Walnut Grove

Over Spring Break we took a day trip to visit Walnut Grove, the famous town in Minnesota where Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her stories. I grew up watching the Little House on the Prairie and a while back I bought the DVDs for my kids to watch. So we wanted to visit this place while we live so close. Along the way, we stopped and took a little hike to see these Petroglyphs. There were thousands of pictures carved in the rock. My camera battery died, so I just have a few pictures of the things Kiley snapped along the way...

While in Walnut Grove, the kids bought this slate and a slate pencil as a souvenir. They had fun pretending they went to school with Laura and Mary.

We also passed this town called Sleepy Eye, which I remembered from the show. I was surprised that it was a real town.

We stopped at this park for a picnic lunch.

Basement is Done and Yes we are Moving...

I know it is crazy, but we are finally done with our basement and as usual, with the excitement of finishing this project and the anticipation that comes with enjoying the theater room, now we have discovered that Jason's job transfer will happen sooner than we thought and we will be leaving our hard work for someone else to enjoy (again). So here are some pictures of the finished product. It turned out wonderful and I just want to hang out there all day.

The storage room turned out great too, complete with my can sorters, which I have not stocked yet...

These are the can sorters that Jason made for our food storage a few years ago. I love them. You drop in the cans from the top, and pull them out the bottom and they rotate so you are always using the oldest can. He made several sizes for all kinds of cans that we store. I just love this and think he is the best.

Jason is super excited about this job. It is a promotion and to the brand that he has been wanting to work on. The only trick is that he starts his new job in Racine on June 1st and our baby is not due until June 30. So he will be most likely commuting back and forth on the weekend so the kids and I can stay here and finish school and have the baby here before the move. It will be tricky to get the house sold and find a house there in Wisconsin during this last trimester of my pregnancy, but I think everything will work out for us. We are hoping to make the move around mid-July. My parents and my sister Tracy are going to come and help during the really tricky times. (When the baby comes and during the move).

The kids are pretty excited to be reunited with their friends from Racine. We have not decided where to move exactly, but we will be going out to look at schools and houses soon and narrow it down a little. We all have mixed feeling about leaving this house and our friends in Minnesota. We have really enjoyed out short time here. But we knew we would be going back eventually and we are looking forward to being back in Wisconsin.

I have some great pictures of our little wanderings during Spring Break, but I will post those next time.