Midsummer's Day 2014

While most of my Midsummer's Day experience revolved around the Kubb pitch, Mr. Pihl and I meandered downtown for our lunch break, joined in the evening's traditional festivities, and ended the evening at the local watering hole for an adult beverage with my in-laws.

Good day.



The Midsummer's Day festivities are kicked off with a procession Downtown lead by the high school's army of Swedish dancers.

This happened well before most of the vendors were set up and waaaaay before any normal person was awake and functioning enough to come be a festival-goer, yet the crazy kubb-ers were in attendance to be announced.

Read: US.

Some pretty amazing gals were up bright and early to sell breakfast burritos for a cause near and dear to my heart.

Hi, teammates!  I'll be walking with these ladies for in November, but that's for another post.

Anywho, right after the morning processional we had to scoot back to the kubb-craziness a few blocks away.

Skip forward 3 hours...

Hello, Viking on a Stick!

What is a Viking on a Stick, you ask?

I'll tell you.

It's amazingness (and the opposite of low carb, but hey!  It's cheat day!).

A Viking on a Stick is a skewered Swedish meatball, a hunk of Swedish rye bread, another Swedish meatball, and another hunk of Swedish rye bread (notice a trend?), that has been battered and fried.

Don't knock it until you try it.

Seriously.  I was once skeptical like you are right now.  But then...

Yum.

You haven't lived until you've tried one (or four).

We snarfed down our sticks along with beer and brats in the festival's beer garden.

Mmmmm...

Kubb fuel, maynard.

After returning to the kubb pitch, and failing to move on to the Championship round (are we surprised?), Mr. Pihl and I hunkered down in lawn chairs, ate homemade ice cream, and prepared to watch the highlight of Midsummer's.

The raising of the maypole.

It looked like a LOT of work to get it all the way up (and I think Mr. Pihl was experiencing a bit of PTSD - he used to be one of those high school dancer punks expected assigned to raise the thing).

Here is the maypole process in photos:

Whew!  I'm exhausted just looking at them doing the work.

After the maypole was up, this happened:

And then they announced that alumni was encouraged to join in the dancing.  So this happened:

10 points to the first person to spot my husband!

In conclusion, Midsummer's was great fun (even if my competitive self didn't win the kubb tournament).

BUT - - - I did win my personal best steps on my fitbit!

Yowza!