Children's Museum

Ruthanna and I went to the Children's museum in Brookings with Ilene (and Spencer and Sidney.) 

 

 Playing in the room full of large foam blocks.

 Upstairs in the art room that day the project was using clay. We each bought a chunk of clay and starting making our projects.

 A favorite place for Ruthanna-- shopping away in the grocery store. She grabbed her cart and started filling it up with food.  Spencer was waiting at the checkout for us to ring it all up!

 Picking vegetables.  A little tricky to get the wheelbarrow to work.

Christmas 2013

 

Ruthanna loved Christmas this year.  She was a pro at opening the gifts and when we'd put one under the tree, she'd start opening it right away. 

 

 Ruthanna and her cousins....it was a juggle getting everyone to look at the camera at the same time....

 Ruthanna heard somebody say the word "popcorn" and she was out to the kitchen standing by the popcorn maker begging and dancing away. My dad came and they made popcorn.

 A shopping cart with pretend food was a hit.  Now she sits her doll in the high chair and pretends to feed her.

 Singing Christmas carols

By the end of the day we had a tired little girl

Christmas Cookies

 

When we got home from Florida, we had to get right in and make some Christmas cookies, since Christmas was in only 4 days.  Ruthanna loved it.... She wanted to be right there on the action.

 

 Her favorite part was putting the sprinkles on.  We started with a new container of sprinkles and ended with an empty one.  :)

The rest of the vacation

The day before we left, we headed to the beach again.  It was 85 degrees that day.  We stopped at a nature walk place along the way.

 

 We climbed a tower that they had there and took a few pictures.

 Made it to the beach. Ruthanna played in the sand.

 Family picture quick by the beach

 We walked down Boardwalk for a ways and stopped at a café and had a snack.

That night my cousin Rachel came with her husband and new baby, so we got to meet little Karas.

 Coming home we had a long layover in the cities so we went to the Mall of America for a few hours. Ruthanna went on a couple of rides. 

Walking across the parking lot to meet the airplane to head back to Watertown.

Florida continued...

 Swimming away... the water felt nice

 Done swimming and ready to head back to our house

 Andrew and Ruthanna looking in the fish pond.

Ruthanna and I in one of the gardens at the place we stayed.

Florida pt 1

We went to Florida for a week right before Christmas, so Andrew could take another class down at the ship school.   The weather was nice, Ruthanna was great, and lots of memories were made.

 Sitting by the airport window in Chicago before we boarded.  Ruthanna's a trooper on the airplanes...loves to watch everything.

 The next night, Monday the 16th, we thought we'd go to the beach. I was going to ride bike and Andrew was going to push Ruthanna in the trike we checked out from the office.  A few blocks down the road, Ruthanna fell asleep. Andrew carried her.

 She slept for awhile on the beach. We thought we'd wait there awhile in hopes that she'd wake up so she could sit in the trike.

The palm trees were all lit up along boardwalk where we walked along the beach, so we snapped a few pictures. 

Heading back to STAR Center, where we stayed.

Fun outside

 Sledding last weekend with the new sled....