Holiday Weekend Fun

Last Friday, the kids' school had a Beach Day spirit day. They used the opportunity to sport their new clothes that Grandma brought them from Hawaii. That worked out perfectly because we also got to see Gma and Gpa!!

My parents were making a trip down to the Cities to visit my grandparents' graves at Fort Snelling. They come every Memorial Day weekend - and Mom was not about to let a pandemic stop her from putting flowers out. They had originally planned a quick down and back - but haven't seen the kids and Mike since January (I got a quick lunch in early March before everything shut down). So we agreed to a socially distant drop in visit.

My parents decided to stay for a couple days at Emmy's - so she went to the cemetery with them too. AND THEN CAME HERE. You guys, we have not all been together since Christmas. That has not happened since ... ever. That has never happened. It's not how we roll. We are entangled, co-dependent people and are really okay with that. It was so good to see them and my socially distant resolve faded rather quickly (that and Gpa simply ignored my rules to walk right up and hug Dec). Between that, missing everyone, and the pathetic looks on Gma and Fiona's faces, there.were.hugs. We all needed them!

Gma, Gpa, and Auntie joined us for Ice Cream Friday (that's a quarantine thing that I'm pretty sure the kids hope becomes permanent) - and then a pretty epic baseball game broke out in the back yard. Everyone played - even grandma. Dec and Gpa bonded over their sweet left-handed swings. Auntie and I showed some serious skills. Dec even pitched. We had such a fun time and for a few hours, life felt normal again. 

The rest of the weekend was fun and low-key. We weren't too sad to be home because we typically don't travel for Memorial Day weekend. We were very sad about the forecast for three straight days of rain. Saturday morning, I ventured out to get vegetable plants and flowers for our new garden and my pots. It looked like my best chance to get everything planted while staying dry. The kids helped me plant the veggies and then I got the pots done right before it started pouring. Whew!

But thankfully, while there was rain every day, it ended up being mostly at night. So Sunday afternoon, we headed out for a 3+ mile family bike ride. We followed the bike trail over to our original Ms. A's and had a lovely socially distant visit with her and her family. Dec even got to issue a personal invite to his buddy Jack for his birthday parade. Those two and their sweet friendship is the best. And it's so fun to see how excited a 16-year-old boy is to come to a six-year-old's celebration. 

On Memorial Day proper, we needed out of the house. Mike decided we were going to check out the hiking trails at Carver Park Reserve. It was a 30 minute drive to get there and we were all so excited to be outside Shakopee city limits. I was a little concerned by the number of cars in the parking lot, but there are enough trails and woods that we felt very spread out and didn't see many people at all. 

We hiked about a mile - stopping many times to check things out. Mike pointed out deer tracks and showed them what a deer trail looked like. We saw a lot of birds and Quinn even found a chigger on the ground! I suspect we will be back there again to check out other trails this summer. Mike and I are already brainstorming other places to explore. The kids are campaigning for a place with more rocks to climb!

One of our favorite parts of the weekend was enjoying the strawberry lemonade poke cake we made after each of our adventures. It was a fun cake to make and Quinn and Dec even got to practice piping with the poke hole filling. Mike learned how to make pizzas on our new grill and we experimented with grilling ribs too. Our bellies had a delicious weekend!