Day in Wisconsin

When I see the beauty of the world around us, I am constantly reminded of how amazing our God truly is!

We had some extra time before our concert, so we did some sightseeing along the way. I snapped with my cell phone - the best camera is the one you have with you!

...We enjoyed some candy bars in van en route to a scenic lookout...

It was a good, healthy treat, right?

The Tower 

(Hmmm... this looks sort of like something we've been studying about. More on that in the future.)

Shopping - MOST people in our family enjoyed this event. :)

Daddy took us out for a late lunch at the Copper Kettle.

Karen's egg

We all had to try some of the mussels - our family loves to try new foods or new food combinations and then duplicate our favorites at home. Did I mention that we love to cook???

The evening concert was held in the city park. Last year it rained. I'm thankful for the great weather we had this time!

They had a beautiful memorial in memory of our fallen heroes with a statue of a U.S. soldier in uniform from each big war our country was involved in.

Minnesonta

We are all worn out from our weekend travels, but our concert in Hinkley, MN went extremely well! Praise the LORD! People traveled to the concert from up to 4 1/2 hours away, coming from Michigan, Wisconsin, and up by the Canadian border! The church was packed with a responsive crowd and we sold a ton of CDs - we SOLD OUT on 2 of our CDs and were only left with a handful of the other two!!! It was fun.

The couple we stayed overnight with was so sweet. 

They had been dairy farmers. Here's a bit of humor from their house to brighten your day :)

 We stopped at the Mall of America for a few hours on our way home. 

The first neat store we spotted was a hat shop.

Oooo the fun of playing around! All sorts of choices!

Top hats, anyone?

Weird Bluegrass in South Dakota

On the way to our first concert, we stopped at one of our favorite restaurants - 

a French American fusion named Cafe Brule. 

 See our drinks? We had a blast choosing the flavor combinations for our cream sodas. The list of choices was quite long...I went with Kiwi Dark Chocolate, Karen chose Peach Toasted Marshmallow, Seth thought Blueberry Butterscotch sounded good, and Daddy liked Macadamia Nut,  while Mommy definitely liked the Raspberry White Chocolate better.

We unloaded, set up, and played an evening concert, loaded back up...

and then unloaded and set up the next morning for a church concert...

and loaded back up.... then we unloaded and set up for an evening concert...
and of course loaded up again once it was done. Some people ask us how we get our exercise...
I wonder sometimes.

 weird Bluegrass - nowhere near Kentucky. For us Iowans, it looks sorta fake.
But, maybe that's how it's done in Kentucky.
Anyway, we were playing bluegrass on the bluegrass - not something you do every day!

Seth and Karen are warming up before the concert on their duet, Limerock.

We had a great time and were glad to see old friends and meet new ones.

It turns out that not only does this guy have a cool, one-of-a-kind John Deere tractor car, but he also had a brother who wrote some of the gear software that Daddy uses at John Deere! It's a small world.

With such a unique subject, I had to have some fun with the photos!

On the way home the following morning, 

we stopped once again at Cafe Brule for the dessert we had skipped a couple days ago!