Thursday
We were home for a few days before we were hosting guests. I had invited my parents to come to the Minnesota State Fair this year as they've never been. Due to scheduling conflicts Harvey tagged along with them.
We hadn't been to the fair in years and are county fair stands at heart, but it would be fun with her parents. And extra interesting with Harvey.
Friday
Unfortunately we were in a heat wave while they were here. I guess the weather in Oregon followed us home. This year we were smart and brought our hiking pack to carry our water bladder.
Thank goodness for the mist sprayers.
We would later find out this was the busiest first Friday on record.
First stop was for Pronto-Pups. Which Brooke was too good for.
And a bucket of fries. Theo got pizza on a stick.
We took a break from walking through the animal barns and watched the pig competitions.
We all had to keep an extra set of eyes on Harvey as he's known to get curious and wander on his own. I found him petting this cow.
Yes, they produce milk in Minnesota too.
We took another break to watch the steer competitions.
Lots of 4H events going on around the fair.
So many people.
Next stop was a big cup of root beer to share with the kiddos.
This is our tradition.
Don't let him fool you, he took 2 sips and was done.
Theo was jealous that his cousin got a float.
Next we went to the Kidway for some rides. I went on this ride with Theo and thought I was going to die. It was pretty janky.
Only Harvey wanted to go on rides. We're so spoiled by our annual trips to Green Bay's Bay Beach Amusement park and it's 25 cent rides. The fair is ex-pen-sive.
The 4H building is always our favorite.
Yeah, the 4H and arts building are both worth the visit.
We had never done the Little Farmer exhibit before.
Theo was the only one little enough to ride the tractor.
The kids had to do farm chores.
At the end the kids got a pretend dollar to buy something for their hard work. There was ice cream, juice boxes and fruit snacks.
We may have broke everyone with all the walking we were doing.
We took them on a wild goose chase to find one specific food vendor. We couldn't find the Que Viet giant egg rolls on a stick until we saw a couple eating them who gave us vague directions.. Sorry, Gail and Mike.
We still had more to see, like the seed art.
There were like 5 anti-Packers pieces, but no mention of the Vikings. Why do Minnesotan's folks focus their attention on their neighbor to the east so much?
People are so talented. We told Meadow she should enter for next year.
Seriously...get over the Packers and Wisconsin, Minnesota.
One stupid picture for G.G.
Meadow is still doing her challenge and ordered both her and Theo's apple freezies.
Harvey chose an apple.
What we had really been looking for was the Dairy Kids ice cream. We kept getting confused where it was. We tried coming in earlier but thought it was just sales booths. We didn't realize the ice cream and butter ladies were in the back.
We'd apparently been going to wrong building for years.
Even though we had spent more time here than I thought we would we still didn't even see everything.
Saturday
Now I had all these badges we've collected over the summer to add to Theo's hiking backpack.
I figured after our long day of walking at the fair that we should keep it easy today. We headed over to Excelsior to ride the trolley. We've been on the one on Lake Harriet but hadn't done this one yet.
This trolley used to run in Duluth.
I still owed Harvey a birthday present so we went across the street to a toy store so he could pick something out. Leave it to Meadow to find all the cat things.
We checked out a couple shops in Excelsior, ate on the lake at Maynards and stopped at Lilac Park. We figured it was the kids turn to do something fun and stopped at the playground at Wolfe Park.
We hadn't ever put in our air conditioners in this summer. We had window work done in June and then we were gone for the most part. This week was the first week all summer that it was almost unbearable without them but wasn't worth putting them in. My mom was pretty upset about it. By today it cooled down to the 70's which is apparently jacket weather.
Oh, G.G.
Sunday
The next day Harvey was still sleeping when I woke up. This is very unusual for him as he's usually the first one up with the sun. I guess we wore him out.
These two and their Switch's.
We wanted to show my parents photos Scott took for the Yeti store but it wasn't open yet.
So we made different plans.
While in Edina my mom wanted to go the Container Store. While they did that we walked around Centennial Lakes. I hadn't been over here in the summer before.
Then they needed to head back home.
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