Memorial Weekend

Well, so much for the "unofficial start to summer". Windy and cool doesn't exactly feel like summer to me, but oh well - we still had a great weekend up north. On Friday afternoon we headed up to Cross Lake with our friends Chad and Beth and their two boys, Nathan and David. Chad's parents own a beautiful cabin on the lake and offered to let us stay there while they were out of town for Memorial Weekend. The kids were so excited to go to "the cabin". The whole drive up Carson kept asking, "Mommy we go to cabin?". When we finally rolled in well after their bedtime, the kids were ecstatic...and didn't go to bed until after 10pm.

Saturday was by far the nicest day of the weekend up where we were at. By mid morning it had warmed up enough for the kids to play outside, and play they did! We brought along our bounce house for the kids and that was a big hit. Little David didn't quite know what to think of it, but he seemed to like watching the older kids in it. Once the thrill of the bounce house wore off, we busted out the bubble maker Peyton had gotten for her birthday (great gift Shane & Emily!!!). Oh my - that was like Christmas times one hundred. Check out these great pictures of bubble mania:





We also ventured out for a quick boat ride on the lake. The kids really thought their life jackets were cool, and of course, Carson gave us all a good laugh by wanting his jacket on OVER the life jacket. He also gave Daddy the nickname "Muscle man" because he saw Daddy was holding the boat next to the dock while everyone got in. The excitement over the life jackets continued even after the boat ride was done - Peyton wouldn't take hers off and wore it for a good 45 minutes after we came in from our boat ride.










Later that evening we laid low around the cabin and the kids took turns riding the old wooden rocking horse. Every time Carson got on for a turn he'd sing "Rock A Bye Baby" at the top of his lungs. How relaxing.



Sunday we decided not to go to church. The guys went fishing in the yucky, wet weather, while Beth and I stayed at the cabin with the kids. We had to be quite creative with ways to entertain them, but it was a fun time. We played with toys, played dress up, played the piano & sang silly songs, and finally broke down and put in a movie for them. The kids were excited to see some of the fish the guys caught when they finally came in from fishing - then Beth and I got a much-needed break from the kids and headed in to Brainerd to do a little shopping while the kids napped. Ahhh, that was nice.







That night we took the kids to Crafts 'n Cones for ice cream. We had a great time, although it was pretty messy!! And the kids had to eat some of Daddy's cone - but they had to fight for it!! As we were leaving the boys stopped to smell the roses...I mean the sunflowers. :)







Monday we spent the morning cleaning up around the cabin and packing up to head home. We had a fabulous weekend except for the phone call we got Sunday afternoon saying our house had been hit in the hail story. I'll save that for another post, though. Hope everyone else had a nice, enjoyable Memorial Day Weekend!!