23 July 2010

The Friday Five...Vacation Edition!

We are probably on our way home as you read this after a week on Lake Ossawinamakee near Brainerd where we rented a cabin. The cabin was perfect and while the swimming right at the cabin was pretty weedy and mucky, the lake was beautiful and there were plenty of places to pull up and swim or just jump in the middle of the lake.

It was a relaxing and fun filled week and will be hard to narrow down into just 5 things. So I will try to keep the words short and just stick in a bunch of pictures. Here goes...my favorite 5 things this week...

1. Grandparents

We were fortunate to have my parents go up with us on Thursday and stay until Monday when E's parents came to stay until we went home today. I hope that some day our kids realize how lucky they are to have the grandparents they do. They are beyond awesome.

2. Water Sports

Anytime we get to go on the boat is a good time for us, but using it every day of the week is heavenly! E made his goal of skiing all seven days in a row. I did ski too, but we don't need to grace this blog with any pics of that. I definitely got an upper body workout tubing with the kids and trying to keep them all on the tube...they are beginning to enjoy a wild ride and it takes all I've got to keep them all on! They are getting so brave! Both Aves and Beckett used the ski trainer for the first time this year and with some encouragement and modeling from their big bro even can wave, do "muscles", and make faces for the camera. Tate tried skiing on real skis a couple times...it was pretty hard without skis that were tied together and we didn't want to scare him from doing it, so we decided to wait until next summer. We hope to have them all skiing soon!

3. Fishing

There was a fishing trip every morning after breakfast {there are not many actual pictures of the fishing trips because I stayed home to run while the kids were out with Dad and the grandpas}. Tate is quite the avid fisherman and would pretty much do that the entire week with no rest. Tate graduated midweek to a junior rod and Beckett got his own Batman fishing pole towards the end of the week and is very happy to not be using an extra pink princess pole anymore!

4. Other Brainerd-y things

Nisswa Turtle Races

Lots of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox...the kids can now pick them out from miles away...literally {because they're that big!}



Pirate's Cove for our first ever round of family mini golfing

The golfing was pretty funny...the two bigger kids did pretty well. Beckett did it the way he was supposed to for two holes, then would just tee off, run to his ball, pick it up, set it down two inches from the hole, putt it in, and scream as though he got a hole in one. Hilarious.

5. Slowing down enough to really enjoy the kids at these ages

I have absolutely loved this summer of 2, 4, and 6. It is a huge difference from last year of 1, 3, and 5 when every outing I had three kids running in three different directions. They are all so funny, kind, charming, and challenging in their own little ways.

So that's it...my fave five from the week. These actually are only a FEW of the pics I edited last night. They actually look better in color and if you want to view the whole album you can find it here!

Hard to believe its over again. Did we want to come home?

Heck no!

I just have to give out a shout out to E, who gave me a big ole' push to go up north this year. I wanted to work on saving our money for our two trips next spring/summer, but he reminded me how much we need this.

Now, onto the laundry!