Month: July 2017

T: We slept in until 8 am.

P: I went back to sleep. Yeah!

P: We went to get breakfast at the hotel. I got disgusting toast and cereal.

T: I got kind of disgusting toast, and disgusting cheerios. 

T: Then we went on an air conditioned bus tour. Me, and Parker and Zach played video games on a pioneer tour, weird. 

T: We saw Ma, Pa, Mary, Carrie, and Grace’s graves. Laura was buried somewhere else with Almanzo and Rose.

P: We saw Silver Lake.

T: We saw the place Almanzo built Laura her first house that burned down.

P: At lunch, I had pizza sticks, and rotisserie chicken, and one piece of cucumber. 

T: It was our friend, Joy’s birthday. And also Barb gave us little game things to do. Then we headed off to a lake.

P: A police car took us to the side of the road and said that we were going too fast. Going 42 in a 35 spot. And she hit [drove] on the shoulder of the road. 

T: The police wasn’t an actual police. Seriously, why did he have to pull us over? He was a college campus police. Why do they have police for college campus?

P: We went to a lake [Lake Shetek, in a State Park]. Zach met us there. We got stuffed fishies that were water toys. We played and played. The lake was very fun.

T: The lake was actually pretty warm. And we played a lot of games with our fish balls. 

P: We went to Walmart for scissors, wax, wine and toothpaste. We needed wax because my brace broke [and a wire was sticking into her gum].

P: And then we ate dinner. I had potstickers. Taylor had pad si ew. 

T: Parker thought her potstickers were the best potstickers in the world.

P: And they were. And soon we’re going to a pageant. Good night for the night. 💤 

[Mom: After our Thai food dinner, we drove back to Walnut Grove to attend the pageant. Barb has been taking tours to the show for 16 years, so she was able to reserve front row seats for us. The girls sat with Zach and he brought little gifts for them.

The show was better than the one the night before, but heavier on religion and featured stories that weren’t included in the book “On the Banks of Plum Creek.”

But there were some cool parts including live horses pulling buggies, underground pipes to simulate a prairie fire, and a very over-the-top portrayal of Nellie Olesen that kept Taylor grinning from ear to ear. 

Before the second act started, we spotted fireflies in the trees off to the side of the stage. While we weren’t close enough to catch them, I’m glad we all got a brief  “firefly experience.” 

The girls LOVED it. Taylor said she wanted to be in that kind of pageant when she’s older. 

The show started at 9 pm, and ended just after 11. We had to stay to let the girls meet and take photos with the actors. 

We took to sleeping girls into the hotel well after midnight.]

 

P: Kittens! We held kittens. My favorite was sugar. And they started hiding, I had to get them out. I didn’t get hurt at all. They were very adorable. I loved them.

[Mom: We saw kittens today, and that was all Parker could talk about. Fortunately, Taylor was able to remember non-kitten related activities and share them…]

T: In the morning, we got to sleep in. And we decided to join them [the tour group] at the Ingalls Homestead museum. We had breakfast at the hotel. Only the waffle was good. We headed in the car to go see a museum.

P: That has kittens!

T: The car ride was long and tiresome. 

P: We were going to the museum that had kittens.

T: In the museum, we saw a lookout tower. And we got to climb it. 
T: Then we went to a pretend dugout, which we got to see. It’s about as big as one of our bathrooms. 

T: We headed down the slope and we saw a little barn with a fenced area. We saw lots of chickens, and we went inside and saw lots of kittens. My favorite was named slush.

P: My favorite was named sugar. 

T: We went to Pa’s shanty, and then we got to ride a pony and ride in a buggy that Laura would have drove in. The pony we rode was named Athena and was the most gentle horse there.

T: We went over to the barn where we got to make corn cob dolls. I named mine Rebecca, Parker named her’s Diane.

P: I made her from scratch.

T: Me too.

T: Then we took a wagon ride and we got to steer mules. They are a cross between a horse and a donkey. We learned an interesting thing about mules… they can’t have babies.

T: The school was nice and a teacher taught us, not any cruel things. She talked about where we are from, and talked about differences between this school and ours, and I was very talkative. I made some friends. When they were having a problem on the way back, I solved. One wanted to ride the horse, the other feed the kittens. I suggested they play with the kittens, then go on the ponies, then play with the kittens. 

T: After that, we had lunch. Then went back to the cats.

P: The cats were so adorable. I got them out of this little nook. I named one sugar, because it was really cute and sweet as sugar. All liked to play. They liked to play with straw and rope.

T: A cat fell asleep in my lap, and I held it for 5 minutes. It felt like an hour to me.

T: I went up early to look in the gift shop. We didn’t buy anything there but it was fun to look. Then we came into the car and went to another museum, which was the surveyor’s house. We got to see some of the actual things Laura and Mary owned.

P: I was the teacher [in the Brewster School replica nearby]

T: Then we went to the house that Pa and Ma lived in once Laura moved out and married Almanzo. It was very neat and very big. Almost as big as our house. 

[Mom: We wrote this blog post in the short time between ordering our dinner and our food arriving on the table. A fter the final tour of Pa and Ma’s house, a lot took place. And they were too tired to finish the post.

The girls spent quite a while in the pool, and particularly enjoyed playing with Zach when he arrived to swim too.

We stopped by the local “country club” to have dinner, but then picked the Oxbow Family Restaurant for dinner instead. 

Then we spent the evening watching the pageant where they re-enatcted scenes from “Little Town on the Praire.” After the first act, Taylor asked to audition for the show in future years.

Zach helped entertain them at intermission. 

Both girls LOVED the show and were bouncing with excitement at the end about getting to meet the actors.]

P: We woke up again. Really tired. 

T: I pretended I was asleep, and everyone tried to poke me and wake me up. 

T: We had breakfast in the hotel of waffles and bacon.

T: We went to a church that Laura attended while she lived here with Almanzo. [in Spring Valley, MN]

P: There we got to ring a big bell. And there was a pump organ that we could play.

T: We had to pump with our feet to keep it moving.  

T: We learned about why fires were not stopped. The fire truck had to fill up al these buckets and carry it down the street. And had to get tons of buckets of water to throw on the fire.

T: In the church gift shop, I got two American Girl doll dresses. They were very pretty. And I got a shawl. They’re from Yia Yia as a birthday present for me. [Thank you Yia Yia!]

P: We got in the car and rode, and rode, and rode in the car. It was so much traffic!! (I’m being sarcastic because there were no cars on the road.)

T: We had a rest stop. Right before that, me and Parker said we were bored. Mom gave us fidget spinners and had a rest stop. We gave one to Zach too.

P: After the rest stop, we got back in the car and we drove for so long. 

T: It felt like a day in the car. We were going to Nellie Olesen’s “Little Cafe on the Prairie.” I ordered chicken strips and tater tots. 

P: We played Egyptian War with Zach. Taylor won and Zach won too. We had to stop the game early because our food was here. I ate a cheeseburger and sweet potato fries and one pickle. 

T: Nellie Olesen was not her real name. Her real name was Nellie Owens. Laura changed her name because she didn’t want such a bad reputation on that family.

P: Then we went to Plum Creek. We walked in the water and saw where the dugout would have been.

T: There wasn’t really a dugout, but there was a nice prairie so you could see what Laura saw. The Plum Creek was warm. We waded through it until we could wade no more. It didn’t go past our knees. There were no leeches in Plum Creek, thank God. After, we went to another Laura Ingalls Museum.

P: There was an outhouse, a jail, a store, a little house, a dugout, a kitchen, a school room, and many other things. My favorite part was the school room, the outhouse, the jail cell, the little house, the dug out and the many other things.

T: My favorite, was Zach was super funny during that time. When we were in the house, he was a school teacher. He asked questions like “what is sponge bob divided by 5?” I would say 100. He’d say A+. It was very fun and we played for hours in every exhibit. 

P: We bought a dress [for an American Girl Dolls] and a pail and some marbles in the gift shop. 

T: We came back to the hotel and had dinner at a very good place. I do recommend it. It’s called Bello Cucina. I ate alfredo pasta and chicken.

P: We went to the gas station, got bobby pins, came back to the hotel, got into our swim suits, and went to the hot tub. We started writing our blog.

Goodnight 💤 

P: Woke up at 6:30 am, uggggggg. At breakfast I had a bagel. 

T: We had breakfast at a rude people place [Panera]

P: We got in the car and I drew and drew and drew. I drew birds and animals and live peanuts for everyone on our tour. Our first stop at Lake Pepin, where I picked up little mayflies and let them go. We saw an eagle, swooping and gliding with its partner. 

P: We went to the little house in the big woods — actual site. But not the actual house, but a replica. It was an actual replica.  

T: It had nothing in it but a dust pan and a broom and picnic table. It was very very very tiny, about the size of a hotel room or a living room, whichever is smaller. There was no ladder to get up to the attic. 

T: We went to a Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum. It had a lot of beautiful dresses and good quilts.

P: It had toys, toys, toys, toys.

T: We got to see what Ma’s china Shepherdess would have looked like.

P: We saw dolls of Ma, Pa, Laura, Mary, Carrie, Grace, Almanzo, and Nellie Olesen. They were realistic. 

T: They were also very pretty. There were china dolls, with china arms and legs almost the size of American Girl Dolls.

P: There was a cat on the deck of the pretend steamship. But it was a plastic one.

T: There were things that Laura had there. I was impressed because she lived so long ago and they still have her things. Then we collected pebbles from the shore of Peppin Lake. I found three very pretty pebbles that I loved.

P: And then we went to the Pickle Factory for lunch.

T: We were driving along and we were following a Jeep which we thought was Barb’s car, but then we got to a market and the car was not Barb’s car. And we’d been following it for so long. And now we lost track of Barb! We all met up at a gas station. It was kind of while before everyone caught up. But we were the first to get there. Ha!

T: We went to another museum about Laura [in Burr Oak, Iowa]. We now know that Laura didn’t write about a whole time in her child books. They just lost some wheat crops. Some people who were making a new hotel said they could come and work. A little while after they started working there, Pa found out that they were paying him wrong, so they moved to a brown house with a saloon separating their house and the hotel. The saloon caught fire, and Pa said he wouldn’t move a drip of water if the whole town had burned down.

T: They moved down the street, where baby Grace was born. But that house was deconstructed before they knew the use of it. Only one brick remains from the house where Grace was born.

T: None of the people living today will be related to Laura, for their descendants died off after Rose (Laura’s daughter) had her son who died before he was married. And none of Laura’s siblings had any kids of their own.

P: We went to the cemetery. We saw lots of graves. Laura used to go on quiet walks in that cemetery to calm herself down.

T: Zach (who is on our tour), we like to play this game with him… the ground is lava. To play, you count down and someone has to jump up on something so they are not touching the ground. He also made us some coloring pages and bought us two things of colored pencils to help us color them. He’s so nice.

T: We drove to our hotel, unpacked the car and went swimming. After a little while we took showers, went to dinner, and went to bed. Goodnight.💤 

[Mom: This hotel is quite nice and had a strong enough wifi to finish yesterday’s blog while the kids were swimming in the pool. I let them swim for a while before getting them back to the room to take showers. Parker claimed to be cold and hungry so we got her all taken care of before her shower.

Babe and I decided that we didn’t want to eat the complimentary burgers provided by the Quality Inn tonight. So instead, I went to Walmart to pick up some supplies and then we brought in BBQ brisket and grilled veggies from a local restaurant here in Decorah, Iowa. 

We ate our delicious food and drank our screw-top wine (we are aiming sleeping tonight, thank you very much!) sitting in the dining area of the hotel while two very tired girls zoned out with the cooking show playing on TV. 

We got the kids to sleep by 8:30! Go us! Another adventure-filled day!]

T: In the morning, I woke up. I fell asleep around 10 pm and woke up at 7:30 pm. Me and my sister played some games and then went down to snack before breakfast.

P: I had Cheerios and toast with butter. Quite good.

T: I had peanut butter toast and milk. Then we went back up to the room. My mom and Babe (aka grandmother) needed to figure out some things for today. So we got to play some more. 

P: My part of the game was about a competition of which boy would get the princess and marry. And my favorite little guy won. My least favorite guy was slapped in the butt.

T: They said we’re going to Taylor’s Falls. (P.S. There is no waterfall in Taylor’s Falls.)

P: (Taylor is my sister’s name)

T: So we got in the car and started driving. We stopped for groceries at a healthy food store. We had gummy bears in our pockets, so we tried not to show those.

P: I wanted applesauce, so my mom finally gave in. (I really loved it!)

T: We got some stuff for breakfast. We had blueberries and gummy bears. (Yummy!)

P: (They were called gummy bear cubs). And we also ate crackers but we didn’t like them so we didn’t eat them.

T: We started driving to Taylor’s Falls. There we came to a drive in restaurant that had a giant root beer cup that was spinning.

P: It was spinning in circles and it didn’t fall over.

T: We stopped there and ate a good lunch. And we got free miniature golf tickets for the one next door.

P: We used them later on…

T: We were going on a paddle boat called the Taylor’s Falls Princess. 

P: (I think my sister is a princess)

T: {growl}

T: We loaded on the boat. The river looked like root beer when it hit rocks.

P: I kind of wanted to drink it…. We learned that the river looks like root beer because of the roots of the Tamarack tree.

T: A guide told us stories about pictures in the rocks. My favorite was of Babe the Ox and Paul Bunyan. 

P: I liked George Washington [a portrait in the rocks]

P: The paddles went round and round. I was watching them for so long that my eyes got tired and kind of blurry. The paddles were red.

T: This boat could carry about 200 people. The old boat, called the Taylor’s Falls Queen, could only carry about 104 people. It could also go very close to a cliff.

P: It could go 17 inches deep into the water with its paddle.

T: That means the boat can go in shallow areas where it is shallow. Some parts of the river can be 100 feet deep. Why it’s called Taylor’s Falls is because there was a person who came up the river and his last name was Taylor. They saw a kind of stairway that led up the river. It dropped about 100 feet in stairs. But a dam was built over it, only showing the first stair. And that dam gives power to Chicago.

P: It was very relaxing.

T: And hot.

P: We hiked up to glacial potholes. And we got to go in one, but not touch the water in it. I liked to throw rocks in them.

T: When the water was up above these rocks that we were standing on, how they make the potholes is a rock will go in a circle with the water spinning against the sides, making it round, going down deeper and deeper. And this is what makes the potholes. Some were much bigger than cars, some were much smaller. Some were as big as me.

P: We walked around and around, it felt like in circles. We climbed the rocks.

T: We went to miniature golfing from there.

P: It was the funnest thing in the world.

T: Parker chose a blue golf ball and a pink club, Mom chose a green ball and a green club, Babe had a red ball and black club. Mine was yellowish orange, and my club was blue. I shot my golf ball into the pothole [hole] in one stroke.

P: I did too!!! Yahoo!

T: It was very hot and we got bitten a lot. And mom’s golf ball flew into a river once and Parker had to grab it. And I had to hold her feet. They were smelly.

P: I had to use my club for a cane because I had a bug bite in the divot of my knee.

T: Then we headed in the car to go to our hotel. We finished our Little House in the Big Woods audiobook, and started Little House on the Prairie.

P: I love the story!

T: We met up with our Little House tour guide, Barb. She is very nice and gave us pins with our names on it.

P: I loved mine and said it was my baby.

T: We went to dinner with our group. Joy is the mother of the other family. Mike is the father. Zach is their 15 year old son. 

P: I played tic-tac-toe with him.

T: …and lost. Dinner was good. And Barb gave us little bags with ponchos, pens, notebooks, and a book. 

P: After dinner, we went to the shore [of Lake Hudson] and walked along the pier. And then we walked back to our car.

T: We drove into our hotel and got our bathing suits out so we went swimming. We came back and washed our hair, brushed our teeth and went to bed. Goodnight.💤 

T: In the morning, I woke up at 8. I had stayed up until 11 last night, which our time was 9. I tried to go play with my sister, she was a little fussy about that.

P: Don’t write that I was a little fussy about it.

T: We headed off to breakfast after packing our suitcases up. We went to breakfast . I had eggs, bacon, and potatoes. I didn’t like any of it. 

P: I ate pancakes for breakfast and daddy’s coffee foam. I kept eating the foam until I was full of it. The pancakes were about as big as my head.

T: My dad was going to leave after that, so we went to the car to drop him off. My sister found out a weird way to wiggle peoples fingers and I did that to her the whole way because she insisted on it, or else she’d do it to me.

P: Yes, I would.

T: My dad was not so sorry to leave us after all.

T: We were going to drive to a museum about the Ojibwa people. We were listening to the audio book about Laura Ingalls living in the big woods of Wisconsin.

P: IT TOOK AN HOUR AND A HALF FOR US TO GET THERE.

T: Aaaaaaaannnnnnnddddd, it was closed! Phooey. 🙁 Open on all the other days but this day. We looked around the property. Then we went to the store nearby and we saw some other people wanting to go to the museum too. We told them it was closed. The three boys were very excited it was closed. Their mom was neutral. 

P: The mom kind of looked disappointed. 

T: They told us about some good places to go.

P: They had climbed a nearby fire tower. 

T: We went to go to get some lunch because everyone was quite hungry. Me and my sister ordered chicken strips and Mac and Cheese. There were tons of bugs [Lake Flies] around, live ones and dead ones. They looked like they would bite us but they were friendly and didn’t bite. 

P: I caught a lot of them. My favorite one didn’t have antennae on it’s tail. So I put it on the rocks and then I looked back and it was dead, so I made a little burying ground for it.

T: My mom was taking out her credit card to pay, and….. it dropped down under the deck where it was not accessible. 

P: My mom was very disappointed and laughed about it. 

T: We started driving to another museum, and we checked on it’s website and it was open. We saw a horse-drawn wagon tied up to a light post near a grocery store. We stopped and looked at it. There was stuff in the buggy, so we thought it belonged to someone who was in the store. THe horse got spooked easily. 

P: It was very cute and I wanted to pet the horse. 

T: Then we went to another museum. Our guide told us about the fur traders and how everyone wanted a beaver skin top hat. The mink was the softest. 

P: I liked the fox and mink furs. They were so fuzzy! We went to see the wigwam…

T: Which means in Ojibwa, birch bark house.

P: There was a pretty doll and a gun (that didn’t work because it forgot one piece soooooooooo it couldn’t shoot). It was in the shape of the top half of a triangle.

T: Next our guide told us about the forts the fur traders would build. He showed us all the peoples’ room. The general of them all had the biggest room and could bring his family along. His wife was Ojibwa to help speak her native tongue. Then we got to see some people talk about the Ojibwa foods. Mostly they ate wild rice. Then we went into the museum, 15 minutes before it closed. We spent all that 15 minutes in the gift shop. We finally settled on two different kinds of maple sugar candy.

P: We ate them in the car right after we left. I put mine in my water because it was a little too sweet for me. The water got really sweet. I loved it.

T: We started to drive to our hotel. We didn’t know where it was, so it took us kind of a long time to find it. Finally we found it and went to the swimming pool where there were lots of people.

P: I went in the hot tub!!! My mom found a penny and I went diving for it.

T: We showered and headed back to the room. We went to the casino where there were lots of people gambling, and smoking and drinking. But on the others side, there was food. You each got a credit card. You’d go over to a booth, pick out what you wanted, handed them your credit card, they swiped it, and you’re good to go. Even me and my sister got credit cards.

P: The pizza was kind of disgusting, so I got potstickers, and they made me wait for 5 minutes for the food to be ready. 

T: I got pizza with pepperoni and mozzarella cheese. And it got mashed potatoes. A very big serving. Then I ate almost all of it! It was so delicious. I didn’t care for the gambling at all. Then a lady told us that a man had been stealing from a purse of a lady who was gambling. Luckily he was caught. And I have a really loose, wiggly tooth. We headed back to our hotel and we got ready and we went to sleep. Good night.

P: Tonight I am going to cuddle with my mother.

A joint blog post- by Taylor and Parker

Taylor: In the morning, we went to Tin Shed, which I highly recommend, only if you like dogs. We still had to do some packing and we kind of rushed doing that. And then we were ready to go. But, it wasn’t time. So, the parents sent us to walk the dog. Finally it was time to leave. We are headed to Minnesota to see a Little House on the Prairie tour. 

Parker: I left my dog kihei at home. I miss her so much.

T: We took an uber. The driver was nice. Her name was Glenda. We got to the airport and headed off to check our bags. We stopped at a store called The Market, to get gum and snacks for the plane. We went to our terminal, it was very far away from some others. We got to sit in row 6. It was actually very comfortable. I could swing my legs out without hitting anybody. It was a long flight. My iPod died once.

P: On the flight, I watched my iPod, but then I got to use my dad’s computer because my iPod was dead. 

T: We finally got there and got a rental car, which took super long. Finally we had the car. It’s called a Toyota 4 Runner. It is very high and it is high to sit in. It kind of took a long time to get to our hotel. Our hotel is an old bank. 

P: We checked out our rooms. I’m staying with my grandma, Babe. I got both the keys. And hid one next to the light of the lamp. But then I was turning the lamp on and the little knob that I had to turn fell off. So my grandma put it back on. And then she said she had to have a key too, so I gave her the other key.  

T: We dropped our bags off and we went to meet our friends at a park. 

P: [We saw] our friend Stephanie, her mother [Jane], and her son, Sam. Sam is 6. 

T: We played there for a while and had dinner. It felt like lunch. 

P: There was a big thunderstorm coming, so we had to leave. 

T: We saw some dark clouds moving in, so we started driving. In about 5 minutes, it started to pour. 5 minuets later, it stopped. Weird weather. 

P: And then we rode back to our hotel and went in the hotel and up to our rooms. I sat down on the potty and started writing my blog. Kaploosh.

T: We headed back to the hotel to have a good night.💤