Vacation Avocation!

I've been absent around here for about a month and that is due to near constant travel!  While it was wonderful; traveling with 2 young kids might be more of a job than just staying put!  :)  We kicked off our travels with a trip to Southern Minnesota to see some of my family and to celebrate my Grandpa's 81st birthday.  Somehow there were very few pictures taken that weekend, I think we were too busy catching up and eating all of the great food my grandma makes!

We spent a week at home and then we headed out to Northern Wisconsin for a week long stay at a cabin with my husbands family.  We had a great time; and while I was hoping to spend much of our week doing this.  

We actually spent most of it doing anything but!  We'll hit the highlights! :)  We took the Spooner train, which was nice but perhaps a bit spendy for what it actually was.  We did get a nice river view where we stopped to turn around.

 We also swam at Shell Lake, it was so rocky on the beach and in the water that my kids spent more time on the playground than in the water!  

A short trip up to Hayward to see a lumberjack show was entertaining too. That wasn't all the driving we did as we also drove up to the Apostle Islands and took a cruise, which would had been much more enjoyable had we not had a crazy little guy with us who did not enjoy being cooped up on a boat for 3 hours!  

We also spent some time walking among the falls at Amnicon State Park.  

Did I mention we saw a wild black bear!  Can you even see it?  :) That was one of my favorite parts.

Okay, so we did relax some.  Peyton went fishing for the first time and caught 11 of the tiniest sunfish I've ever seen.  She was in heaven!  Carter just enjoyed  the outdoors and being dirty.

It was a fun filled week and I really enjoyed the beauty of the north woods.  I did however find my solo trip to Target once home to perhaps be more of a vacation than our trip!  Can anyone relate to that?

We recovered from Wisconsin for a few days then headed down to the Des Moines area to stay with my parents and go to Adventureland.  We hadn't been to the water park park there before and had a great time. Of course we still found time for some rides.  I've been coming here my whole life and love sharing the tradition with the kids.

Gotta love our flat state!  You can see forever at times.

We are now home and getting back into routine.  Preschool starts for Peyton right after Labor Day which will be here soon!  I love fall and really love routine.  Back to school has always been one of my favorite times of the year.  I have some new clothes sewn for Carter that I'll be sharing soon and I think I have even have some tutorials coming!  :)