{"id":830,"date":"2010-10-18T14:25:59","date_gmt":"2010-10-18T19:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=830"},"modified":"2010-10-18T14:25:59","modified_gmt":"2010-10-18T19:25:59","slug":"apples-and-legos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2010\/10\/apples-and-legos\/","title":{"rendered":"Apples and Legos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday, 16 October 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today we visited an Apple Orchard.<\/p>\n

We made a return visit to Apple Jack Orchards<\/a> after a five-year absence. Yes, yes, I realize it is an hour away from our house, but we knew we’d have a good time there.<\/p>\n

See, we first visited there in 2004, looking for an orchard near our home in Big Lake. We returned there in 2005, with a four-month old son, and took his picture amidst the pumpkins and fall leaves.<\/p>\n

The next few years, we searched out other orchards, just for a change of pace. Living in St. Paul, we tried some that were closer, including last year, when we went to Aamodt’s Apple Farm<\/a>, possibly the lamest orchard I’d ever visited.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, Jennifer said: “I want to go back to that orchard where we went when Owen was a little baby. Which one was that?” Well, it wasn’t hard to figure out – we just had to open up the photo album and look at the picture of baby Owen sitting by the Orchard’s sign.<\/p>\n

Here’s the problem, though: I hate traffic, I hate long drives, and I hate crowds. So…I didn’t want to go mid-week (too much traffic), and I was worried about the weekend (crowds!). But Saturday won out.<\/p>\n

Well, we didn’t really have a good time. I mean, yes, there was plenty to do, but there were too many people, it was windy, you couldn’t pick the apples (due to an early frost last spring), and we showed up with exactly $2 in cash. Worst, Isla was cranky the whole time. Jennifer finally got her to calm down in the moby, and then we boarded a big wagon for a tractor ride. As soon as the tractor started going, Isla started screaming. This was totally unexpected because she’s almost never like this, particularly early in the day. Jennifer could do nothing to calm her down. I offered to take Isla, but Jennifer pointed out that Isla “doesn’t like me as much.” Later she explained that she didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but she was exasperated. Then Owen said something like “Maybe she just wants to flop down to your boob.” Which – bravo to Owen – was precisely what she wanted, but sitting knee-to-knee with a bunch of strangers on a rocky wagon isn’t really the best time to accommodate the baby. His comment made everyone laugh nervously, so that drew even more attention to our train wreck of a day.<\/p>\n

Isla cried for most of the way home. There was traffic on 394 (is there ever not?). This evening, we discovered Isla has a hives-like rash on her cheeks and chin. Jennifer has a corresponding rash about an inch down from her neck – right where Isla was snuggled for most of the day.<\/p>\n

So, yeah…just gonna go ahead and put this day behind me.<\/p>\n

Sunday, 17 October 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Owen’s been very concerned with the Lego Imagination Center<\/a> at the Mall of America. They closed up shop over a month ago. When we first saw this, we were both somewhat distraught. Alas, a quick check online revealed that a smaller, temporary store had opened at the other end of the Mall, and that a bigger, stronger, store would be opening later in the year. I saw advertised on the store’s walls that they will be giving out Lego prizes to people who come on opening day. Needless to say, Owen is very concerned that we make it there on opening day.<\/p>\n

Well, this morning he asked me to check online again to see if opening day has been announced yet. It hasn’t – ETA is late November. However, the good folks at Lego said they’d be building two murals for the new store today and everyone was invited to come help.<\/p>\n

So, after having lunch with my sister, brother-in-law, and dad (yep, he’s back in town again…long story), we sped on over to the Mall of Hysteria and located the Lego booth. Owen was handed a 6×6 flat piece with a number printed on the back and a color-coding on the front. We then went over to a table featuring ~20 buckets of variously colored 1×1 bricks. Owen had to assemble the correct bricks onto his flat piece.<\/p>\n

There were two murals, incidentally. One looked to be a Minnesotan landscape, featuring hills and a lake. That mural was over 99% completed by the time we arrived. The other, smaller mural was of a moose. Or, at least, we were told that it would be a moose; it was only about 20% done when were were there.<\/p>\n

When Owen finished, he took his piece (#107)over to the moose mural, handed it to a giant of a man (the guy was at least 6 foot 7). That man took the piece, fitted it into the corresponding slot – 5 rows down and 11 columns across. After pushing it on with his hands, he wielded a rubber mallet and secured it into place.<\/p>\n

So, if you happen to pass by the Lego Imagination Center at the Mall of America sometime in December or afterwards, find the moose mural, count down 5 rows of 6, and count over 11 rows of 6. Owen made that piece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday, 16 October 2010 Today we visited an Apple Orchard. We made a return visit to Apple Jack Orchards after a five-year absence. Yes, yes, I realize it is an hour away from our house, but we knew we’d have a good time there. See, we first visited there in 2004, looking for an orchard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":957,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions\/957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}