Three days

Sunday: 
We had breakfast at the Tavern in Northfield and said those farewells that were necessary.

We were going to take Madeline on a tour of St. Olaf to balance out her Carleton experience, but St. Olaf told us we were not welcome.

We next went to the Soli homestead in Albert Lea, where Anna's family had kindly prepared a bunch of the Soli siblings' old toys for Madeline to play with.

Madeline was especially fond of a play-Doctor's kit.

Meg helped her give shots to Tiger Kitty.

Much merriment followed, and after that the not-insubstantial drive from Albert Lea to Eagan.

Monday:
All this moving around meant Madeline didn't sleep fantastically, but she did take a two-plus hour nap to make up for it.

She loved (and continues to love) the Meyers' penguin.

And, when all of us but Summer and Madeline had gone off to play cards for the evening, those two explored fun things like fish ...

... and dinner.

They also took glamour shots together.

And Madeline appreciated (and continues to appreciate) this baker who lives in the kitchen (as well as the gnomes in the garden, not pictured).

Tuesday:
This morning Madeline announced, "Swing!  Slide!  Walk!  Shoes!," so we went to a playground.

There was much playing.

And with milk in one hand and water in the other, Madeline braved the long walk through the prairie to get home.

The Meyers have lots of toys around, and today Madeline especially enjoyed scooting around on little cars and playing with the animals stored in their seats.

Then we went to see real animals at the Como Zoo!  (We saw some toy animals too; this machine that molds liquid plastic into animal form right in front of you was too cool to pass up.)

You can really get up close and personal with some of the animals at the zoo, like this snow leopard (note Madeline clutching the sea lion that machine had molded for her).

Two lions were sleeping right next to their enclosures' windows, too; Madeline repeatedly found herself drawn back to them, each time exclaiming, "Sleeping!  Sleeping!"  (She repeated this performance later for the gorillas.)

The cougars, though, were active.

As was this wolf.

Toward the end of our zoo trip, Madeline fell in love with this turtle statue:

And that was that.