Cookout

 Walt and Geo had all the relatives in for a cookout yesterday.  The men had two grills full of meat plus Geo's delicious side dishes, so suffice it to say that no one went hungry!

 

Cousins

 The Colorado crew arrived, including their (new to us) dog Maggie. They were even in time for ice cream at Sam's Five and Dime. :)

Watkins Glen

 The weekend before we came to Eden, we went down to the NASCAR race in Watkins Glen. It's a beautiful area and a nice track, but it was about 90 degrees and the seating is metal bleachers, just baking in the sun. (We keep telling the kids how much fun it is to go to live sporting events, but they are not going to believe us if it keeps being this hot every time we go!)

So, it was exciting to be there, but we ended up leaving early because the kids were getting a bit overheated, and they weren't that interested in the race. (James sometimes likes watching the races on TV, so we were surprised that he wasn't more interested, but he just wanted to look at his math book. Matthew was falling asleep.)  And the best Ford got knocked out in a crash in the fourth lap, so that took a little of the excitement away as well.

The track is huge -- it's a road course -- so we took a golf cart ride back to our car.  (We didn't really know our way around so we had parked pretty far from our seats.)  Matthew and I were sitting on the seat facing out back, and he said it was one of the scariest rides of his life!  (Which was pretty funny given that he'd ridden a bunch of much scarier roller coasters at the amusement park with his friend just the other week.  It really wasn't bad at all, so I'm not sure what made him so uncomfortable about it!)

(The bottom picture is a panorama created by Google -- Mike has not actually lost part of his midsection.)

Eden Fun

 Lots of fun with the grandparents -- James played cribbage with Grandma and Grandpa, we had lunch at Cafe Eden (Mattie loves the hamburgers and also remembered that they had a claw machine), and we went out to Roy Lake in Grandma's convertible for some swimming and playing in the sand.  Matthew loves the small town independence of getting to go to the playground or Danny's store by himself. :)

Some of the Colorado cousins are arriving soon -- Walt and Mike have the croquet field all ready.

Arrived in SoDak

 We arrived in Fargo yesterday, and had dinner there before heading back to Eden. (Couldn't find the Applebees, so we stopped at Texas Road House instead. James was very pleased with his steak!)

We made a quick stop at the Nicolette Tower on the way home, although it was a bit hazy (apparently due to wildfires in Canada). The kids loved running up to the top, though! It was close to bedtime for the kids when we arrived, but that didn't stop them from wanting to go to the playground and checking out the new train (and the not-so-new climbing tree).