We had a wonderful trip to Minnesota with tons of family! Aunt Deedee has had a cabin on Elbow Lake, outside of Cook, MN, for over 30 years. We spent time there when we were Kali and Sabrina's age and it was an amazing treat to get to take our girls there this year. Cook is quite a drive from Minneapolis, so it was a long day getting there. Thankfully we had Nana flying and driving with us, and we all survived despite several stops on the way, but I'll never forget Sabrina clawing at her straps on the carseat the minute she saw Poppy at the lake and as we unclipped her, she leapt out the WINDOW of the car, into his arms, stripped down naked and jumped right into the lake. We had arrived! It was classic. The setup couldn't have been better. We had two cabins side-by-side, right on the edge of the lake. We were about a 5 minute walk to the lodge where they had a small restaurant, a bar, ice cream (!!), and a swimming beach and dock. Also, half-way to the beach was a great swingset which, for reasons still unknown to us, Sabrina nicknamed "her office" and she had to spend LOTS of hours at the office during the week. One day she even "hired 6 coworkers"...where does she come up with this stuff? We had Grandma Gail and Grandpa Rich in our cabin with us and Nana, Poppy, Tim, Erica and Baby Lindsey were in the other cabin. Deed bounced back and forth from her cabin (about one mile across the lake) to ours. We spent one full day out at Deed's cabin where we fished, canoed, napped, read, swam, and pumped water! Sabrina loved pumping water and we got several great pictures to add to Deed's collection of all of us pumping water at the cabin when we were Sabrina's age. Great continuity! We spent one rainy day driving into Ely where we had lunch, played at a park, and shopped around the cute little town that serves as the gateway to the Boundary Waters. Most of the other days we let the little babies wiggle on a blanket, we went swimming at the beach, we went out on the boat (Deed's boat and one that we rented) and enjoyed the down time. We didn't do great fishing on this trip (pretty skunked, really - you can see the photos) but Grandpa Rich brought Sabrina a Dora fishing pole and they had a few good sessions down at the dock.
Sabrina made more progress on her potty training while we were there - and impressed us all by doing a great job without diapers all the way there on the plane and in the car. She held it while driving, ran to the bathroom right when we stopped, and didn't have any accidents all day. Phew. We had a few accidents throughout the week so we're not quite there yet, but making progress. Sabrina slept great there too. This was our first trip since she's been in a big girl bed and she had a twin bed in her room and she didn't miss a beat. Just jumped into her bed and fell asleep on the first night. She did wake up once in the middle of the night and woke EVERYBODY up she was crying so hard. Poor girl couldn't figure out where she was! But other than that, she did really well.
Kalira turned 3 months old while we were there and is SO close to rolling over! Lindsey was moving all over the place so it was fun to see where Kali will be pretty soon. It was really great to see the two girls together - they grabbed each other's toys, grabbed each other's hair, punched, swatted and kicked each other - I see a lifelong friendship ahead. :-) Can't wait to get them together again soon.
We also had a great night and morning in Duluth at Deed's house before we flew home. We saw the Aerial Bridge, we visited a beach on Lake Superior, Sabrina and Deed baked cupcakes, we cooked a wonderful meal at her house, watched the Olympics, then spent the next morning on a boat tour in the Harbor of Lake Superior. Our drive back to the airport and flight home were long, but thankfully we had Nana and Poppy with us for that trip so it made it easier. We all came home happy and tired with great memories from the Land of 10,000 Lakes! Thanks for a wonderful week, Aunt Deed!
Now we are looking forward to another trip to Seattle next week...without grandparents!...I hope we can manage.
No comments:
Post a Comment