We celebrated Independence Day this year at Sam’s uncle and aunt’s house. Manny and Becky live in Saint Anthony Park in Saint Paul. This is the home where Sam’s grandparent’s raised their family. Saint Anthony Park has been hosting a small town style 4th of July celebration for many years.

We had a wonderful afternoon with Sam’s family. We cheered her relatives on as they competed in the volleyball competitions at the park and we enjoyed zydeco music from the bandshell in the evening.

I’ve included some photos of the afternoon on the website.

The last week in June, Samantha, Peter and I rode the new Hiawatha Light Rail line from downtown Minneapolis out to Fort Snelling.

We’ve been excitedly waiting for the light rail line to open up for quite a while. At the moment, with only one “line”, you really can’t call this a light rail “system”, but it’s still a great addition to our public transportation infrastructure here in the Twin Cities.

After arriving at the Fort Snelling station, we walked over to the historic old fort. I think the highlight of the trip for Peter was getting Gettysburg civil war army men from the gift shop.

I’ve added pictures of the trip to our photo gallery.

Here’s a little taste of springtime in Minnesota. These are pictures from last spring as we enjoyed the season.

I’ve included pictures our Easter celebration, a visit to the spring flower show at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory at Como Park, the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary, and a trip to the Minneapolis waterfront.

With fall approaching, I began to think about how recent it was that the snow melted and everything had that bright green spring color. I realized I hadn’t added any pictures to our gallery in a long time. Well, better late than never…

Elaine, Tom, Lucia, and her host mother protested the war in Iraq earlier in May. Tom and Lucia made their protest signs themselves. They attended a Wednesday night peace vigil on the Lake Street bridge.

Later, Peter and Colton had their own “Peace” march through Grandma Elaine’s neighborhood. The carried their signs and chanted “No more fight! No more fight!”.

I’ve added a few pictures from Peter’s most recent birthday party to the photo gallery. It was a wonderful afternoon with Peter opening presents and sharing cake and ice cream with his family.

Peter wasn’t real sure about turning three. For about a week before his birthday, he was insisting he didn’t want to turn three and instead wanted to remain two this year. He liked the idea of a birthday party and presents, but he said he liked being two and would really rather stay that way.

Peter and Elaine made the birthday cake and Peter got to decorate it himself. It was a dinosaur cake complete with trees, rocks, and lots of dinosaurs. Very cool! He’s now decided the whole birthday thing was a good idea, being three is pretty good afterall, and he’s now looking forward to turning four.

Our son, Peter, has developed a taste for Knock-Knock jokes. He comes up with his own jokes, which he finds hilarious. His most recent creation was:

Knock-Knock…
Who’s there?
Funny!!!
Funny who?

At this point he says “Funny! Funny! Funny!”, puts his thumbs in his ears like moose horns and turns around in a circle while making his own interpretation of Moose noises.

This is followed by lots of laughter as he admires his own sense of humor. We hear this one around the house a lot.

Shortly before Christmas this year, Santa Claus, several of his elves, and Santa’s “reindog” Rudolph made a quick visit to my parents house. Peter and my nephew Colton just happened to be over helping their grandparents decorate the Christmas tree at the time of the visit. What great luck! Santa’s elves were a little bit shifty looking, as you can tell from the picture, but they were as jolly as could be. Accompanying Santa were his elves, Shifty, Dicey, Studly, and Flasher. Flasher was the elf with the cigar. Peter is still talking about how kind it was of Santa to take time out of his busy schedule right before Christmas to visit Peter and his cousin.

Visit our <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/23195233@N00/sets/72157606600261771/&#8221; photo album to see more pictures from our Christmas holidays this year.

The boys, Samantha, Mike and I went to ZooBoo at the Como Zoo this evening. It was a lot of fun. The boys dressed up as alligators and looked really cute.