Dentist, hair stylist and "tax person", these are the three people I(we) use who live more than 20 minutes away from us, and for good reason. A dentist, well what do I really have to say about this one. Ryan and I tried a dentist in Shakopee and it only took one visit for me to decide that driving to Mankato once (I know it is supposed to be 2 times per year, but I'm a little lax on that still) a year is well worth it to know that someone isn't going to charge me insane amounts of money to "fix" things in my mouth, or worse yet, in my kid's mouths that really aren't broken. The upside to driving to Mankato for the dentist appointments, we get to hang out with said dentist and his family after the appointment is done - not a bad deal! The dentist by the way is Brent Olson (I guess I should say, Dr. Brent Olson, but whatever) and he is a good one! Hair stylist . . . well, I really didn't know what a "hair salon" or a "hair stylist" was until my late (or later) 20's. Prior to that, a quick trim at Great Clips or any other place for that matter was good enough for me. Well, it only took one amazing haircut and color to make me change my mind, and wouldn't you know it, that salon and stylist, is also in Mankato (I'm starting to see a trend here). Since my first cut at Aveda, I have only had two haircuts outside of that place, and it wasn't good. One looked like a mullet and the other had so many missed strands of insanely long hair all over my head that it got to the point where I actually had Trav take a big chunk and just cut straight across with one of our normal scissors at home. Sadly, his trim was better than what I had started with - lesson learned. And then there's the tax lady. Prior to Trav working at his current company, we had always done our taxes on our own, and it was NOT fun. We would stress out and read, and stress out some more, and to this day, I'm not completely sure all our of returns are correct - oops. Well anyway, once Trav decided to start his own company, we were sort of forced into having someone do our taxes because as much as we would like to save a buck, neither of us are qualified in the area of "more than just a basic tax return." So after Trav chatted with a co-worker, this guy recommended a lady he used and was happy with, the only problem, the lady worked about an hour away from Shakopee (she better be damn good if I'm driving a full hour). As it turns out, she is great! From the first year to this year, she always gets things done quickly, and most importantly, we manage to get ourselves a nice little tax return - well, worth driving an hour for.
So after reading that, you might be wondering where I'm going with this. Well, it is "tax time" and as usual, I like to get right on things. So last week, I gathered up all of our tax documents and faxed them to the "tax lady" and one week later, she called to say the returns were ready - time to plan a trip "up north" to sign the returns. Because the trip is boring and no fun for the kids, I try to plan something fun to do on the way home. So this year, we packed up the kiddies, signed the returns, then played it by ear. First up, we had to get something to eat, but then we realized how close we were to Troy's house so we decided to make a surprise visit first, and grab lunch after. As luck would have it, Troy and EJ were home alone while Nicole was off "learning" so she can make more money. Troy showed Trav and I all the remodeling that has been going on in his house while the kids played with all of EJ's toys. After a while we all packed up and headed out for some lunch. Once lunch was done, we finally got to the fun stuff . . . a trip to the zoo. The weather was great and we were only a couple miles from the zoo so it was the perfect place to spend the afternoon. We saw monkeys (EJ slept through this - apparently all that playing finally caught up to him), fish, seals, penguins, lions, tigers, and bears, and too many other animals to name them all! Here are some pictures from the day. Most are of the backsides of the kids as they were far too busy watching the animals to actually stop for a second and turn around.
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| EJ snoozing away |
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| Ellie crouching down low to get a better look at the zebras |
