TAG | Pictures
Kyler LOVES trains. (He loves cars and airplanes too, but that’s a different story.) Lately the only thing he wants to talk about is trains. We think this came about because the library and local bookstore both have Thomas the Train train set tables that he loves to play with.
The Disney Channel show “Choo Choo Soul” might have had something to do with it as well. He doesn’t really watch the show (or any TV for that matter) he just likes the theme song.
We decided he would get a kick out of Choo Choo Bob’s, a store in St. Paul specializing in all things train.
He. Loved. It.
We also couldn’t help but notice that most of the kids there were all boys about the same age (although with more hair) as Kyler. Incase you’re wondering – none of those kids had an easy time actually leaving the store. Its an easy store to go to, a hard one to get OUT of.
Last weekend, we took Kyler up to Maple Grove days – an event we attended for a whole 45 minutes, if that. But we got to see what Kyler was most interested in (diggers, trucks, etc.). The highlight of the trip was picking up a construction hat, which as you can see, Kyler took quite seriously the rest of the weekend.
Kyler loves Mickey Mouse (“mee mou” as he says). That statement shouldn’t surprise anyone considering his parents. During our last trip to Disneyland we made sure to introduce him to Mickey in person, which he loved. We learned that Kyler likes the characters that are shorter (Mickey, Dale, Chip) and loves it when they have big noses and let him kiss (or in one case, lick) their nose.
Hmmm… they clean those costumes regularly, right?
Anyway… we met Mickey at his house and, for the first time ever, used the Disney PhotoPass service where they take a picture of you and issue you a card where you can look at the photos on-line and then order them. One of the really cool things about Disney is that they will still take a picture with your camera if you want even though they staff a “professional” photographer for the purpose of trying to sell the photo.
I should have asked them for a photo on my camera. I didn’t because I figured their camera was nicer, it was a “pro” photographer and even the lighting in the room seemed to be rigged specifically. I figured that all this person has to do is take 700 photos each day with a pre-set camera in a room specifically designed to get great photos of your kids meeting Mickey.
I’ll let you judge the quality of those photos based on the thumbnails below. I’d try PhotoPass again, but now I’m not going to hesitate to ask them to use my camera as a “backup plan.” — Regardless, it was SOOOO cool to introduce Kyler to Mickey. He loved it and it was one of the highlights of the trip for me. Even if the pictures didn’t come out great, the memory did!
I have also posted some more pictures from the trip on Facebook and will post some here as well whenever I find time.
I had the opportunity to go to a truly historic place in my last trip to Chicago. Wrigley is a cool place – so cool that no one is allowed to start the wave (really – I saw people yelling at a group of college kids trying to do so).
Here are a few pictures from my trip. These are taken from the bleechers, which is a GREAT place to watch the game from. Next time I want to do a rooftop party instead. That looked like a blast!
Kyler and his friend Ellie (who he knows from school) get together to hang out (usually with parents around). Recently, the two went to the arboretum where Kyler taught her things like how to make your parents think you’re about to dine on rocks.
One of my favorite things to do every year is go to the Auto Show. You can imagine my excitement when I got to take Kyler (a kid who’s first 5 words included “car”) along with me for the first time. Needless to say, he loved it. Infact as you can see in the pictures below, he continued the auto show car review the next day when we were at the toy store.
These last pictures don’t really fall into any category but I thought they were cute. Kyler refuses to eat the standard kids meals at Panera in lieu for mom’s more fancy black bean soup.
We had a busy weekend with lots of small errands to run. Kyler needed new shoes and we had a bunch of other stores to hit beyond the ~8 trips it took to just track down the right shoes.
Along the way, Kyler discovered he LOVED the “car” at the grocery store (which he insisted stay in motion at all times), wanted to drink big-boy style at lunch and figured out his new thermos-cup in a while 3 seconds.
Kyler loves the shopping cart Grandma and “Papa” Hansen got him for Christmas but lately he preferrs to play with it while sitting IN it.
While in his cart he also took the time to look through the family photo we took this Christmas, pointing out everyone in the photo including “Don” (John), Rob and Treeche (or some variation of that – meaning Katrina).
Kyler loves any kind of fruit. The pics below were from Pei Wei where I gave him an orange slice. As you can see he got some of the rind but wasn’t willing to give it up. Later he stole some strawberries from a dessert Johna was making and then got to lick off the spatula – which he absolutely LOVED!
Whenever I blog I like to have a theme or main topic. I don’t have one today. I just feel like I haven’t posted pictures for a long time so let me fix that.
(Oh, and yes, Gymboree does appear to be stealing catch phrases from my podcast. I don’t mind. The shirt is pretty darn cute.)
