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There are more pictures coming from the main camera, but this is a quick (and surprisingly decent) snapshot from my little pencam while out for a birthday dinner tonight. We had a party at our house yesterday that was supposed to be a pool party in the backyard, but 50°s and windy kept everybody inside instead.

Today, Ella brought snacks to school, and her classmates sang “the earth goes around the sun” for her 6 times. Our family tradition has been to have birthday dinner at Andy’s Garage, but they closed their original St. Paul location back in February. As it turns out, Fiona’s birthday dinner there was our last. Instead, we went to Sweeney’s, which is a bar, but they also have good food and a patio, and it’s not such a bad place to bring the kids to eat. We had a nice bike ride over (Andrew and Tessa joined us for dinner), had a good time, and it was a beautiful night to eat outside.

more pictures to come!

It was a busy sports weekend around here. On Saturday, Autumn and Malte raced in the Oakdale Duathlon. This is a race that Autumn and i have done as a team each of the last two years, and the weather has historically been in the 40s and raining. This year Autumn and Malte each raced solo, and it was perfect weather. Malte had a super fast bike ride, and a good finish, though the run really wore him out. It’s also the first race where Autumn used her new (last fall) triathlon bike (bought on an amazing unmissable deal), and she had a great finish. I’ll let her post more details later.

That afternoon, i got a nice bike ride in, then Ella went to a friend’s house for a sleepover and we had a few friends over to hang out around the fire. The original plan to set up the slip’n’slide was dropped because it cooled off a lot in the afternoon.

Sunday morning, Autumn went out for a trail ride on her mountain bike while i had a quiet morning relaxing with the girls. In the afternoon, we went to check out a Bike Friday tandem bike. We aren’t ready to buy one, but trying to plan ahead a bit. These are nice because they can adjust to a wide range of riders. You can adjust the bike as the child stoker (the rider in back) grows so it’s usable for a long time. They aren’t cheap, but maybe there’s a used one around somewhere.

Lots more pictures of the weekend here!

We went to the Mayday festival at Powderhorn Park this past Sunday (a little late this year, with May 1 falling on a Tuesday). It started as a very unsettled day, weather-wise, with a 50% chance of rain and lots of wind. As the morning went on though, it just got nicer and nicer, and by 2:00 it was downright beautiful out. Even the wind calmed down, so we hitched up the bikes (me with E in the trail-a-bike and Malte pulling Fi in the Burley, Autumn unfortunately working) and headed out.

I hadn’t been to a Mayday there in a few years, but it was a good thing we biked. We started seeing cars parked solidly on the street 4 blocks away, people lining Bloomington Ave. to watch the parade. We caught the end of it as we circled around and went into the park to see the last few floats come in.

We walked halfway around the lake, watching some of the musicians, listening to the Hari Krishnas chanting and losing count of the hundreds of bicycles parked everywhere you looked. Lots of neat bikes, but mainly it was neat to see that so many had arrived by bike. Judging by the number of cars though, it was probably less than half of the total crowd.

We sat on the hill for a while trying to watch the big ceremony with guys on stilts and more puppets, but the girls were too antsy to sit still that long, so we went around a bit further where we found an area to make your own little puppet. Ella was immediately interested and started working on a beautiful butterfly while Fiona climbed on some rocks.

One last food stop to share a root beer float, then a few minutes on the playground before we headed home. Lots more pictures in the Mayday picture gallery.