Time well spent...

 A couple of weeks ago I suggested to my Sister that she and her hubby ought to get away for a bit and leave their teenagers up to me for a few days. Well Sam, my nephew is almost 19 and and pretty self sufficient, so I had limited contact with that boy who is a working maniac, and well...

when you're not working then the place to be is with friends  :)

I was happy to spend 3 nights and 3 days with my niece Jensen! 

She's soon to be 15 and it's been awhile since we've hung out. 

Her and I have some things in common, a big thing is Shopping, 

so we went right out of the gates on Saturday and shopped. 

She's always got some good places to go that we don't have in Rochester, 

and she doesn't mind letting me go to a few of my favorite places as well.

*Forgive the horrible quality of these photo's, I left my good camera at the house, 

and resorted to using my phone camera, not so good!

Sunday morning we had a doozie of a storm,  pea sized hail and lots of wind!

Since the weather wasn't the best we decided to take advantage of being inside, 

so we headed to a nearby pottery-painting place to paint us some pottery.

Jensen was painting a mug, 

Here's she's adding some intricate details.

I chose something easy, but practical

...a spoon-rest for the cabin.

It's a mason jar with something dripping out of it.

It will look very different when it's "fired", cant wait to see the finished product.

It's hard work painting pottery!

Later Sunday afternoon, Jensen had a volleyball tournament, 

it was fun watching her play even though they didn't have the best day.

There she is #15

We really packed in a fun day on Sunday!

7am this morning, I toted Jensen to the high school for her driver's-ed training,

She was gone for 3 hours so I just chilled back at the house!

Our afternoon was spent at the Mall of America.

We had a great time at the "Crayola Experience". 

So many fun activities that involved Crayola crayons.

 A little advertising on the L.L. Bean store front.

This was like spin-art that we did as kids, only we didn't use paint. 

You loaded a color crayon in a machine that melted it one drip at a time so as it dripped,

 the spinning wheel created this. Hard to tell here but it's very dimensional. 

 I've never seen so many shades of colors

Jensen ended up hand-picking a tin, full of colors to purchase.

Too much fun!!!

The Melt-down station involved drawing pictures by dipping the end 

of a toothpick into melted crayons and creating a picture.

Tomorrow morning I will head back to Rochester. 

My sister and her husband Darin will meander back home from their mini-trip 

to the North Shore of Lake Superior

....and life will resume as it is

That's a good thing  :)