July

Summer, where did you go?  

I'm pretty sure this one is going back to the end of June.  Phil's dear friend, Curt, got married to a lovely young lady, Amy, at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska.  Such a beautiful day at a beautiful venue for the beautiful and happy couple!   

July 4th - it's all about the red, white, and blue, right?!  We started the day out right!

Once again, we went to our friends', Jed & Tara Hausmann's for their annual 4th of July get-together. We had a hot and sunny day outside, perfect for "the pool" as Henry calls it every year!

Jed always has an impressive fireworks display and fabulous food on the grill, as well!  The kids enjoyed some fishing down at the creek too.  

Thanks to Sonja for some tickets to the St. Paul Saints game at CHS Field.  It was my first time ever there, good times!  Henry brought his glove, ready for every pitch, hoping for that foul ball :) 

It was Superhero night when we were there.  Look at Lydia, admiring Mudonna T. Pig aka WonderWoman!

Oma & Opa took us out on a boat ride one Sunday morning on Coon Lake.  We WERE having a good time, until Miss Independent had to drive the boat BY HERSELF and also wanted her life jacket OFF NOW!  After that little incident, it was time for Lydia and I to head home.  

Henry and Phil stayed to do some fishing, and they were quite successful!  I got multiple pictures like this one throughout the morning, showing off all their hard work!  Henry just couldn't quite get too close to the big fish yet.  He said, "I'm sick of catching big fish.  I want to catch more little fish!"  Oh, what a problem to have :)

I've had a Bucket List going throughout the summer of all the new places I wanted to check out.  Here's one of the splash pads, at Andrews Park, in Champlin.....  

.....and another splash pad, at Emerald Park, in St. Anthony.  

They would go back and forth between the splash pad and the park, then we'd always bring a picnic lunch before heading home :)

Kenny Chesney returned to Target Field this summer, sweeeeeeeeet!  Oh my, I LOVE me a good country music concert :)  Luckily, I found a pair of cowboy boots in my closet that I bought in college and wore once.  So, 15 years later, they worked perfectly for the occasion!  I just knew I saved them all this time for some reason.

Lydia, oh Lydia, you little stinker :)  So, she got her little paws into the sunflower seeds that the big kids were eating one day outside with our neighbors, and of course, shoved them in her mouth when I tried to take them away.  It didn't seem like a huge deal at all, she coughed/choked them out of her mouth as I was trying to dig them out and we went on with our day.  Two days later, she woke up wheezing pretty good.  I thought it was either a horrible coincidence that she now has some sort of virus, or she possible aspirated a sunflower seed down into her lungs 2 days prior.  Fast forward about 8 hours and she's in the ER at Children's Hospital.  We got admitted overnight, then she had a date in the operating room with the ENT surgeon, who found 3 little pieces of seed, 2 stuck in her tiny little windpipe and 1 down in her lungs.  As soon as she was out of surgery, the wheezing was gone, good to go, back to normal.  Scary!!  

Our sweet neighbors brought her over a bouquet of sunflowers the day she got out of the hospital :)