July 8, 2018 - Earl's 75th Birthday

June 28, 2018 was a milestone birthday for me, my 75th. That called for a special celebration with a small group of family and friends. We rented the Kirby Puckett suite at Target Field for a June 24 afternoon baseball game between the Minnesota Twins and the Texas Rangers. This greeting was displayed on one of the big screen TV’s in the suite when we arrived. I’m taking a week off from nature photos to show you some of the photos taken by people at the party.

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Diana surprised me with a special, one-of-a-kind, personalized Twins jersey.

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This is the inside room of the suite. It was air conditioned and all the snacks and food were included. The windows look out over the field and the leftmost panel is a door leading to open-air seating for watching the game. Notice Kirby Puckett’s signature on the wall above the windows.

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Here’s the outside seating area. In the front row (from left to right) are granddaughter Riley Hestwood, grandsons Connor and Dylan, their mom, Amanda, and dad, Nathan (Diana’s son), and Diana’s sister, Deb Kildahl. Top row, John Mirocha, my younger son Tim, and Marilyn Blomberg.

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We had a delicious confetti cake. The food service people were a little concerned because they thought we might want to put 75 candles on the cake and light all of them. Diana assured them we would only use two candles, a 7 and a 5.

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Posing in front of Kirby’s #34 jersey are my fishing buddy Jim Blomberg (28 years of fishing weekends at our lake home) and his wife Marilyn, along with me and Diana.

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Having some sort of deep discussion are (left to right) my sister Esther Nelson, sister-in-law Audrey Orf, my younger son Tim, and my older son Dan.

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Watching the game outside are Jim and Marilyn Blomberg and Bruce and Bethany Harpster. Bruce is an alternate energy guru and has been of great help working on our solar panels, generator, and wind turbine at our home in northern Minnesota. We also enjoy throwing around wacky ideas with Bruce.

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Here’s my birding buddy from “up north,” Shawn Conrad and his wife Kari.

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A great big “thank you” to Diana and her friend Linda Russel for all the work they did in planning the party and making sure everything went smoothly. A great time was had by all and the Twins won, 2-0!

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