The weekend is here and so is the warm and sunny weather in MN!  We began our morning with brunch with our fabulous friends, Mike and Kyra Brinker.  We were invited over for a delicious brunch.  If you were wondering, Kyra is a bit of Rachel Rae/ Martha Stewart when it comes to brunch.  Nobody left hungry!   We enjoyed catching up on all the summer happenings.

After our visit, we headed over to the fairgrounds in Rochester for the AKC Agility Trials.  This competitition involves pure breed dogs doing all the same hurdles, jumps, tunnels, and balance beams that you see on those really cool programs on Animal Planet.  All the kids were saying “Hey, this just like Air Bud and Firehouse Dog!”   We met some very friendly dog owners from the Twin Cities area who kindly shared their shade from the hot sun and gave us all the ins and outs of the competition.  This was very helpful to us, since this was our very first Agility Competition.  We spent a few hours watching experts and novice dogs and trainers alike. 

In the end, we all agreed that our own Gracie would not likely stack up against these well trained pups

–although we still think she has the cuteness factor going for her! 

We headed home for a little R and R in the afternoon.  In the evening, we went on to see a performing arts group, the Park Players, at Rochester Civic Theatre.  These talented young men did their own renditions of Shakespeare.  Kadi was pleased to see several of the friends she performed with in Hello Dolly!  this summer.  Many laughs and death scenes later (which the boys loved best of course), we ended our evening with a short walk along the Zumbro River to see the falls in downtown Rochester.

Stay Tuned for more on our Staycation tomorrow.

Vicki’s Note: The above post was written by Mike. I must add that everything we enjoyed today was FREE! You have to love that!