July 2nd
I made it to another evening open water swim, brought the family this time. They all swam at the beach (with Kyle) while I did some laps back and forth across the lake.
The next day we went to the St. Louis Park Aquatic Park. The kids had fun jumping off the diving board.
For the Fourth of July we were invited to a neighbor's house who hosts an epic July 4th block party. He has print outs of the declaration of independence which we take turns reading outlet and then excerpts from other famous speeches. It's a super fun and meaningful way to celebrate. I'm grateful we are able to partake and the kids can experience this tradition. His daughter took over this year leading the reading.
Then each year he does something special. The first year we attended he had a petting zoo in his front yard. It rained that year and wrecked his lawn, but memorable. We were in Vegas last year and didn't make it but I think he had an ice cream truck and maybe fire truck. This year was ALL OUT! He had a presenter from the U of Mn raptor center who gave an education show on 4 different raptors.
The grand finale bird being of course the EAGLE!
It was so good!
Working toward our summer bucket list we needed to go mini-golfing. I had heard about this place out west that was a bit of a drive but worth it. On July 6th, we drove out to Big Stone Sculpture Garden and Mini Golf. There was a small wait list to start putt-putting but they had a lot of land to wonder around and sculptures to look at so that easily filled the time.
The course was pretty fun and unique.
That evening we went out to eat to celebrate Thomas's birthday but I'll post about that separately.
