Field Trip: Rochester, Minnesota

  We were done with field trips for the year, or were we?  I have learned to never count anything out.  We made a took a trip just before Christmas to visit a family member at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN and gave it a little zip of learning.
  While visiting at Mayo, we stretched the kids' legs a bit and wandered the halls.  We were on the St. Mary's hospital campus and there was a small (the size of a walk in closet) museum in one of the buildings.  It had some cool artifacts from the early days of the hospital.

One of the items was a spoon, the size of a serving spoon, that was used to remove gall stones - yuck!

See the operating table with the slats and trough underneath?  I won't explain that one, you can figure it out ;)

 This was one of my favorites from artifacts scattered on display in the halls.  It is a bronze cast of the Madonna's face from Michelangelo's Pieta.
 And then a lovely 3/4 size nativity...
 

This didn't even scratch the surface of all the lovely and interesting sights we could see within Mayo, but we needed to get out and about a little more so we took our show on the road.  And went to the History Center of Olmstead County.  I'll tell you, the Children's Museum at Rochester almost won out, but we had a limited time in town and we've been to general childrens' museums before.  We needed some local exhibits!
  While it was fairly small, the History Center did a great job presenting the highlights of the county.
We found a solar compass, which apparently Shorty has "been always wanting for my birthday!".

And a place to have our pictures taken with Dr. Charlie and Dr. Will Mayo...

I debated posting this picture, but someone's serious pic was too serious ;)
There were lovely outfits from the mid 19th century that made it on to Mookie's wish list...

And a Lego model of one of the Mayo buildings that Bubby was thrilled with.  He took pictures of every angle.  Including this one ;)

It would have been nice to be there under more relaxed circumstances and explore more, but we got to hang out with family made it fun and learned a little along the way.  That's what it's all about :)  We even got our fill of a White Christmas going home on Christmas Day (ok, a little more than we wanted by going through a snow storm, but Hubby got us home safe and sound).

On the way home before the storm

Update: When I wrote this blog I forgot the best story!  We went out in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve Eve to go get some of Rochester's homemade ice cream at Flapdoodles.  The guy at our hotel (Econolodge - which was the best hotel experience we'd had in a long time!) said it was phenomenal.  So, out we go in the driving and accumulating snow (crazy Kansans ;) ) to get said ice cream.  When we get there we're piling out of the car and Shorty grabs some of the parking lot snow and eats it!  Parking lot snow!  We are about to have frozen deliciousness (and it was) and he eats parking lot snow.  *sigh*