Memorial Weekend Trip

We flew back today from our trip to Minnesota/Wisconsin over Memorial weekend. We had a full weekend with many wonderful memories to savor. Some of these are in the form of the 300+ photos I took (oopsie, I didn't realize it was so many!). There are 3 slideshows of photos, so scroll down to view them all, or use these links to go to our online photo album and view all the new pictures: Anniversary Party, Minard Farm, Minneapolis.

On Friday, we flew into the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, where we met Ian and Nate, who flew in the same day from Seattle. We all drove down together to Viroqua, WI, where the anniversary party was held for Jered's grandparents. They were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary (wow!) and all of their living children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren attended the party on Saturday afternoon. We had a lot of time in the car to catch up and get to know each other better. Since our family is so spread out, this is not a common occurence for us (2006 was our last trip with the whole Hanschen family). I also got to meet Jered's mom's side of the family for the first time. Before this, I had only met his grandparents. One thing I can tell you for sure is that he has a very large family!



The anniversary party went very well, and all the cousins enjoyed visiting - catching up on the last 14 yrs and showing off their children. On Sunday, we all went out to the grandparents' farm and spent the day there. I have never spent that much time on a farm, and I found it really relaxing. Will absolutely loved it, and was off on his own any chance he got - exploring the grounds, chasing the other kids, and hours staring at and feeding the "birds and animals" (aka - chickens). As you will see in the pictures, Will spent a lot of quality time with Grandma. She even got him to fall asleep at one point in his stroller, which I think is a miracle, hah! He hasn't done that since he was about 3 months old! Will also took to his Uncle Nate right away and even started calling him "other dada," which was very cute. He spent most of our time in the car playing tickle games and laughing with Uncle Nate. Will was fascinated with Uncle Ian's beard too, and spent a while just rubbing his hands on Ian's chin and cheeks. At one point he started rubbing my face at the same time and asked me, "This?" wondering where Mommy's hair was (hilarious). He also called Ian, "Eeeeee!" which was the letter of the day on Sesame Street the day before we flew up there. He learned it just in time :-)



On Monday, we drove back up to Minneapolis and stopped at the Mall of America. We went to the aquarium there and saw some great fish, including 2 sawfish - male and female. This is one of only 2 aquariums in the US that has a male/female pair of these strange looking fish. My favorite part was that the tanks went overhead, so it was a bit like walking through a tunnel in the ocean. We also went to the Legoland part of the mall, which Will loved (as did the other "boys"!). Afterwards, we drove up to Jered's cousin Sara's house and had dinner. Sara (and hubby Steve), as well as Jered's other cousins Amy and Sheila, Amy's hubby Mike, and Jered's Uncle Bruce and Aunt Marnee were there. Amy and Sara both have boys close in age to Will - Ethan and Jonah. It was the first time we'd had them all together and it was a blast seeing them interact. They are each spaced 3 months apart (15, 18 and 21 months), which was also really cool. We had a great time eating yummy food, talking, and playing with the boys. We also got some cute (and not so cute, haha) family photos, which is tricky with 3 toddlers. One cute thing Will did there was when we were changing his diaper in Ethan's room, he was looking at Ethan's baby pictures and said, "There's a lil' baby" several times. It was precious (he adores babies). We spent the night with Bruce and Marnee, then drove to the airport this morning after a wonderful breakfast.



We are so happy that we were able to see both sides of Jered's family in the same trip. It's not often we can see our families, which made this a very special and memorable trip for us.