved it and we love seeing her able to tackle new parts of the playground. There was another precarious area that she crawled up that neither Jesse nor I thought was possible. Not only did she do it, but the second time she cruised up it.

More bouncing.

Awe, such a sweet picture of my girl with her daddy.

After the park and some lunch my little Monkey crashed for a nap while I watched the first part of the Vikings game. Yet again they dominated during the first half. They couldn't screw up the second half a third time this season, could they?

Riley woke during the beginning of the third quarter and as much as I wanted to watch the rest of the game I also wanted to get back outside. It's apple picking season here so we headed out to Minnetonka Orchards. It's about a half hour drive from our house so I was able to listen to the Viking's game in the car. How things can change so fast! One minute we were up by 20 and the next we're only up by 3. And then we're tied 23 - 23. And it was time to get out of the car. They couldn't possibly lose this one during the last moments of the game just like the first two, could they?

So off we went to check out the orchard. They had all sorts of kids areas to play, a corn maze, farm animals to pet, food, and apples to be picked, of course. Lo and behold the first thing Riley noticed was the swing set. So we swung... and swung.... and swung until a cute little 6 month old girl started giving Riley the evil eye for hogging the swing.

After a little urging we were able to get Riley to move on to the play train which she had a lot of fun with, but isn't quite big enough to take full advantage of. You'll get there soon enough, kiddo.

We didn't go on the hay ride, but I took a picture of one!

They had animals you could pet and feed as well... Sheep, Llamas, goats, and chickens

Riley didn't tackle this mound of hay this year. Maybe next year, kiddo.

Jesse was hesitant to enter the corn maze for fear that we would be deep in the maze and our kid would start freakin' out, but she was really good. We didn't really go very far because she pretty much headed straight towards the corn and pealed off the dried out leaves.  She obviously did not get the concept of the maze.

Dead end.

Finally, we arrive at the apple trees. Apparently the apple season is a bit off and we only had the option of Honey Crisp apples. At least they are one of the good ones. A bunch of us apple pickers stood around while an employee explained where to pick and warned us that everyone has been bitten by a bee today. Everyone? She even suggested that if we had hoodies we better put them on so our necks weren't exposed. And then she continued to talk about the bees and the biting... uh, not sure if I want to bring my kid into the bees lair of death. No matter, Jesse helped Riley steal an apple off of a restricted tree picking area and they hung out towards the end of the row while I filled up a peck of apples.

Risking their lives to come find me.

When we got home I discovered that the Vikes lost, but I couldn't have cared less. I got to spend the day with my family and that was a big win.