Our 4th of July Staycation

We still have a few things left on our house to-do list for our builder to take care of.  One of those was buffing our wood floor to remove the scratches left by the sheetrock subcontractors.  Well, a couple days before the 4th of July, our wood floor was finally buffed!  While we were excited to get it taken care of, it meant staying out of the house for 24 hours for everything to dry.  So we packed up our suitcase and drove to our favorite local hotel for a little getaway.  The boys love the water park at the hotel.  And it has a zero entry pool which was perfect for Rose.  She loved being able to crawl around in the water!

The next day we ventured out to Taylors Falls to one of our favorite state parks, Interstate State Park. The park is surrounded with beautiful vegetation, rock formations and the St. Croix River.  Owen's favorite part of the park is the potholes.  The potholes are deep holes that were cut into the rock by glaciers during the ice age.

Owen looking into a pothole

Cole walking down the path to the river

Owen, our little rock climber

A selfie to get Mom into a photo!

Enjoying the beautiful park

The following day was the 4th of July.  We were thankfully back in our house with newly buffed floors (yay!)  But it was such a beautiful summer day that we decided to spend it outside at Minnehaha Falls.  Owen got his explorer gear on just for the occasion.

We walked all along the creek.  While Owen explored, the rest of us enjoyed the sights.

"EEK! The grass is tickling my legs!"

"I must stand up"

"I guess I'll just crawl to Mom"

"Thanks Pa!  Standing is sure tricky."

"Yay! No more tickly grass!"

Cole tends to get a little goofy when Mom tries to take photos!

"I'm NOT going to smile for the camera!"

"How's this smile, Mom?!?"

We walked all the way down the creek to a shallow area full of kids swimming.  We had never been to this part of the park before.  When Owen saw all the kids in the water, there was no stopping him.

There were tiny fish swimming in the creek that he tried catching, but alas, they were too quick for him.

Cole had been begging since we got to the park to go for a bike ride on the big surrey.  So after one more pass by the falls, we were off to the bikes.

Cole was so excited to finally get on the bike!  While the boys rode bike, Rose had a bottle.  She tends to drink a bottle very slowly, casually sipping away.  By the time she drank her bottle and we got back to the bike rental shop, the boys were done with their ride.  What perfect timing!

Everyone was so tuckered out from all the fun at the park that all 3 kids zonked out on the ride home.