Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Grand Old Day

We had another busy weekend, which was highlighted by a visit from Uncle Jered, Aunt Shauna, and cousins Max and Riley, who were in town for a mini-vacation from Iowa. It was great to see them! They stayed at a hotel near the Mall of America. So we all had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe (a.k.a. the "jungle restaurant") on Friday night, went through the aquarium and played at Lego Land on Saturday morning/afternoon, and then Aaron and the girls had pizza with them and played at the hotel pool (which was more like a water park!) on Saturday evening. I will direct you to their blog, because Shauna has a VERY nice camera, and is already posting a bunch of pictures that are much nicer than anything I can take with my phone. :)

It was great to see you guys... and hopefully we'll see you in August too!

So my weekend recap will be limited to Sunday, which was Grand Old Day. This is an annual event, a street fair in St. Paul along Grand Avenue. It's really the first of the big summer festivals, and is (to me, anyway) much more of a kickoff to summer than May Day or Memorial Day is.

We of course got there bright and early for a number of reasons. For one, that's just how we roll, and it was incredibly easy to find parking. But mainly because there's an 8K race at 7:45 a.m., and Auntie Laura and Dylan were rollerblading it! This was Dylan's first full race, and we HAD to be there to cheer him on!

The course is a down-and-back, and we actually missed them on their first half. But we were right there to cheer on their way back! Dylan looked good, which was particularly impressive given that we were right at the top of a fairly big hill! It was so cool.

After the race, we decided to stick around and wait for the parade, which didn't start for another 90 minutes. That gave us plenty of time to wander around. We went to the grocery store and picked up some breakfast, since the mini-donut booths weren't open yet. Then we went up and down the street checking out the booths and vendors that were set up. This included the MN Wild booth, that had a plinko game. Everyone got a prize. Ella won a hockey card; Maisie won some hockey tape.

This is basically a cloth tape that's used to wrap hockey sticks. She was really excited about it... she kept going, "I have my VERY OWN TAPE!"

We were sitting in the "sports zone," so the girls also had Minnesota Rollergirls tattoos and stickers, and beads from the Timberwolves' cheerleaders. We were really near a booth that had Goldy Gopher, the U of MN Gophers mascot, running around. Ella kept saying, "Mama! Look at that big beaver!!!" I kept saying, nooooo, it's a gopher... but apparently she's way more familiar with beavers than with gophers. They were fascinated by Goldy but he also kind of freaked them out, so we kept our distance from that booth.

Finally - FINALLY! - it was time for the parade! We liked all the princesses, the gymnasts, the firefighters, the girl scouts, and the pirates. We did NOT like the Vulcan Krewe - again, too scary. But we mostly liked anyone who threw candy!

This picture is just a small fraction of what was collected. By the end of the parade, we had as much candy to bring home as the girls usually collect at Halloween! And that doesn't even count all the Tootsie Rolls and Starbursts they ate while we were there.

We didn't stick around after the parade - by then it was 11:30, so really close to naptime. But it was very fun, and a good kickoff to the summer festivals!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Love the picture of Laura and Dylan, oh my, how I love it! Also Maisie and her tape!
What fun. Hopefull next year there'll be no conflicting events and no illnesses eather!
Gramma Liisa