With annual traditions, like the Sts. Peter and Paul Fall Festival, I feel like I’m a broken record.  But I did so much more this weekend than usual. 

Saturday morning, I met Mom and Aunt Bev in Eau Claire.  We went to my cousin’s baby shower.  She is due Sunday, she was joking with the host that she wasn’t going to make it to the shower, but she was there. 

After that we drove to Independence and dropped off my stuff and headed to Arcadia to Mike’s house.  We went to the Ashley for the Arts at the Memorial Park in Arcadia. Every year Ashley Furniture puts on this event as a fundraiser for various charities.  It is quite a big deal.  Anyways we went to the 3:30 performance of the Memories.  They were good. They have been preforming in the area for over 40 years! After that we went to Mike’s house for a grill out.  My cousin, Paula and her boyfriend Tom came by.  After that we went to the 7:30 performance of Matt Nathanson.  I’m not exactly sure who he is, I guess he is famous or something.  I didn’t really enjoy that so much so I took Shelly, Mike’s friend, for a walk down Soldiers’ Walk.  I love walking down this timeline of historic events. I showed her the sculptures for all the wars and the beam from the World Trade Center.  It was a nice getaway.  We made it back for the end of the concert and then the fireworks.  For such a small town, they were really amazing. 

Sunday morning started our normal tradition. Go to church to drop off mom’s pies and cakes and turn in her tickets. I’m not sure the last time she did this herself! LOL!  I got my verbal abuse from Becky Maule at the cake walk/sucker pull.  I know it is in good fun. This year she told me she dreamt about me all night and then fell out of bed. She blames me for that.  I spent $15 and didn’t win a damn cake.  They rig the game!  I got my cheese coffee cake and we turned in mom’s raffle tickets.  Something out of the norm for us, we went to the Polka Mass on Sunday morning.  It was nice, as nice as can be.  After church we had Chicken and JoJos from East End Bar. It was good but I really wish that we had the dinner at church. Smelling the meatballs cooking in the church basement during Mass was hard to handle. :(

After lunch Mom, Bev and I went back up to church for Bingo. We didn’t win of course. Never do! We left after Bingo so Mom and Betty Jane could go to Aunt Vina’s wake at the funeral home.  Bev and I went to Anna’s house to get a picture of Mickey as the “wheelchair super hero.”  So during Bingo I get a random phone call from our niece Beth. She is doing some scavenger hunt thing and need a “wheelchair super hero” in purple and white with a “G.” I told Eric he was crazy if I was going to do that.  But I told Mom and she said that Mickey would love to do it. So here he is:

After picking up Mom and Betty Jane at the funeral home we went back to the Festival for the polka music.  Bev and I stayed about an hour and then we headed home. We stopped at Culver’s for a burger and I dropped her off and made my way back home. It was a nice, busy weekend. 

So where was Eric you ask?  Well he was in Mankato working with DJ on his paper. 

It has seemed like a lot longer than a week since I last wrote.  It has been a week of sadness.  My Aunt Grace finally succumbed to cancer and passed away Tuesday. Although she is no longer suffering there is a sense of extreme sadness. As for my mom’s sisters, I was the closest to Grace and her kids.  This past weekend, I got to reconnect with most of Grace’s kids and grandkids and it was great.  It also meant I had to put up with being called Kimmy. Being the youngest of the cousins, I guess I will be picked on. Saturday we went down for the visitation. Afterwards we went to my cousin, Paula’s house for dinner.  The table was all cousins just talking. It was so nice.  And shockingly no cards were played. That is just weird. It is also strange that in a few short years it went from 6 sick sisters to just 3.  Bev, Alice and Mom are left to keep the family together.  The funeral and burial were yesterday afternoon followed by lunch. It was a sad weekend but also a great weekend to see family.  It is really unfortunate that weddings and now funerals are really the only time we see family.  On a funny note, in the Lutheran church they always read the obituary during the service.  As the pastor was reading the obit and got to the family members, I thought of Eric’s parents.  Man their family section of the obit will be long with 64 immediate family members (currently). Good thing they don’t read the obit during a Catholic funeral Mass, we would be there a while.   Anyways, that was a moment that I had a little chuckle.

As for the rest of the week, I tried going for a bike ride on Monday.  The first attempt was on the road bike but the tires got “untrue” somehow and were wobble so back the garage I go.  Next I grab my Townie cruiser. I went down by the river…duh…lots of rain means the river has flooded down there and I had to drive through water and muddy. My tires were caked on and made it difficult to ride so I went home. I thought about taking the mountain bike next but the brakes are bad.  So I settled for crashing on the couch eating raspberries. At least I was eating healthy. :)

Tuesday was finally warm enough for some waterpark action at Valleyfair. Last year with the massive heat wave around this time we were going daily to cool off. This year it hasn’t gotten warm enough yet.  But it was finally almost 90. It was so much fun going down the slides, rafting tube ride, lazy river and wave pool.  We were there about 2 hours. 

Wednesday I took my road bike into the shop for a tune up and to fix the tires.  They won’t have it ready until tomorrow…a whole week! I really need to get training for the triathlon in 76 days…yikes!

Thursday was band practice and boy did we need that.  We start our concert season on July 4^th and we haven’t practice since May 30^th.  The Carnival musical really cut into our practice time. It was tough though. The musical was easy because even though it was over 2 hours long there were a lot of breaks with no music so my chops could rest.  But Thursday night was almost 2 hour solid of playing. My mouth really hurt.

Friday we suffered through 7 innings of Twins baseball.  And I mean suffer.  It was cold, rainy and windy.  But I’m thankfully for the windy because it meant we stayed dry as the rain was falling in front of us. We saw the grounds crew put the tarp on the field 3 times. The tried to start the game, the Twins went into the field and then another down pour came and a delay.  There really wasn’t much rain after that but the wind really picked up. It is crazy that at June 28^th baseball game we would be freezing with sweatshirts on!  We sat in the 2 Gingers bar to stay warm and ended up leaving after the 7^th inning (it was after 10pm already). The Twins were losing so bad that if they did stage a comeback it would have been a miracle. We drove past the new I-35W Bridge to get a picture of the rainbow bridge. It was so nice to get home and wrap up in a blanket.

I-35W Bridge

Saturday we did some shopping and Eric got a haircut and we made our way to Wisconsin.  Here is a picture I took of the 3 remaining sisters.  Grace will definitely be missed. :(

Alice, Karen and Bev - the Stai Sisters

We were at the local tavern and a Buffalo County Sheriff stopped by for some food. This is the conversation:

BC Sheriff: "I've never seen you without a beer in your hand on the road or off."
Random guy: Laughing...pulls out a beer out of his pocket with his car keys.
BC Sheriff: "You driving this way or that way"
Random guy: "Yep!"

We had a great weekend in Wisconsin. We drove down Friday with Danielle in tow. On Saturday, Mike had his semi-annual Chicken Q at George's Lounge. We helped serving up the food. The half chickens were huge, weighing in at 3 lbs.

We took back roads to the Chicken Q. On the way we saw the "Leaning Silo of Arcadia." LOL!

After the Chicken Q we went to church and then played cards and games all night. We played 21 questions and Eric won every game of course.

Sunday we had a grill out at Mike's house with Nancy and Greg. It was good, as always.

Overall it was a great weekend and we ate a lot of food. The scale didn't like me this morning.