Walter comes home from England!

Walter arrived home in the mail yesterday, finally, after his long overseas journey! He came back with so many stories, and so many wonderful souvineers! Thanks so much EssHaych!

Here's Walter and Bobby, my new eggbert (he's so cute!), with the aodrable place guard guy, an essex map puzzle pin (which is going on my school bag!) and a huge plethora of postcards! And some southend candy! Nom =] Oh, and check out that little scarf she made Walter! Love it!
She even got me craft supplies for painting and sewing! I love the brightly coloured thread-- I've never seen any that cool! Amazing find! I can't wait to use those!
Walter posing with his cute scrapbook, AND a cd with more pictures!! And she made me my own scarf with my favourite colours! Perfect for Minnesota winters! I love homemade scarves, so this excited me beyond belief.
Brouchures, maps, tickets, you name it... she saved all this amazing stuff from their summer for me! It's hard to show it all in here, it really doesn't do it justice. But there's their plane tickets to Cyprus and back to England, a London train map, and so much other stuff!

Groyp shot with yet more wonderful presnets! Check out those panda socks! I already wore them haha I had to take them off to take the picture. There's some adorable frog and turtle candles too.. I didn't even tell her I collect candles! Unbelievable, I feel so spoiled! Thanks so much to EssHaych! Walter had a great summer, and I had so much fun with Eddie and she was a fantastic partner! I hope to do the next little visitor swap too!

Road Trip to Indianola, Iowa

Two weeks ago, we road tripped to Indianola, which is just outside Des Moines, with Ellie and Yoojin from MCAD art camp, to visit my roommate from there, Maddy. It was a four hour drive, but Eddie had fun looking out the window at the soy bean and corn fields. Also, there were huge stretches of windmills for wind power, which were really cool and pretty surreal looking. We stopped at a rest stop that was a barn, which made Eddie really excited. He'd never seen a stereotypical big red barn in real life before, I guess! When we finally got there, he was really happy to see Maddy again! We went to the amusement park called Adventureland... it was very small and cute. Eddie had a lot of fun going on some crazy rides like this one that went really fast in a circle... he got really dizzy though! After that he went on some calmer rides, then tried funnel cake. He got powdered sugar all over his face, it was really funny! It soon washed off though because it started pouring! We were drenched, and took cover on an inside ride called the Underground Railroad. It was a little train, going through a pretend mine with really ancient anamatronic miners. It was partly funny, but I think Eddie was a little creeped out by them! Luckily, it stopped raining after that, and we were able to go on some more rides before leaving. Once again he passed on the big roller-coaster-I don't blame him, I wouldn't have let him if he had wanted to! After we left Adventureland we went to the big mall in Des Moines, Jordan Creek Mall. When we went back to Indianola, we saw a mailman on a tractor, driving down a residential street. Eddie found that hilarious!

Blink-182 Concert

This was a few weeks ago, but I'm just now blogging because I didn't have my camera for a while!

During the day of the Blink-182, Fall Out Boy, and Panic! at the Disco concert, Eddie was so excited he kept bouncing around, not wanting to do anything but wait. I, however, insisted we watch some movies to make the time pass more quickly. We got there about an hour and a half early, but it wasn't as early as we thought because I thought the doors opened at 6:30, but it was really 5:30. The lines were going way out the doors... it was a madhouse! On our way in we passed Blink-182's tour bus and got some pictures with it. Even though we weren't very early, Eddie, Patrick, and I trooped up near the front of the general admission section, claiming some very close spots. We had to wait through a very mediocre warm-up band we'd never heard of, but finally the bands we were there to see came on! I couldn't get many pictures of Eddie watching the concerts because it was dark with flashing lights, making a good picture impossible. But trust me, he was having a great time! He sang along to Fall Out Boy, and danced very hard to Panic! Although those bands are some of the biggest in the US, and very good, what everyone was reallllly there to see was of course, Blink-182. It was so great when they finally came onto the stage... it was unreal! Eddie was particularly entertained by animations of a sassy rabbit that were shown on the screens behind the stage. The music was amazing live and we didn't want it to ever end. When they left the stage, Eddie looked so disappointed that it was over, but was delighted when the curtains rose again for an encore. And this was no ordinary encore. Travis, the drummer, was doing a crazy-intense solo...on a moving platform! He was harnessed in, drumming as he moved around high above the stage! It was a memorable end to an epic night!

Baking Up a Storm!

Eddie had pretty much been sitting around the house with me, calling me chipmunk ever since I got my wisdom teeth out a few days ago (if you saw my cheeks you'd know why!) Of course, being the spoiled little eggbert he is, I rewarded this cabin fever by agreeing to take him out today.

Regardless of this being questionable in teaching him not to call me names, going to my friend Jackson's house to bake today effectively improved Eddie's mood! He decided what we would bake- Banana bread, zucchini bread, and snickerdoodle cookies (he thoughtfully picked soft things so I could have eat them too!) We baked for hours, making quite the mess, but we had great fun with it. Eddie had never had zucchini bread before, and he was delighted by how sweet and unusual the flavour was. Everything in general came out perfect, due to me and Eddie and Jackson's excellent baking teamwork. Eddie didn't totally do a lot of work.... he may have found an egg carton and goofed around in there, pretending to be one of the real eggs, to see if I would try and put him in the batter... what a silly egg!

Mill City Museum

The other day I took Eddie to the Mill City Museum to learn about the history of Minneapolis's milling industry, which helped it grow into the big city it is today. The museum is really cool because it is on the grounds of the mill that was once there (it was destroyed in a fire a few decades ago). Eddie got a little sad exploring the parts that had the old ruins, thinking about all the people that died, but he also enjoyed being able to imagine what the old mill was like. Inside the museum we read a lot about the founder and history, as well as learning what went on in the factory. We went on the Flour Tower, which took us up and down through the 13 floors and talked to us about how the factory worked as well as telling us some interesting stories about the workers themselves. At the end of the Flour Tower, we got to go on the roof to look out at a beautiful view of Minneapolis. We then played around in the exhibit, making a giant puzzle of a map of Minnesota, among other fun interactive things... Eddie really enjoyed those! Finally, we watched a movie called The History of Minneapolis in 19 minutes. It was really funny and Eddie really liked learning how Minneapolis came to be thanks to the milling industry.

Eddie goes to warped tour 2009

Yesterday, Eddie decided he was sick of Hilary and wanted to spend his day with Patrick and Rachel. They showed him a great time at the biggest concert of the year- warped tour. The show being 10 hours long, with multiple stages and somewhere around 50 bands, Eddie was very overwhelmed. The line to get in was gargantuan, so the gang opted for the "5 dollar donation to charity line", which got them in right away. The first couple hours were mostly hardcore bands, so Eddie stayed safely tucked away in Patrick's bag to avoid being killed in mosh pits. Eventually, it was safe to take Eddie out to listen to a couple bands. Rapper P.O.S., who is a very big deal in Minnesota, even let Eddie onstage with him for a picture or two. While walking around the various merch tents, we ran into a familiar face- Pat Brown from Sing It Loud. Although we weren't in the giant line for pictures and autographs, Pat remembered Eddie from the show at the garage and let us get a quick picture of the two of them. There were many a person walking around advertising free hugs, but after being oddly gripped by them, he decided that they didn't know how to hug someone who's two inches tall. So we moved along. Around 5 o' clock, there was a large lull in musical quality, so the gang decided to sit down for a bit. We played with the different colour effects on Hilary's camera and got a few pretty cool pictures. We saw a few more bands, and then it was time to go home. What a day!

Valley Fair!

A few days ago, Eddie went to Valley Fair, our amusement park, for a very exciting evening. It was the perfect day for it, because it was a little cloudy and therefore not at all crowded like it usually is, but it still was nice and warm.

There are tons of huge roller coasters there, but not only was Eddie too short to ride them, he was far too scared. It's easy to fall off a zooming and looping coaster when you're a tiny little eggbert- I definitely don't blame him!

But he loved seeing all the rollercoasters and trying the fair food... let's just say he's got his fill of fried food for a while. But he had to have some cheesecurds... they're a classic fair food here. And it's easy to get carried away... trust me! =]

He finally got up the courage to want to go on one ride to remember his day at Valley Fair by, so I agreed to take him on the ferris wheel...holding him very tightly because I was so worried he'd lean over the edge and fall! We were up so high, but I didn't let him look down... and looking out over the park was a wonderful view! Afterwards he felt so brave and proud that he went on the ferris wheel... and I just felt relieved that he didn't fall off!