Folks, COVID is over, and the Mayday Parade is back!
But first we had our good friends Davin, Dora and the kids over for dinner. After seeing them a week earlier, at Doralyce's birthday party, we invited them over.
We wanted to catch up and also thank them for the invite to the birthday party.
I made shrimp and grits for our friends.
Meadow made some ooey gooey brownies for dessert.
Her 100 Cookies cookbook is the best.
The next morning the kids played games while eating the leftover brownies.
Now that Theo taught himself to swing he loves our playset. Even if that means swinging quick as we walk to the garage.
We always say we're going to explore the many neighborhood-wide garage sales in Minneapolis. We finally made that happen at, apparently one of Brooke's favorite neighborhoods, Bryn Mawr's.
I would live in this neighborhood if I could. Though everyone has perfect yards so I don't think we'd make here long.
We were hoping to score more furniture for the house, but no one was really selling any.
In the actual alley above we picked up a very cool painting of Minnehaha Falls.
The woman we bought it from recently wrote a book about the history of the falls and had acquired a large collection of paintings and photographs of the falls. She also shared a fun fact that the falls are narrower today thanks to the bridge that was built above it.
It started to rain, but we continued on. Some of the houses in Bryn Mawr are some of the best preserved in the city. But it's so removed from the rest of the city being squished between two highways.
I'm jealous that they are close to so much nature but they do lack businesses to walk to. Not that they don't have any but there's not a lot.
We were about to leave when we spotted a playground.
Meadow and I stayed back at the playground. After a while we were wondering where Theo and Brooke were. They had hiked all the way across the woods to Theo Wirth Park.
We were trying to find a geocache that ended up being farther than planned. Was still fun to explore a part of Minneapolis we hadn't been to before.
Have I mentioned that I love this new-to-us antique couch? We think it's from the 1910s. The previous family had passed it down for a 100 years.
It was reupholstered in the 2000s but rarely used.
I'm even in more love with the matching chair.
I was happy we stumbled upon this Victorian chair in our searches.
What could a crowd full of aging hipsters, crust punks and South Minneapolis hippies mean? Mayday of course.
It was back again! Sort of. Not really officially.
We left later than planned so sat near the end of the parade by Powderhorn Park.
The people watching is almost the best part.
The kids and I saw an ice cream truck, so we went over and got a treat while we waited.
Poor batman. Lucky Theo.
The family next to us shared their chalk with the kids. Theo has really been into creating things symmetrically.
Eventually crust punks on bikes showed up, which could only mean the parade was about to start.
Theo hadn't been to Mayday since he was a few months old. The variations of bikes were amazing to him.
The Heart of the Beast released the parade to the community, which means that the battle train was now the centerpiece of Minneapolis Mayday.
And like usual it had grown.
These were blasting fire into the sky and perhaps right onto the power lines. I was freaking out inside just a little bit.
Theo was absolutely mesmerized by the bike-powered contraptions. Later that night he'd come to Brooke, crying, saying he was so sad that the parade was over. I went to the computer with him to show him the amazing bike train and all was well.
After we had gone to bed he woke me up crying because he wished he could go back in time to see it again.
Can you blame Theo's amazement?
Next were the art bikes.
Followed by art cars. It wasn't the old school giant puppet-filled Mayday of past years, but it was still rad.
We went to get tamales and tacos over at Mercado Central after the parade. This is the Twin Cities best Mexican market.
We were waiting for our food when a woman told me to follow her. She and her family were done eating so she gave us her table. People can be so nice.
We tried out Maria's Restaurante for the first time.
Not pictured, but the tacos con arroz were the highlight for me.
The kids love their sweetcorn tamales.
We walked back past the festivities at Powderhorn Park.
As you can see in the background, Scott has been scraping the house to get ready for painting.
Meadow got this knock off lego cat for Christmas. It's more complicated than she thought so had put it off thinking she would do it when she's older. I guess she couldn't wait and decided to try it. It was really hard, she spent many hours on it only to have to start over. After she completes a step I check over her work.
Now that it's warm enough out to be out in the porch, Theo decided to be creative too.
Since everyone was crafting, I repaired a few chairs. This one came with our game table, but broke the first day I used it. After a few different failures, I finally succeeded with a whole new leg braces. Bought a dowel, filed off the ends to match the holes on the chair, glued the ends and insides and then clamped the chair together. Thanks, YouTube.
While I was at it, I suppose I glued and clamped our little rocking chair.
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