Nelson Family Blog: July 2026

Thursday, September 24, 2026

July 2026

Wow, I am super behind again on blogging. It doesn't help that I feel like I am busier right now than I have ever been in my life. So, life has been crazy.

July continued to be a busy month. Emma finished up fastpitch softball. She had a good season and had a lot of fun. But, I think she was ready to be done with softball. She transitioned really nicely into band. At the end of July, going into August, Emma had two weeks of band camp. She had 8 hour days, but she loved it. She has met so many good friends, and she is just loving band. It has been great overall.

John and I have really embraced being band parents. John is involved with the Dude crew, so he gets to help build all the props, and I help the dude crew with loading and unloading the truck, and bringing the props onto the field. I have also helped serve some meals, bring food, helped with uniform fittings, on a committee for Festival of Bands, and I might have to chaperone this weekend. It's been insane. It's basically just like everywhere else that needs volunteers, 20% of the parents do 80% of the work. It's fine for now, but we might get burned out eventually.

Elliott had a great summer as well. He continued playing baseball this summer and then finished up the season in August. His second team had Rory and Jacob on the team, so that was fun to know some other people on the team. His team for the second half of the season wasn't very good, but they all seemed to have fun and have a good season. I think they won 3 games or something like that. But, it was a great summer of learning for Elliott, and I think he. liked it enough to play again next summer. And I did enjoy watching him play all summer.

John and I volunteered at Lallycooler again this summer. We worked in the beer tent again for a few hours. Lallycooler was at the Canaries Stadium this summer, which was nice for us. I will say it was super hot outside, and the crowd was a lot smaller this year. We enjoyed watching Josh Ross, Gavin DeGraw, Bow Wow, Goodroad Band, and Jason Derulo. I really liked Josh Ross and Gavin DeGraw, and the rest were just ok. We really did enjoy a free music festival, even though we sweated our butts off the entire time. Lallycooler did announce they will not be doing another music festival next year, so that's a bummer.. But it was fun while it lasted.

Towards the end of July, John and I took a weekend away to the cities. We went to SDSU Night at Target Field on Friday evening. It was a beautiful evening for baseball, and we had a lot of fun at the game. It was one of the most boring baseball games ever though. I think we saw like 6 hits total, and the Twins lost 0-2. So, overall, not very exciting, but we always enjoy a nice summer night at Target Field. We also each got a Twins/SDSU hat and enjoyed some good baseball food.

After the game, we drove to St. Paul to stay at the St. Paul Hotel again. It was pretty late by the time we got there, and were ready to call it a night. On Saturday, we found a Caribou for breakfast, and then we headed to Stillwater to shop and eat lunch. It was fun to be back in Stillwater, we walked across the bridge into Wisconsin, shopped a little, and then ate lunch at Nacho Mama's. It was delicious. After the partial day in Stillwater, we headed back to St. Paul to head to the Saints Game. The Saints game was super hot and muggy, but we stumbled across a free lunch, complete with burgers, brats, drinks, and salads, We didn't know what it was for, but it was great. After supper, we grabbed a couple beers and enjoyed a baseball game. The Saints won, and we really enjoyed ourselves. We headed back to the hotel for the hight.

On Sunday, we shopped at Ikea and walked through Mall of America for a while. Then, we headed for home. The kids stayed at Jim and Barb's house while we were gone, and they had a lot of fun just having some summer nights on the farm.

That was our July in a nutshell. We had a great, busy month of July. It was mostly hot, dry, and muggy. But, we really enjoyed our outdoor activities and tried to enjoy our time outside.