Labor Day

This labor day we didn't go out of town since we had decided to invite Babushka (Grandma) to MN to visit us. Actually, we were originally planning to take her to Niagara Falls or New York, but everything fell apart because of the tickets from MN to Niagara Falls being really expensive. But we decided she would be really happy if we invited her to come here, too, since she'd never visited us in Minneapolis before.

The preparations started as soon as she accepted our invitation - almost every day after work we cleaned our apartment and did laundry.  We decided to clean one room at a time each night, and do a couple of loads of laundry. We didn't have the luxury of an extra weekend to clean, so it ended up being a really busy week

Friday after work, we picked up Babushka from the airport then we took her to our Uchi - it was a total surprise to her, since we didn't tell her where we were heading - we kept telling her that we were going to somewhere scenic to take pictures of the sunset.

She was so happy and liked our Uchi!  : )

 

Our Uchi still looked like this, at the time...

At the end of the night we took her out to eat at our favorite Indian restaurant, which she also liked -- mmm, Naan, rice, meat, sauce, what's not to like?!

The next day, I had a photography class in the morning, so the Russians (my hubby and his Babushka) dropped me off, and then went for a walk around the Minneapolis sculpture garden downtown.  After my class was over, we all went to check out the farmer's market, and then all around the twin cities to take photos:

Cathedral in downtown Minneapolis

The following day I came up with this idea to take the Russian and his Babushka to the botanical gardens in St. Paul -- there is also a zoo there, which I had forgotten about, but it all ended up being a great part of the visit!  The botanical gardens have tons of tropical plants, including ones from Asia, that I know really well but which the Russians have never seen before, and they have nice garden rooms like this one here:

 

and it turned out that Babushka and I have one thing in common -- we're both crazy about photography.  So she really enjoyed all the plants and flowers we could take pictures of, and so did I:

 

Some close-ups of a lily (heh)

 

 

 

What we *didn't* know was that the botanical gardens had an exhibit of GIGANTIC lily pads, the size of elephant ears.  They were unbelievably huge:

 

Have to photograph them from far away to get the full perspective...

 

The Russian's giant hands look tiny in comparison!

 

Each lily's root system leads to about ten giant leaves!  GIANT!

 

Of course, lilies are blooming as well!

Now, surprise #2 was that, at the time that we went, there was also a butterfly exhibit -- a huge tent full of trees and butterflies which would land everywhere and amaze everyone:

 

This one looks like it's an airplane about to take off?

On the last day that she was here (which was Labor Day) her flight was in the evening, so we got to drive around lake Calhoun & Harriet, and took photos in the secret rose garden there.  We showed her the Mall of America, and ate crappy Chinese food in the food court.  Then we were off to the airport.  It was a busy & entertaining weekend, lots of fun memories, and once Babushka was gone we both really felt it and missed her.  We hope to invite here again next year, but this time to our fully-ready Uchi.