Bound for the Twin Cities

Our time in Fargo at an end, we slept in on Wednesday, July 6, and then headed for the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.  Without doubt, this is the single destination of our trip that offered much to do.  What’s funny is that we spent the lion’s share of our time in one place:  the Mall of America.

For a family that is not a big shopping one, this is kind of funny.  But given that shopping at the Mall of America is far from the only activity, maybe it’s not such a surprise.

Anyway, our hotel was in the St. Paul area, so we headed there first, with a stop at Pizza Hut for lunch.  We stayed at an Americinn, which ended up being a pretty nice place.  It is definitely a budget hotel, but it had a huge pool with a sauna and hot tub, in addition to very large rooms, which meant plenty of space to set up Jeremy’s pack-n-play.  It was a two-story hotel with no elevator, so that wasn’t great, but we found it to be a pleasant surprise.

After dumping our stuff, we headed for the Mall of America.

We knew that this place was obscenely big, but I don’t think we really grasped HOW big until we got there.  The MOA has a full-sized amusement in the middle of it, and some of the rides go up full four stories of the mall.  There were specialty stores of all kinds, in addition to the big mall chain stores (a two-story Old Navy, anyone?), and there was even a full-sized Best Buy on one of the floors.  There were more restaurants than there are in most fair-sized towns.  Really, this place is quite overwhelming.

Aside from the Wisconsin Dells, and perhaps it even came in first by the end of the trip, this was the one place that the kids were over the moon about visiting.  In addition to the amusement park, the MOA also has a Lego store and a very large Build-a-Bear workshop.  The kids had been saving their allowances for months to be able to splurge at these two places.

But first things first…the Nickelodeon Universe theme park offered discounted wristbands after 5:00, and that’s what this night’s trip to the mall was all about.  The mall closed at 9:00, and we figured that four hours worth of rides was plenty.  As it was a Wednesday evening, the crowds were not that bad, so Jeff and the kids got their wristbands and went to town.

As Jeff likes roller coasters a whole lot more than I do, he hung with the older two kids while Jeremy and I checked out the rest of the mall.  Jeremy’s diaper had leaked due to his parents’ negligence in changing him at appropriate times, so my first priority was finding a store with inexpensive baby clothes so that I could get him into dry things.  I found a Marshall’s, so I bought myself a couple pairs of pants and Jeremy a set of shorts and a top.  Then, we just wandered.

Jeff and the kids took a break for supper, and we headed for the Panda Express.  Then, it was back to riding for them and back to wandering for us.  By about 8:00, Jeremy and I found a place where I could sit down and he could wander about, because he was pretty tired of being in the stroller by then!

About 30 minutes from closing time, I headed back to the amusement park and watched the rest of my family ride the crazy Sponge Bob roller coaster.  They are backlit, but you get the idea.

We left the mall at closing time, the kids very excited about returning the next day to visit the Lego store and Build-a-Bear workshop.

And that was our first day in the Twin Cities!

In other news, I got in a 15-mile run today.  As every run from here on out is my “longest distance ever,” I won’t dwell on that!  But, in spite of the heat, it was another good one.  T minus eight weeks to race day.

Have a great weekend!

Relaxing in Fargo

So what little did we know about Fargo?  That would be just how little there is to do there that we couldn’t do elsewhere.

We found Fargo to be a very nice town with very nice hotels.  But, as I mentioned earlier, I think that the hotels are so nice because you will probably spend a lot of time in them!

That being said, we found our time in Fargo to be remarkably relaxing and low-key, which was perfect for this point of our vacation.  This was our first place to spend more than one night, and it wasn’t a bad place to do that, in spite of tornado sirens and questionable alien restaurants.

So, what did we end up doing in Fargo?

On Tuesday morning, July 5, we slept in, ate breakfast, and then headed to Walmart.  Yep, Walmart.  Always a favorite vacation destination.  I think I mentioned earlier that Jeff had forgotten his blood-pressure medicine, so we stopped at Walmart to see if he could get an emergency supply to last the rest of the trip.  Of course, errands like this always take longer than I think they should, and it was a good hour before we were finally done there.

Then, it was on to the Children’s Museum at Yunker Farm, which is probably one of the few sights unique to Fargo.  Not that there aren’t children’s museums (and lots of ‘em) elsewhere, but each one tends to have its own personal flavor, and Fargo’s was no different.

I am not a big fan of children’s museum, probably because I’m not a child, but our kids have always liked them.  Charlotte is about to age out, I think, but, with Jeremy, she has a good reason to go and still enjoy herself!

Anyway, this flavor of children’s museum had fun bubble activities…

…a train…

…a special toddler room, where Jeremy found this toy that he tried to take home with him…

…and a few things that the bigger kids liked, too.

There was also a tiny, creaky carousel, with a map painted on the wall that told us where we were.

There was supposed to be mini-golf and an alphabet garden, but those were overgrown and closed.  So, we took one final picture at Yunker Farm and headed out.

We grabbed lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings and tried to figure out what to do next.  We stopped back by the Visitors Center and found lots of brochures, but they were mostly for hotels and restaurants and sights that weren’t even in Fargo.

So, at this point, we decided to just go back to the hotel.  We had found out that morning that the fireworks from the previous night had been rescheduled for tonight, so we thought that Jeremy could take a good nap in the hotel while the kids swam in the cool pool.  I joined Jeremy, and Jeff hung out with the older two kids.
Around 4:00, we grabbed an early supper that the hotel offered as a “Manager’s Social” and then headed to a place called Thunder Road, the local mini-golf/go-kart/batting cage place.

This ended up being a lot of fun.  We pushed Jeremy in his stroller through a round of mini-golf, and then we each took a turn in the batting cages.

Then, Jeff, Charlotte, and Elijah took a spin on the go-karts.  Charlotte drove her own, which was pretty comical, at least to me observing her.  Being just 11, she’s never driven anything before, so she was very, very slow and very, very careful.  I think that everyone else out there got at least one extra lap, and then poor Charlotte rammed her car into the row in front of her when she tried to park it.  Oops.  She was more embarrassed than hurt, especially when the  teenaged attendant told her that she needed to put on the brakes.  Yeah, thanks, she didn’t know that!

Since Jeremy had not been able to participate thus far at Thunder Road, big spenders that we are, we splurged on a 50-cent ride for him.  I think he liked it.

Afterwards, we still had HOURS before the fireworks started, so we looked up a Cold Stone Creamery, because Jeff had a gift card from basketball coaching.  They were having a special of buy one-get one kids’ sundaes, so I don’t even think we managed to spend $15 on typically expensive ice cream! 
Fargo was turning out to be quite the bargain.
Finally, we decided that we might as well head over to the fireworks, as we really weren’t sure about the parking situation.  It turned out to be pretty easy, so we took the blanket that we borrowed from the hotel, our bottle of bug spray, and our card games and found a spot just outside the Minnesota State University at Moorhead’s football stadium.

This is the point in our vacation where we discovered that the state bird of Minnesota is actually the mosquito.  HOLY SMOKES!  Those babies were huge.  We doused ourselves with bug spray (or so we thought) and were STILL getting bitten…through our clothes, on any bit of exposed skin.  We sprayed ourselves over and over to no avail.  Poor Jeremy got bitten on his cheek before I slapped some bug spray there, too.

In spite of the mosquitoes on steroids, we played Monopoly Deal until it got too dark, and then we lay down to enjoy the show, which was fantastic!  I didn’t take any pictures of the fireworks because Jeremy was lying on my chest and covering his ears with my hands.  Once the noise was cut, he stopped squirming and was entranced with the show, as were we all.

When the show was over, we headed back to our hotel, with a quick run through Wendy’s since it was nearly midnight, and we were all hungry again.  Then, it was off to bed, as we were driving to Minneapolis the next day.

We would find the next leg of our trip significantly different from Fargo!

The Funny Things about Fargo

Today, it rained!  As we haven’t had much of that here lately, this was a much-welcomed event.  While the humidity hasn’t dropped much, the temperature has, and I think that our area is supposed to be out from under the heat dome by this evening.  Hallelujah!

Yesterday, I got in my very first 14-miler, the longest distance that I have ever run.  Beyond being a milestone for that reason, it is also a distance over halfway to the goal.  While 26.2 miles still seems like an awfully long way to run, being over halfway there feels pretty good.  My running partner and I started around 5:30 a.m. and wrapped it up about two hours and 20 minutes later.  Given the heat, we were pretty happy with our time.

After the run, Jeff, Jeremy, and I jumped in the car for the three-hour drive to Effingham, IL, to pick up Charlotte and Elijah from Jeff’s parents.  They were kind to give us the shorter drive this time, which was nice.  So, now, we’re all back home, for at least the next week or so.

Back to the Road Trip…

We arrived in Fargo, North Dakota, late afternoon on Monday, July 4.  We were staying for the next two nights at an Expressway Suites, a hotel close to the Fargo Moorhead Visitors Center.  We were pleasantly surprised with how new the hotel was and how beautiful of a swimming pool it had, complete with a big waterslide.

We quickly discovered that the hotel was as nice as it was because the hotel powers-that-be know how truly little there is to do in Fargo.  I guess the hotels themselves need to be places of entertainment.

In any case, we checked in, at which time the desk clerk informed us that Minnesota State University in Moorhead, right across the river, had the best fireworks display around, if we were interested.  I briefly toyed with the idea of sending Jeff, Charlotte, and Elijah and staying at the hotel with Jeremy, it would be 10:30 before the fireworks even started (it’s pretty far north up there—lots of daylight hours!), and just the thought of dealing his being up that late made me tired.  But, then, I remembered that we were on a FAMILY vacation and that one late night wouldn’t kill any of us.  Thus, we had our evening plans.

Shortly thereafter, we headed out for supper.  The kids had seen this on our drive in and begged to eat there.

Against our better judgment, we agreed.  After all, Jeff and I had been doing most of the restaurant picking this trip, so we figured the kids could choose tonight.

Upon entering the space portal, we immediately figured out that the Space Aliens Grill and Bar was a Chuck E. Cheese’s-type place.  That in itself wasn’t a deal-killer, but the not-great, expensive food was.  The portions were small and deep-fried all, and I think that we paid more for this meal than we had for any one up to this point.  Ack.  But, since we ordered dessert, we were given 10 free tokens, and Elijah managed to win 80 tickets at one game!  The kids pooled their winnings, and both left with a cheap prizes that made them both very happy.  So, I think that Jeff and I were the only ones who didn’t like this place.  At least, we were able to get Jeremy a relatively healthy smoothie for his supper.

As we still had tons of time before the fireworks show, we next visited the Fargo-Moorhead Visitors Center.  It was closed, due to the holiday, but there were plenty of things to see outside, including the world-famous Fargo wood chipper.

I’ve never seen the movie Fargo, which made this wood chipper famous, but the city Fargo seems pretty proud of it.  (We found out the next day when we stopped back that the REAL wood chipper from the movie is inside, along with a copy of the screenplay.  This one is merely a replica.)  I thought it might make a funny picture to put Jeremy in the wood chipper, but no one agreed with me.  In hindsight, they were probably right.

The center is also home to the Fargo Walk of Fame, which has a surprisingly high number of famous people represented, and this colorful bison.  We‘re not sure what makes the bison special, but the kids kind of liked it.  Well, except for Jeremy, who was a bit leery.

After that, we went back to the hotel for a little bit before leaving for the fireworks.  However, shortly after we arrived, the lightning and thunder started, then the downpour.  Jeff checked on his iPad and discovered that a huge bad weather system was coming through.  We decided that the fireworks were off of our agenda for the evening, as, even if they weren’t canceled, we really didn’t want to be out in a strange place in a thunderstorm.

We got ready for bed, and, then, the tornado sirens started going off!  We headed down to the lobby for instructions from the clerk, thinking that we needed to take shelter.  He laconically told us that the tornados weren’t anywhere close to us, so we didn’t need to be worried.  We went back upstairs, and the sirens went off again!

I don’t know about where you are, but, where we live, the sirens don’t sound unless a tornado has actually been spotted.  Jeff scoured the weather websites to find out if there really was a tornado and couldn’t find any reports of one.  The weather reports on TV kept saying that conditions were ripe for a tornado to form, but that was about it.  We went downstairs and sat there for awhile, but, eventually, the rain let up, and we headed to bed.

And that ended an exciting first day in Fargo.  Tomorrow, we were determined to see all of what Fargo had to offer.  Little did we know…!

Sioux Falls

The next couple of stops on our trip were noticeably short of big sites.  As I mentioned earlier, we didn’t go into western South Dakota, and eastern South Dakota’s biggest claim to fame is Sioux Falls, a series of cascades on the Big Sioux River.  So, once we got cleaned up and checked out of the hotel, we headed for there.

There is a park surrounding Sioux Falls, and it was the site of a Fourth of July celebration.  There were food stands, vendor booths, and an orchestra playing patriotic songs.  There were also lots of people.  It was a very sunshiny, hot day, and Jeremy had about had it, with how early he had to get up and indignity of being jounced for three miles in an umbrella stroller.  So, we didn’t stay here as long as might have under other circumstances.

But what we saw was very pretty.

We got a couple of partial family pictures in our matching race t-shirts from that morning, but Jeremy really wasn’t in the mood.

And when we tried to get a picture of the kids and the falls, this is what we got.  Yes, he was screaming by the time I took him back.

We figured this was a good time to move on!

We had seen a museum for the USS South Dakota while out driving around, and the kids were interested in visiting there.  Jeremy fell asleep in the car on the way over, so I stayed with him while Jeff and the kids checked out this mostly-open-air, free museum.  The concrete wall topped with flags marked out the shape and size of the battleship, which was pretty neat.  I think that the flags represent each state from which a serviceman from the USS South Dakota came.

Hot and tired, Elijah flops down under a tree with me, while Jeremy sleeps in the car nearby.  (I left it running!)  Elijah is not used to getting up early and running three miles!

And that about did for Sioux Falls and South Dakota.  We headed back north, ate lunch at a Perkins restaurant right before we left the state, and crossed into North Dakota.  We were Fargo bound!

Independence Day

Before I go back to our vacation, I just want to say a short word about the weather.

I thought that I would get up at 5:30 today for my run to beat the heat.  Ha!  It felt like 85 degrees, and I could literally wring out my clothes when I got home.  Where is this weather coming from?!  Yesterday, we had temperatures of 99 and heat indexes of 112 to 114.  Today?  Temps of 98, heat indexes between 112 and 120.  WHAT?

I might expect this if I still lived in Tennessee or Mississippi.  But we live in PEORIA, for crying out loud.  I’ve decided that any running I do during this heat wave is endurance training and nothing else.  A 10:14 pace over four miles today?  I’ll take it!

Speaking of running, back to our vacation…

On Monday, July 4, we woke up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  As I couldn’t completely take the week off from running, Jeff and I came up with the brilliant idea of seeing if there was a Firecracker Run anywhere in the area.  This seemed safer than setting out alone in a strange city and more enjoyable than a treadmill.

We hit pay dirt in the small town of Lennox, about 20 minutes south of Sioux Falls.  The Lennox Lions Club sponsor an annual Firecracker Road Race, with distances of 1 mile, 2 miles, 5 kilometers, and 10 kilometers.  Jeff thought that he might like to run, too, and Charlotte is always up for a race.  We did some fast talking to our child who hates organized running and managed to talk him into giving it a whirl, and Jeremy was good to go with his stroller. 

It was settled.  I would run the 10K for a solid longer run, and Jeff and the kids would run the 5K.  The race was $10 for kids and $15 for adults, payable at the door, and included a t-shirt.  It doesn’t get much better than that!

Race time was 8:00, so we stumbled down to breakfast around 6:30.  Unbeknownst to us, as this was a holiday, breakfast wasn’t actually being served until 7:00 that day, but we managed to find some cereal and bagels to eat before we hit the road.  We got to Lennox around 7:20 and headed into the local high school to get registered.

There was no preregistration for this race, so we just hopped into the appropriate lines and were signed up before we knew it!  At 8:00, we went to our appropriate starting corrals (lines painted on the road), where an older gentleman thanked us all for being here and for making this the largest Firecracker Road Race that Lennox had ever hosted.  (Wow.  There may have been 200 people total for all the races.)  Then, with the pop of a firecracker, we were off!

I must say that this was a nicely done race.  The water stops were appropriate, the course was relatively flat, and we were blessed that day with cooler weather and a nice breeze.  There was not much shade, as one might expect in South Dakota farm country, but I had a great run, averaging a 9:08 mile.  I wanted to finish in under an hour, which I did.

Charlotte took off at the start of the race, and, while she didn’t place this time, she still had a good run.  Elijah stuck with Jeff and Jeremy for the first half of the race but eventually asked Jeff if he could just take off.  He finished well ahead of his dad, which really made his day!  Jeremy, who was riding in an umbrella stroller, finally had too much and was asleep when he crossed the finish line just in front of Jeff, who told me they were getting some pretty good laughs when they finished.  I admire Jeff for pushing that jangly stroller for 3.1 miles; a piece of sports equipment it is not!

Anyway, this was a great time, much enjoyed by all of us.  Here we are before we drove back to Sioux Falls.

We drove through the town of Tea on our way to the hotel.  This cracked us all up, Charlotte in particular, so I snapped a picture of Tea’s water tower.  You can imagine the punch lines.

We got back to the hotel around 9:30, where, much to our surprised delight, breakfast was still being served, due to the holiday hours.  We were pretty hungry by then and much enjoyed our second breakfast, when the hot food was actually out!

After that, we cleaned up, packed up, and headed out to see what we could see in Sioux Falls.  And I’ll tell you about that next time.

Iowa: A Pleasant Surprise

Not that I have historically spent a lot of time thinking about Iowa, but, when the state crossed my mind, I never really considered it much of a destination.  Rightly or (more likely) wrongly, I always kind of lumped it in with how I pictured Nebraska and Kansas:  unrelenting, flat farmland.  I now know that this isn’t true about Kansas, I still don’t know if it’s true about Nebraska, but it’s absolutely not true about Iowa.

Thus, my title…Iowa proved to be a pleasant surprise.  We saw lots of rolling hills and scenic vistas.  There was a lot of farmland, but it was very pretty country.

We woke up on Sunday morning, and the kids wanted to swim.  We had gotten there too late the previous day; plus, the hotel was packed full of youth baseball players, all in town for a big tournament, so the pool had been covered up, anyway.  So, we grabbed breakfast, beating the baseball rush, and the kids went swimming.

Meanwhile, Jeff and I had looked up the possibility of attending church before we left Des Moines and found one about ten minutes from our hotel called the Downtown Church.  The website made it sound a lot like the church we currently attend, so we decided to give it a shot.  We packed and loaded and headed downtown.

The Downtown Church ended up being exactly like our church, except for the denomination.  It, too, is a multi-site campus with a contemporary worship service.  The kids really liked the chocolate cake that was available, and Jeremy went without too much protest to the nursery.  The older two kids sat with us, and we later discovered that this particular site (there are two other plus the main campus) does most of its business at a Saturday night service.

In any case, it was neat to see how another denomination was doing what we are doing.  When it ended, we grabbed Jeremy and headed out of Des Moines.

Our first stop was about 30 minutes away…the bridges of Madison County, made famous by Robert James Waller’s book and Clint Eastwood’s movie.  It has been years since I’ve either read the book or seen the movie, and I wasn’t a huge fan of either one.  (Glorified stories of adultery don’t really float my boat.)  However, the bridges are actual landmarks and were pretty neat to see.  At least, the first few were.  After that, we were ready to move on!

Here is the Imes Bridge.

Here is the Hollowell Bridge.

And here is the Cutler-Donahoe Bridge.

As you might can tell, same bridge, different setting.  We did see bird nests and wasp nests, and one actually had water underneath it, so the bridges were scenic.  They just weren’t very varied.  We decided to take a pass on the remaining three.

In between the first and second bridges, we took a little stop at an Iowa winery called Two Saints.  Since our time in France, Jeff and I have really enjoyed stopping at wineries in the different states that we visit and sampling local wines.  Our kids, on the other hand, absolutely detest wineries and are very vocal about it. After all, as Charlotte put it, “Those are no fun for us.”  Wah, wah.

On this particular occasion, we simply reminded them of all the fun stuff that we were doing later on in the trip and that the least they could do was indulge us in a little wine tasting.  (I’m not above using guilt on certain occasions.)

Charlotte, in particular, still wasn’t happy about it but finally was shamed into watching her little destructor, I mean, brother while we tasted.

Aside from the fact we found a few bottles to take home from here, we also discovered during this stop a major flaw in our itinerary.  As we were chatting with the vineyard owner, she asked what our plans were.  We told her that we were headed into Omaha to spend a few hours, and she looked at us as if we were nuts.

Evidently, quite unbeknownst to us, the Missouri River had been flooding for the last couple weeks.  We knew about the floods up in Minot, North Dakota, but had no idea about those further south.  As a result, the interstate heading into Nebraska was completely shut down with massive detours north and south to get into Omaha.

Our plans for a quick jaunt into Nebraska went down in flames!

After the winery and bridges, we headed into the town of Winterset, home of the bridges, and grabbed lunch at one of the few restaurants that was open, a Mexican place on the square.  Then, with our newly formulated plan, we set out for South Dakota, mightily hoping that the interstate east of the river would stay open.

The roads were open; however, we saw a lot of this. 

Those are sandbags on either side of the interstate.  It was kind of creepy driving through them.  When we had the chance, we hopped over into Nebraska long enough to take a picture and then floored it for Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where we arrived at the Country Inn and Suites around 7:00.

As this was a Sunday evening, our one attempt for supper at a nearby diner failed, so Jeff went out for Subway while the kids tried out the pool at this hotel.  Then, it was off to bed.

Tomorrow…the Fourth of July, Dakotas-style!

An Evening in Des Moines

Well, as you may remember, we were a bit late setting off for our big road trip that Saturday morning.  Add to that a “quick” stop at Chick-Fil-A, and we were seriously running behind by the time we actually arrived at our Des Moines hotel.

(Side note:  the word “quick” in relation to a food stop with a baby is a ridiculous choice.  The fact that the Chick-Fil-A was in a mall didn’t help matters, as we never can seem to park close to where the restaurant is when we hit a mall store.  And the dumb GPS can’t tell the difference between a mall store and a stand-alone!)

Anyway, we pulled into the Hampton Inn a bit before 6:00.  The baseball game started at 7:05, and we had gotten a package deal with the hotel for the baseball game.  This consisted of four tickets, a t-shirt, a commemorative playbook, ten dollars in Cubbie Bucks to spend on food or merchandise, and an on-demand hotel shuttle to Principal Park.

So, we lug our stuff into the hotel.  I had reserved a two-queen room, which we got…but there was hardly any space once the two beds were in there!  So we wrestled Jeremy’s pack’n’play into a corner as best could and quickly got ready for a hot, sunny night at the ballpark.

As luck would have it, another group had just gotten on the shuttle and left for the game when we got downstairs at 6:40.  We were already a bit nervous about the car seat situation and the shuttle, and we finally just decided to suck it up and drive.  The lady at the front desk asked if we were sure we wanted to do that and offered us four bottles of water when we told her that we were.

We soon understood her trepidation.

After running into a Subway to buy the baby some supper, as we weren’t sure there was any ballpark food he could eat, we headed toward Principal Park.  And we almost immediately ran into hoards of people, full parking lots, and road-construction hell in downtown Des Moines.

However, Jeff finally paid some woman $6.00 to park behind a night club that was only a few blocks from the ballpark.  By now, it was 7:15, and we trucked off to the stadium.  Upon arrival, we discovered that our four tickets were bleacher seats at a mostly sold-out game.  We witnessed an altercation between an usher (or whatever they’re called at ballgames) and a disgruntled family who thought they had reserved seats, and, when we asked this man where our seats were, he wasn’t very nice when he answered.

By this time, we were all grumpy and about to give up on this baseball-game idea.  The bleachers, of course, were fully in the sun, and it was probably in the mid-80’s, even this late in the evening.  All of the kids were hungry, we were all hot, and the prospect of sitting in full sun for at least another hour was not very appealing.

But we were there.  So we decided to give it a whirl.

The bleachers were on the opposite side of the stadium from where we came in, so we walked all the way around and up to some free seats.  And it was a bit rough at first.  Mobile babies and bleachers make for a scary combination, and the sun was HOT.

However, the sun eventually went behind some clouds and then set, we got a pizza with our Cubbie Bucks, and we had a great, albeit far off, view of the action.  The Iowa Cubs were playing the New Orleans Zephyrs, and it was a really good, action-packed game.  Jeremy made friends with everyone sitting around us, and we ended up having a jolly good time.  The home team even ended up winning 9-3, mostly due to a Zephyrs’ pitcher who had a bad run.

Here are the kids in our bleacher seats.  Yes, Jeremy is facing the wrong direction and is working on his Subway sandwich.

One benefit of the bleacher seats was that we were close to a play fountain, and, when Jeremy got particularly hard to handle on the bleachers, we took him down to play in the fountain for a bit.  When he was thoroughly soaked, we brought him back up and popped him into his pajamas.

We left during the ninth inning, as Jeremy was done, and we wanted to beat the worst of the crowds.  As we were walking back to our car, the fireworks started, so we got to watch them as we were driving back to our hotel.

So, what was nearly a giant FAIL turned into a pretty good time!

Up next…the bridges of Madison County.  Have a good one!