Father's Day, Anniversary

For Father's Day, we hit the MOA and bought some shoes. One of our favorite places is the Twin City Grille there; they have terrific martinis. CP was not impressed.

Our anniversary this year was pretty low key, despite being a big one. Good thing we have a florist on the corner - it was an easy stop on the way home.

 

Southside Squeaky

We have chipmunks everywhere! I thought that maybe it's because I have been feeding them, but they are just as prevalent all over the neighborhood. They don't actually eat; they only go around hoovering up everything they can. I'm sure we have underground caches of tons of birdseed buried all over the yard.

This one lives on the south side of the garage. He was getting close and then I realized that another one had come up behind me and was going to crawl over my hand with the camera. I moved, and that made everyone jump a little.

 

Mediterranean Cruise

For the last few years (prior to 2020), we have been dreaming of a Mediterranean cruise for our 2021 anniversary. Then 2020 hit. JP did the next best thing and set us up for an afternoon cruise on Lake Harriet. It was an absolutely perfect day: 75°, sunny, and just enough wind to fill the sails. JP manned the rudder for most of the cruise, and I tended to the jib lines. We had a blast! 

We did some math and came to the conclusion that if we did this every weekend, we would still come out ahead vs. buying a sailboat.

It has been a wonderful journey through life with JP; I wouldn't trade it for anything.

 

New Tennis Courts

S's friend from next door C joined us for a walk down to check out the newly refinished tennis courts at the park down the street. We need to pick up some tennis rackets and take advantage of them being so close. It looks like there are also lines painted for pickleball, too!

 

Twins vs. Astros

JP was out of town so we took the opportunity to catch an evening Twins game. We took the bus downtown and hit Brit's Pub for some amazing fish & chips tailgating action. 

It was free umbrella hat night!!! 

Our seats were front row 3rd level and centered on home plate. We scored four runs - all of them were homers. It was perfect! 

...except for the Astros winning 6-4.

 

Hot

We had a warm streak of 9 days over 90°. We've done this before, but this was the earliest on record and we broke records on several days. This was the weekend that the N family came up. DN and I took the snow tubes and floated around in the lake for a couple hours.

 

Vegas Girls Weekend

JP went out to Vegas for a week to see KG and her new condo as they were getting some remodeling done. While she was there, a forest fire popped up just outside of town.

 

Old Neighbors

D & MN brought the family up for a warm weekend in Minneapolis. The boys explored downtown and hit a couple places for drinks & wings; it was noticeably empty and deserted.

No visit to the Cities would be complete without a stop at the falls.

 

Loving the Lake

We are really enjoying living by the lake. With the warm weather, JP takes S for a swim every day to cool off. He doesn't swim like a lab, but he loves it.

 

Memorial Day Hike

On Memorial Day, we cruised up to Banning State Park to show CP the Kettle River and all the cool things there. We got there at 9:30 and the parking lot was empty. By the time we left at noon it was overflowing.