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Last night I had a fun night with my friend Daniela at The Walker After Hours. We started with appetizers at La Belle Vie. Years ago I had one of the best meals ever at La Belle Vie when we went with Billy. The sous chef back then had worked under Billy and cooked us an amazing meal. Well the appetizers were pretty good too – personal highlight was the truffle oil potato chips.

Next we headed to The Walker. It was relatively warm (27 degrees) so it was an easy walk. We started by going through the newest exhibition – The Spectacular of Vernacular. We visited the ice bar outside, which was fun but not as cool as the ice bar I visited in London a few years ago. Then we got our picture taken – as seen here. Very Fun!

OK this is what I’ve been hoping to post – today we went to the winter kite flying gig at Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. It was 7 degrees Fahrenheit. But you know what? It didn’t feel that cold – until we started to freeze. If you’ve spent time in Minnesota, you’ll know what I mean.

The wind was almost non-existent. Yet – we managed to get our kites up! The girls earned the roasted marshmallows they had.

It’s hard to get yourself going to something like this – but the group did an amazing job. There were marshmallows, hot chocolate, pretty affordable kites and some amazing kites brought in my kite experts. We had a great time.

An added note for Grandma — we did wear sunscreen.

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All of the Treacy cousins met up for the annual Christmas Pizza party. I think everyone made it, which is fun. Every year we meet up at Broadway Pizza in Minneapolis. And this year we proved that we met in all sorts of weather. The snow was really coming down, In fact I think we were all about 30 minutes late.

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There was a great Groupon on the multi-people bikes at Minnehaha – so we went. I kind of forgot that I don’t really like bikes when I went for this – but I was quickly reminded once we got going. It’s hard to pedal a bike with 5 people on it – and Patrick’s a good biker. But it was beautiful day. And there was a fun historical recreation at one of the houses around Minnehaha. OK, recreation might be over stating it – but the girls got to play some old fashioned games. The Historical Society does a great job on stuff like that.

For folks who don’t know Minneapolis, here’s a quick description…

Overlooking the Mississippi River, Minnehaha Park is one of Minneapolis’ oldest and most popular parks, attracting over 850,000 thousand visitors annually. It is located at the intersection of Hiawatha Ave. and Minnehaha Parkway.

OK I’m catching up with summer highlights. A fun highlight was the Flutag in the Twin Cities. People build vehicles that’s supposed to fly off a ramp and into the Mississippi. Here’s the official description from the web site…

Red Bull Flugtag challenges teams of everyday people to build homemade, human-powered flying machines and pilot them off a 30-foot high deck in hopes of achieving flight! Flugtag may mean “flying day” in German, but all these crafts ultimately splash into the waters below. They are judged not only on their flight’s distance, but creativity and showmanship as well.

The really amazing thing is that 90,000 people showed up to watch it. The population of the city is only 300,000. So 90,000 is quite a feat. They flew the flying machines off a ramp built on Harriet Island – so really anyone on the shores could see pretty well. So even though it was clearly a ton of people it didn’t seem too crowded – once we parked anyways.

You can see our other short but sweet videos here:

The girls and I went to the Bakken with Uncle Billy. We are kinds of spoiled about the Bakken and our fakey Catholic school holidays so we were not pleased to have to share our private museum. But it was fun. Uncle Billy was the mind ball master. Lunch at Snuffy’s after was the least healthy – most tasty meal I’d had in a while.

First Patrick and I went to see A Streetcar Names Desire. I didn’t know the story and had never seen the movie. It was very good. It is a great place to see a show.

One day we all went for the kids’ day at the Guthrie. We got to hike all around the theater. It was fun to talk to the costume person. The work they had done for some of the costumes was so amazing ad detailed. Then the necklace was held together with a safety pin. I was delighted to see that some of my wardrobe is so Guthrie-like.

We got our pictures taken in the Little House on the Prairie costumes.

We went one weekend to the Fat Tire Bike Festival. Patrick and the girls got to ride some tricked out bicycles. But the best part was the sword swallower. You can ask Aine about it any time and she’ll tell you. The guy swallowed a sword that had to be 3 feet long. Kinda creepy, kinda cool. Also on stage were some burlesque-type performers. That may have been Patrick’s favorite part – again kinda creepy. We kind of lost him when they were up on stage but we found him again later exactly where we left him staring up and drooling.

OK I’ve been a total slug about the blog since we’ve been home. Partially because I’ve been so busy with work; partially because it’s about 400 degrees here and we have no air conditioning and that does not lend to computer work. But I’m in the car and have a chance to catch up…

The Walker! We have been there a few times in our month home. They have really great activities. Aine, Kate and I went one Saturday morning to make our 3D map additions. The Walker was creating a big 3D map in the field next to the gallery. Kate and Aine each created pigs from the State Fair, which we then got to post on the map.

A different day we went to see some bands outside. It was produced by the Walk Teen Council, but there were a few families. We had fun playing with the hula hoops and thing in the outdoor space. The girls even participated in a big art project where Aine and Kate answered question about their community and told about a place they wanted to go. Kate said Cost Rica, which was no surprise. Aine said Pennsylvania. The was news to us.

We also got to hike around the Sculpture Gardens with our cousin Will – well really Will is maybe the girls’ second cousin, or cousin once removed but we’re going with cousin.

My other big activity back home with seeing Macbeth at the Guthrie. Macbeth was the shortest and bloodiest of Shakespeare’s plays. This performance was particularly bloody! It was directed by Joe Dowling who always seems to take a show as far as it can go – and then a little bit. I hadn’t seen Macbeth in years. I found it a little bit tough to follow, which I think was a sign of how tired I was. I would go into greater detail but I know I have a PG audience.

I went to the show with friends Kathleen and Bernadine. We had a very nice dinner at Spill the Wine beforehand.