Oooohhhhh!!!! Aaaahhhhh!!!

Wow. I had an amazing 4th of July. Here is the outline of my weekend:

Thursday, July 3: After working all day at the beloved OB/GYN clinic, I set off to have an adventurous evening. I went home to take a nap, which never happened. Instead, I painted my nails black...you know, to be a rebel ;) ...and watched the bonus features on my rented copy of Vantage Point. (In case you're interested, the movie was decent but certainly not a must-see. The constant rewinds of the same events got a little tidious.) About 6:50, I headed out for my evening o' fun. First, I picked up Maggie, then Jessie in Eagan. We drove to Apple Valley and witnessed something a little weird and sort of disturbing: abandoned lawn chairs. The entire parade route was lined with duct taped tarps, lawn chairs, and even tents. People were angrily declaring that this was "MY SPOT!" to watch the parade on the following day. Nonetheless, my mom had also taken part in this disturbing tradition in suburbia and had set out her own lawn chairs that morning. Insane! Anyhow, we drove to Mom's house, admired her new orange wall, and hopped in her air-conditioned car for the drive to Treasure Island Casino near Hastings, MN. It was a pretty fun drive. You should check out Maggie's blog for a synopsis. The fireworks were good...read her blog...it's good stuffs.

I had several "a-ha" moments that evening. Here are a few:

• Treasure Island Casino is NOT in fact located on an island...dumb name.
• Not everyone grew up going to fireworks & partaking in other such American traditions.
• It's weird to celebrate Independence Day on a Native American reservation...kinda sad.
• My friends are amazing, funny, wonderful people.
• UFO's are real...I think.
• The piece of architecture at Mystic Lake Casino is a teepee...not a pyramid.
• There are not many options for vegetarians at outdoor bbqs...poor Jessie tried to eat saurkraut on a bun!

Friday, July 4: Another day of "Classic American Fun." After picking up Jessie & Maggie, we traveled down to see the infamous Apple Valley parade. Here are some of the highlights:

• getting my picture taken with Norm Coleman
• laughing about the sad, sad summer band camp kids
• making my own Invisible Cart lol cat with Maggie
• watching the crazy, happy Zuhrah dudes in the parade...seriously, it should have been called the Zuhrah Parade. They had go carts, mini-flyers, a steele drum band, bag pipes, traditional band, Eastern Band, Chanters, motorcycle dudes, and probably a million other entries. They were all pretty neat though.

Here is a video Maggie made of the day:

That evening, I went over to Tim's parents for a brief BBQ before the Richfield fireworks, which Tim also shot off. The Richfield fireworks were awesome!!! My brother-in-law Pete took some amazing photos of both the fireworks as well as the Apple Valley parade.

All in all, it was an amazing 4th of July.