Holiday time nearing

I have been extremely busy with my family. We have had some good times together this summer and fall. We brought my mom down from up north for Thanksgiving, she will be here through the coming weekend. She will be coming back down for Christmas, but I suspect that it will be for a shorter period.

We have been doing some scrapbooking projects with her. There are a few stores that my family loves--a small one in Zumbrota, another in Rochester and Archivers in Apple Valley. Mom has seemed to enjoy doing a couple of them, but doesn't seem to want to do it for a long time. We also went to the Vatican exhibit at the Minnesota History Center. It was a beautiful exhibit.
Earlier this week we brought her to the Science Museum of Minnesota. We did the CSI exhibit on forensic science and the IMAX movie--The Great Lakes. What a beautiful movie--though there are few IMAX movies that we have not enjoyed--really, I am not sure that there have been any that we have seen and not liked.

The most exciting thing we have done is that we brought our state park passports and hiking club books to the DNR office near the capitol and ordered our plaques. I am very excited because we have to be very, very close to getting them. I know the boys are really excited to get them and show Grandma. Woo Hoo....who would have ever thought that the day would come? I remember starting after the very first hike and I wondered then if it was possible.

I have really wanted to do these things though and the hard work has finally paid off. We have earned 10 days of free camping and I already know that we will be using them this summer to do many of the things we just lacked the time to do. The kids wanted to go to the Bear Sanctuary and the Wolf Center. I also want to finally make it to Voyageurs National Park and see the historic sites.