Having a blast...wish you were here!

We've been keeping a busy schedule this summer. I think a lot of it is because I like learning and exploring, and my kids are willing participants to go on these adventures with me. I think a small part of it is because it keeps us from killing each other. And from making the house messier than it already is.

Because we had swimming lessons for two weeks this summer, we missed most of the vacation Bible schools in town. So Emily was exported to the twin cities to attend one up there at Grandma Barb's house. Meanwhile, Meg (who was too young to attend) hung out at Lake Riley and had her own version of summer camp along with her light-saber sporting cousin.

Here's our little sand angel. Love the swimsuit,
but the idea of all that sand in the suit
makes me shift uncomfortably. 

 Every small town has its festivals such as Crystal Falls, Michigan's Humongous Fungus fest named after the 38-acre fungus found beneath the earth nearby. Fairmont is no different. We have our Interlaken Heritage Days (presumable named after the Interlaken Park resort which was touted as one of the finest in the Midwest in the early 1900s).
As part of the two-day festival, there was a water-ski show (complete with a ski boat with two 225-horsepower engines on it) and a guy barefooting from the beach (quite the wedgie I would imagine), event mascot, and parade--complete with a strange man carrying a raccoon and leading a "baseball team" of female geese. I didn't quite get that one.

 We also managed to make it to the Como Zoo. My favorite part was probably the newly opened gorilla exhibit. It makes you wonder--who is watching whom?

 We also had a chance to "zip" up to St. Paul to see the Minnesota Historical Center with the family pass my sister got me for Christmas. Below are my children playing with dynamite in one of the hands-on exhibits. There was even a "real" buffalo there complete with QR codes on various body parts so you could scan them at a machine nearby and find out what the native Americans did with the various parts.