First bank holiday of the year

So I know America has a huge budget deficit but they also have a huge bank holiday deficit with the first holiday of the year (apart from new year's day) coming at the end of May - Memorial Day which is when American's remember the last time they got a holiday. They typically get around this obvious government blunder by 'working from home' a lot. E.g. 'It's Friday, I'm working from home', or 'WFH, sick dog' and the like.

Anyway the weekend we just had was simply glorious, we did some work on the screen porch getting it ready for the Summer and spent a couple of afternoons on our local lakeside beach
I also made it out on the bike for a ride. I'm doing the MS 150, a 150 mile bike ride over a couple of days from Duluth to Minneapolis in order to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis society. The biggest challenge is that I have to complete the 75 miles on the first day by 1:30 in the afternoon in order to watch the England USA world cup match. So I've been getting up and out on the bike before 6am in order to get 45 miles done before 9am and not disrupt the weekend too much. If you are interested in sponsoring me you need to do it soon as the ride is on the 12th of June and I got a late start due to both my natural tardiness and some pain with the US Embassy. If you can sponsor me click here to make an online donation.

Becky also finished nursery this week and they had a 'graduation' ceremony (personally I'm with Mr Incredible on this concept but everyone else seems to love them).
Here's Becky looming over the rest of her class
Becky and her friend Lexa


Our church also did a food packaging event for Feed My Starving Children, a charity organisation founded in Minnesota which uses volunteers to package nutritionally balanced meals for areas of world where they desperately need food. We were really short of volunteers so the kids and grandparents pitched in on a few occasions and ultimately we hit the target of packaging 300,000 meals in 3 days with only half the number of people normally required.

And finally, Becky was in her end of year ballet show dressed as a chick - birdy song anyone?