Trains

Like I said, I try to go to the children's museum at least twice a week - on Thursdays after school because they're open late, and on the weekends. I love going late in the day because there's usually no one there, meaning I don't have to share the trains. And Mommy loves it because she has the chance to build me an awesome track without some little kid wanting to test his engineering skills as well, because she always feels obligated to let them play. She really does make some awesome tracks! Lots of bridges and overpasses and curves and branch lines, sometimes using up most of the pieces of track. Me, I'm content to just drive the trains into the station or through a tunnel.

Visit from Bamfa

Bamfa came to visit us at the end of August. He hadn't been able to visit us for awhile because he got hit by a car in February and had really nasty vertigo that left him unable to drive or work. But now he's able to cope with it better (and he's back to work after 6 months off!), so he came up to see us in our new city.

We went to the airplane museum. Bamfa and I flew a helicopter, and Mommy and I flew a fighter jet.

Then we went to the children's museum. I go there at least twice a week because it's so much fun. They have a train in the back that you can ride on. Bamfa rode it with me.

Great-Bamfa knows that I like trains, so she got me this really cool puzzle track set. You just put the track together and turn the cars on, and away they go!

Bamfa also read me lots of books while he was here. We had so much fun with him!
(Note: Mommy broke our old camera when she spilled a bottle of water on it, so we got a new one that takes much better quality videos. Enjoy!)

Firefighter obsession

I love anything having to do with firefighters - videos about them, looking at their trucks, riding in toy ones, dressing like them...

My current firefighter ensemble includes helmet, jacket, boots, mask (usually an extra bed riser thingie that I hold over my face), gloves (either an old pair of gardening gloves or a pair of Mommy's gloves), and hose. Once I'm suited up, I jump in my firetruck and off I go!

(A couple notes about the video: it was taken in the basement so it's a little dark; the flash reflects off my jacket so hopefully we'll get some pictures of me wearing it in bright sunshine; I've since decided to wear my hat the right way, but only because I wanted to, not because anyone else told me that I was wearing it wrong.)

I also love to wear all this stuff out and about town. The warmer the day, the more I want to wear it!

Firetruck parade!

If you haven't noticed, I LOVE firetrucks. And I also love parades, especially when they throw out candy. Therefore I was so excited when the nearby town of Casselton decided to break the world record for the most firetrucks in a single parade. I donned my gear and headed out.
There ended up being 181 firetrucks, ranging from shiny local engines to older collectibles. Lined up waiting to start, they stretched for over a mile (which is funny because the parade route was about 10 blocks). Unfortunately it started raining so we left early, but I still was able to see a lot!

Jamestown, ND

We've been exploring the area up here a lot. There aren't a lot of roads up here, so we're pretty limited to 4 basic directions, and then it's just how far we feel like driving. East is Minnesota: Walmart, Dilworth, a big skiing/outdoor area at Detroit Lakes, and eventually Minneapolis. North is Grand Forks with its Super Target, then eventually Canada. South is the zoo in Wahpeton and then into South Dakota. And west is Valley City, a beautiful town with absolutely nothing to do there; Jamestown; and then Bismarck, which we have yet to go to.

In late July we went to Jamestown. Its claim to fame (being generous here) centers around buffalo: the National Buffalo Museum, a couple white buffalo, and the World's Largest Buffalo.

All are located right next to a restored prairie town. Now, when you've seen one restored prairie town, you've seen them all. Seriously. A couple log cabins, the jail, a post office, and a church are standard, with a couple other buildings thrown in for good measure (this one had a dentist's office; there was definitely something going on between the dentist and his patient).
What made this one different? It had a Wild West Gunfight!
See that guy? He's the sheriff. But how can he be the good guy if he's wearing black? If only that was the worst thing about the show.
These are the bad guys. I could've ad-libbed a show better than them, and they've been doing this once a week for the last 10 years. Wow. It wasn't pretty.

Fortunately there was the World's Largest Buffalo as consolation. North Dakota has a lot of these things (the World's Largest Catfish is nearby in Wahpeton, ND, but we haven't been to see it yet). I guess it's an excuse to stop and stretch your legs while driving.
The white buffalo is actually pretty interesting though. Apparently there's a Lakota legend about it. Once when they were going through troubled times, a woman appeared to help them. After that, she told them she'd come back whenever there was trouble, and she turned into a white buffalo and walked away. Right now there are three known white buffalo living, something that's never happened before, which is a definite sign that we're living in the end times. Maybe Tim LaHaye can work that in to his next set of stupid apocalyptic books?
Personally, I liked the playground the best.

Although a bit hokey in its tourism attempts, central ND is really beautiful. There are rolling hills, scattered trees, and a wide, open sky. It's all farmland except for a few small towns, so you can go miles without seeing more than a handful of houses.
After the buffalo overload, we tried to find sunflower fields. ND is America's largest grower of sunflowers, and according to pictures we've seen, there are giant fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. Mommy loves sunflowers, so she was excited when someone at the gift shop told her where to look for them. Unfortunately, we didn't find any (although we later realized that they don't bloom until late August). But we did discover that there are so few roads in ND that the national atlas we were using had dirt roads listed on it!

Butterfly!

What to do here...

When we told people we were moving to North Dakota, everyone thought we were crazy. Because seriously, what is there to do up here? Even the people who live here think we're crazy for moving here.

Well, I'll tell you what you can do here: go to the zoo and watch a turkey chase a peacock. This went on for at least five minutes, with them flying at each other every couple minutes or so.

(Really, there is more to do up here. I'll get to that in my next posts.)

Trip to see the bamfas

After we moved up here we ended up having a few days before Daddy started his new job, so we went to the Quad Cities to see Grandma and Grandpa (or as I refer to them, Bamfa and Bamfa). It's about a 9 hour drive, made longer by me potty-training and wanting to stop constantly to use the bathroom, a tactic I use whenever I'm bored.

We stopped through Cedar Rapids to go to dinner with Mommy's friend Liz and some friends of hers. I used the potty at least 6 times during the hour and a half we were at the restaurant!

Of course we went to breakfast with Great-Grandma (or Great-Bamfa, as I call her). And Bamfa wore his picture shirt. Mommy thought this was very funny, especially because she didn't point it out to him beforehand.
We went to a museum too, where I dressed in costumes and rode a firetruck. And then threw a massive tantrum because I had to leave the museum and said firetruck.

We had dinner at Bamfa's house one night, yummy pizza from Benny's. I noticed that Bamfa has a guitar, so he showed me how to play it. Kind of.
We went to the zoo, of course. I love zoos. In one of my favorite Barney videos, BJ goes to a zoo and takes lots of pictures of all the animals. Last year Aunt Debbie got me a camera for my birthday, so whenever I go to the zoo I have to take lots of pictures. And like BJ's, mine don't really turn out either. I think I was aiming for a turtle in these shots.
While we were there, we also went to Sunset Resorts campground, where Bamfa and Bamfa Don have a membership. Mommy used to go there a lot as a kid, and she said not much has changed since she was there. Bamfa and Bamfa Don have a RV that they keep out there. It was so cool! I would've loved to have just sat in it all day, pretending to drive and climbing in and out of the bunk above the cab (well, having someone lift me in and out of it).

We went paddleboating - it was so much fun! I got to wear a life jacket, and since I was in the middle I got to be the one steering! I had two directions: all the way right and all the way left. We went in a tight circle, then almost ran into a tree hanging over the water (the only thing that saved us was ducking). Mommy and Bamfa tried to steer sometimes, which of course led to lots of tears on my part. When I wasn't crying, I sang my sailing song: "SAIL-ing, SAIL-ing," over and over and over.
We also went swimming. We waited until after lunch to try to give the water a chance to warm up, but it refused to cooperate. Did that stop us? No! Not me, at least. And I dragged Daddy into the water with me. Mommy just sat on the side and took pictures. My kind-of-but-not-really step-cousins went swimming too, with my kind-of-but-not-really step-uncle. We men can handle it!