Watermelon Day

The girls and I headed down to Watermelon Day bright and early Saturday morning, but quickly ran into terrible weather.  It was so stormy near Faribault that I took the first exit.  We ended up taking shelter in a Snap Fitness for a few minutes after getting drenched running inside.  We crept our way toward Owatonna after realizing that it wasn't going to get much better throughout the morning.  After pulling over there to check the radar again (and realizing once more that it wasn't going to improve soon), we slowly made our way to Albert Lea.  It was a scary drive...Albert Lea had been hit earlier and we saw a semi tipped over on the side of the road.  It made me thankful that we hadn't left earlier and that we had stopped, thus missing the bad winds that hit Albert Lea.  After dropping Sadie off with Dave's mom, we continued (uneventfully) to Iowa, but missed the first half of the parade.  No worries, though--the girls still got PLENTY of parade candy!  A little front came through after the parade with some winds, but then it cooled things off and it turned out to be a perfect day at the park.  We had all of the great-grandkids there, so we were able to snap a picture (plus one with Erin, who is expecting a baby in January!).  The girls really enjoyed hanging out at the park and helping with the pop toss.  

We left the park a little earlier than we usually do, so we could celebrate my mom and dad's 40th anniversary up at the hotel in Webster City.  After a takeout dinner, we surprised them with cupcakes and a gift of matching Twins jerseys.  My dad had made a trivia game about their wedding.  My grandma hung out for a little bit and a few of my cousins came up to swim and play games.