Bloomington

The Light Rail - I do love public transportation. I need a transit from the base to town.

This is our imaginary hotel where the bellhops greet and hold the door open for you. It's across the street from the Target Center which holds the big concerts and sporting events.

Hard Rock!

Taylor Swift will be here in October.

Kings of Leon will be here in September! (I don't know who they are, but Alicia thinks they rock.)

We passed the MN Twins home, but forgot to snap a picture.

Fargo

We made it to the infamous Fargo which is on (as in it takes 1 minute to get to MN) the border between MN and ND. It was a nice little city and we had a great time exploring a new zoo, chuck e cheese and of course the mall. It's all about "the malls" in ND. I guess because they are a gathering place when it's neg 45 degrees for 6 months.

The zoo was adorable and we found some new creatures that we fell in love with. One surprising thing was the bird cage that had its gates open! We were shocked and when we walked through we found out that the birds had injured their wings so they weren't going anywhere.
We went to the lamest ChuckECheese - ever! They are not a big chain up here which is a shame.
It was a nice stop over before our trip to the Mall of America!!!!

Shisha

It's hard to be Alicia. She told me this morning about how she saw a lawn mower with Wolf Lawn Tree Snow on the side of the mower. I said, "Yeah, they are the base contractor for the houses that are empty. They mow their lawns." She said, "Doesn't that worry you?". I said, "Nope, glad they cut the grass". She said, "Yeah, but they are Wolf Lawn Tree Snow". I realized that something was off about the conversation. We haven't slept much in the last week with late night concerts, early morning outings and middle of the night fire alarm low battery beepings. (There are around 11 fire alarms linked together in our house.) So, I start thinking it over and say, "Well, they have to provide all of the services in this area or they'd not work 6 months out of the year with the snow." Her reply, "Yeah, but that doesn't freak you out that they do all of those things???!!!" I was trying to figure out if she thought we should use them to remove snow, did we regret buying a snow thrower, lawn mower, is she afraid that they're going to cut our grass, remove a tree??? SIGH- I'm really wishing Sr. was home at this point to translate this teenager. (He 'speaks Alicia' as we say.) I said, "Why in the world would that freak me OUT?" She dramatically puts her hands in the air to punctuate each word - WOLF.... LAWN.... TREE.... SNOW.... WOLF... "Doesn't that freak you out?" Oh, now I get it, now I giggle, now I giggle until there are tears forming in the corners of my eyes. Oh, Alicia - that's their name - Wolf, like Manning. She is not convinced because there are wolves around here and she gives me the eye. She said if their last name was Wolf then it would be Wolf's. She has a point - and still doesn't believe me. All I can do is laugh at this point and hope that she finds a good man that can put up with her high anxiety level.

Swift

Alex's eyes were closed in all 4 pictures that I took. That kid is on a goofy streak! The three "Fun Mannings" went to the state fair last night to see Gloriana and Taylor Swift. Tonight they're watching Heidi Newfield (sings I want a love like Johnny and June) and Rodney Atkins (I'll be up all night just sitting here cleaning my gun.) Taylor was awesome according my sources and I'll have to snag Alicia's camera for some pictures.

Chess

These two mocked me when I told them they had to move their plastic cool whip containers (a.k.a. popcorn bowls for the po') off the table for the picture. Apparently, that would have been a more authentic picture according to la madre. I told them to zip their lips and take the pictures!!!!

Bug Out!

Air Show Extravaganza!

We'll follow this guy anywhere! Especially when we're standing next to the F16s. How in the world did he manage to arrange for an air show during Mom and Dad's visit?

All we kept repeating was... "Don't touch the jets!!!!"

"Hey, Mommy, I'm not touching the jet..."



The Jelly Belly pilot was crazy. He did all kinds of things - lost part of his wing, flew without any power, straight up, straight down, lost a back tire, landed on a moving truck. He almost gave us a heart attack. (I think Alicia might have actually had a heart attack.)

If you can click and make this picture bigger - the planes wayyyyy behind the two kids are all of the B-52 bombers that are stationed at this base. They are known as "Freedom, the old fashioned way."

We went to an air show preview called Twilight on Friday night and had a steak dinner in the hangar. We were able to walk around the planes and enjoy the practice run of the air show. We returned on Saturday to watch the full airshow, but I forgot my camera. Mom has all of the pictures from that day.

This is the crazy Jelly Belly plane in action.

These are the Army Gold Knights - a parachute team. Alex Sr. could not understand why they jumped out of a perfectly good airplane.

We had a great time and I was so impressed with the f16 viper pilot. He scared us by sneaking up behind us and by the time we saw the plane, it was too late. The roar rattled our chests, pierced our ears, and made us scream. I might have grabbed Alicia's leg for dear life during that startling occurrence.