Minnesota State Fair 2011

One of the great pleasures of the Fair is visiting the Butterfly House!

 

All the butterflies in these pictures are real!

These butterflies were camouflaged by Nora's wild T-shirt. Can you find 5? 

Lovely earrings!

Dad took a nap.

After the butterflies, we were off to visit other animals.  

Pequot Lakes - July 9th and 10th

On our way home we stopped at Andrea and Randy's lake place on the Whitefish chain. Andrea is a professional photographer, but busy with baby Sevi, 

she asked me to document Soren's first catch.

It took Andrea to get me to take out my camera and take some pictures on this trip! Here are some shots:

 Nora met a neighboring dog we then couldn't get rid of.

 Soren has a nice ride from Klara.

And Rick caught the smallest perch in the history of fishing!

 And, of course, there was a water fight.

Vacation at Long Lake in Park Rapids - July 2nd - 9th

This year we went to a resort near Park Rapids. In addition to the usual activities, we were able to visit one of my old college roommates - Marty Carew Holzer - whose parents have a home on the same lake and head over to my cousins on Fish Hook for a couple of visits.

Every time Rick tells about Nora's bass, it gets longer (the fish, I mean, not the story)!

Peter Pan - July 1st

The Prairie Fire plays have begun! While Rick was taking a class at the U all week, and I was trying to finish some research before my graduate research assistant's funding ran out, Nora participated in her first of 4 plays this summer. She was one of the lost children and had a several lines - none of which I managed to get on video. Hopefully we'll get some at play #2 - Beauty and the Beast.

Boarder Nora displays her birthday gift from Dad

Wedding weekend #1 followed - June 25th

Sorry no pictures of us from my niece Sara's wedding. But there are some beautiful photos of the happy couple on her photographer's Facebook page.

http://www.katielewisphotography.com/blog/?p=3006 

Gramma Jo's Farm - June 18th

Well, we've been a few places since Lake Pepin. 

The weekend after Marti's birthday dinner we hit Gramma Jo's farm, which usually includes such activities as feeding calves,

 

a ride on Grandpa Tom's pontoon boat,

some delicious food - here we have strawberry-rhubarb pie straight from my garden,

and an animal adventure (Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of the really BIG black bear we saw waddling crossing a field toward the highway a few miles before we got to the farm. He came all the up to the side of the road, stood on his hind legs to look over some bushes at us, and then ran back to the woods - who knew we were the scarey ones!)

Here we have one of the turtles that came from the Jump River below the barn up to the gravel driveway to lay her eggs. We saw a turtle doing this each day.

I hope turtles don't care too much about privacy!