4th of July

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July.  Rob and I went up to the cities to visit friends and family for the weekend and had a great time.  On July 3rd we went to the Bloomington Fireworks display.  The display is just a couple of blocks away from my brother's house, so we walked through the droves of people and all around the lake where they were setting them off.  The fireworks lasted the typical 20 minutes, but ended with quite the impressive finale. We definitely weren't sitting around asking each other if it was over afterwards.

On the 4th of July we went out to my friend Shannon's new house for a barbecue and got to catch up with a group of college friends that we hadn't seen in ages. Shannon's new house is awesome and I can't wait to see our old college friends again soon!

On July 5th we went to our first Twins game.  They were playing against the Yankees.  We had seats in the upper deck, but they were right behind home plate, so it made for an excellent view of the game and of the stadium.  The weather was gorgeous for a baseball game, and the Twins beat the Yankees, what more could we ask for?

More photos of our 4th of July celebrations and of the Twins game are posted on Flickr (available at the links).

Annual Family Camping Trip

Last weekend was our family's annual (ok we've done it twice now, but it does seem to be a thing) camping trip.  This year we camped at Pickerel Lake in northeastern South Dakota.  I hadn't been camping there since I was about 10--so it was brand new to me.  Rob and I had the week off so we went up to Estelline a few days ahead of our camping trip.  I finally got to go visit the Veterans Memorial Park that they installed a couple of years ago.  It really is a beautiful little park for such a small town and it didn't hurt that the sun was setting as we were walking through.

The first day we were at Pickerel was beautiful--weather wise--but we couldn't check in until afternoon, so it was a lovely evening around the fire.  Rob and I took the dog for a walk down to the "marina" that they have for putting boats in and along the trail that goes from the boat launch to the campgrounds along the shore of the lake.  It was really pretty watching the sun go down through the trees over the lake.

The next day of our trip was hot, but I did get to go swimming.  The lake is pretty nice compared to our swimming options down here in reservoir land, and the cold water felt really good.  It clouded up that afternoon and threatened rain, even rumbled and lightninged off in the distance, but it didn't rain until the next morning.  And then it rained off and on all day.  It stopped raining long enough for dad to cook lunch (fish they caught when the weather was changing the night before and pancakes) and then it rained very lightly for a while.  Rob and I took a hike up to the top of a nearby hill that had views of the surrounding area (in the photo below you can just make out the lake). 

Then later on that day half of us went to Fort Sisseton.  It rained very steadily the entire time we were at Fort Sisseton, but I did get my fill of Dakota territory history

It stopped raining in time for us to have supper and a fire that night and rained again in the morning before we packed up to head back home to Iowa.  Aside from the rain, it was a lovely trip.  More photos of our trip can be found here.

Spring is Here!

Not much exciting happened this winter, and I didn't take too many photos, but spring has finally arrived, and with that--more photo taking!

This past weekend we went to Pella, Iowa to enjoy their tulips and visit their amazing Dutch bakery.  It was beautiful weather and nearly all of the tulips were blooming. We came home with a bag of pastries and a camera full of tulip photos.

You can see more photos of our day trip to Pella here.

And just like the spring flowers are blooming in Pella, they are blooming at our house too.  You can see my spring photos from around our neighborhood here.