Brad and Merryl come for a visit

On Thursday night my brother Brad and his fiance Merryl came to visit us. We had a great visit with them. But it didn't start out too good. We hadn't eaten dinner so Cliff stopped off at Grand Shanghi on the way home from the airport to pick up dinner. Where Brad had promptly threw up on the curb. He says it was the turkey sandwich he ate earlier that day. But he threw up again later that evening during our dinner.

On friday we decided to take Harrison to the Como Zoo. It wasn't very crowded which was nice. The first thing we did was to see the monkeys. Harrison loved it. He kept saying "Hi Monkey" "Hi Gorilla". They were all out and not sleeping. Every other time we go there the animals are sleeping. We then walked over to see the giraffes and the zebra. Harrison loves these animals also. We caught the end of the Sparky show. Harrison loved watching Sparky do all of his tricks. He kept pointing at him and saying "Seal...arr arr arr". Then it started to rain. We ran to see the lions and tigers. Another of Harrison's favorites. As we were watching them, Cliff decided to tell me that my hair was looking rather frizzy. Not "Monica" frizzy. (Monica from the show Friends - where they got to the bahamas and her hair goes crazy). He thought I should know. It was very nice of him to look our for me. We didn't want to continue to walk around in the rain so we headed over to the carousel, making a pit stop at the gift shop. If you know Brad at all, you know that he can't resist a good gift shop. We bought Harrison some animals that he didn't have (a seal, turtle, sheep and gorilla). He just loves the turtle. Brad bought Harrison a stuffed animal zebra and a zen sand thing.

At the carousel we all went for a ride. Harrison did well, for about 3 minutes. Then he didn't want to be on the ride any more. I held him for the rest. I later figured out why, he was very tired. As soon as we got back to the car he fell asleep.

We then went to the Mall of America and had lunch. We ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp. Ken and Shannon had been there and they liked it so I thought it would be kid friendly and fun. I think everyone enjoyed what they got. But I wasn't too thrilled. I thought it was very expensive for what you got. We then shopped and walked around, we were on a mission to find Brad and Merryl new sneakers. Merryl found sneakers at DSW. I really liked them but Brad didn't. He found sneakers at Champs. Cliff was on his own mission, to find all of the establishments that have free food. His favorite is Rybicki's. They have free cheese. The also found Williams Sonoma- free bread with Oil. His mission continues whereever he can find it.

That night Brad and Cliff went to the Vikings game while Merryl and I watched movies and ate sushi. We watched Hitch. Loved it! It was very funny, just what we wanted.