Family Fun Weekend!

This past weekend, Uncle Doug (aka "StewCat") and his family came to visit. Accompanying StewCat was my Aunt Peggy, cousin Bridget (11 yrs) and my canine cousin Lucky (6 yrs). It was a rare appearance by the SoDak Stewarts, who reside in Brookings. It's apparently a Stewart tradition to communicate solely through email and avoid all human contact, aside from an occasional phone call on specific holidays (when Grandma Stewart gets a phone call). So, I've never been to Brookings, and I don't think Stew and Momma have visited Brookings within the past four or five years. Then again, it is a whopping four hour drive from here, so can you blame us? Anyway, it was awesome for Claire to meet her extended family, and she's still walking around the house asking, "Where's Bridget?" She really misses her cousin, who played with Claire so nicely. In fact, Claire told both Momma and Stew to "go away" a few different times because she didn't want her play time with Bridget to be interrupted.

As for me, I eventually warmed up to Aunt Peggy and Bridget, but I was not too fond of the baseball cap Uncle StewCat was wearing. In fact, I don't much like anyone to be wearing a hat around my house, and I've even barked relentlessly at Stew on occasions he's worn his JonCrete Construction (for all your concrete needs in Central SoDak) golf hat inside the house. Here's JonCrete Construction owner and all-around nice guy, Johnny Flax, modeling the golf hat at Stew's 20-year high school class reunion in 2006. I just don't like hats. But my cousin, Lucky, doesn't seem to get bothered by anything. He's a chocolate lab that loves wild birds and swimming in lakes. Unfortunately, we could only manage to provide him with a toddler pool in which to dunk his head. You see, while we were all enroute to Bavaria Lake so Lucky could show off his swimming skills, we encountered a little stream at the end of the paved bike path. Normally, there's a plank extended over the stream that's wide enough for a jogging stroller and a four legged dog to comfortably walk across. However, for some reason, the plank has disappeared. The SoDak Stewarts - expert campers - were all wearing comfortable, waterproof sandals allowing them to simply wade across the stream (and push Claire across in her stroller). The Chaska Stewarts, on the other hand, were forced to leap over the stream... which did not turn out well. Without going into much detail, we decided to divert our path back home instead of continuing on to the lake. However, we did stop at the local playground so Claire could show off "her" swings, slides, sandbox and other playground equipment. Even Lucky got into the fun!