Category: Products & Places

Over Labor Day weekend we took a trip to the North Shore and stayed at Bluefin Bay with some friends. We have gone with them for a few years now. We almost didn’t go this year since we thought it might be hard with two toddlers and two babies (ok, they were 9 months old…not really babies), but it was so much fun and we were so glad we decided to go!

Here’s a little rundown of our trip.

We played at the park.

Looked adorable.

Pretended to shoot things in the arcade.

Did some crafts. The girls were coloring puzzles.

Went swimming. They liked swimming, but they really wanted to be in the hot tub.

The babies were both hungry at the same time, so while we were in Grand Marais (where we did some shopping, sight seeing, rock throwing and had dinner) Trisha and I cozied up in some chairs to feed the kids while the big girls threw rocks! Lots. Of. Rocks.

Bluefin has free packages of s’mores, so every night we went down to the bonfire and roasted marshmallows and ate s’mores until we thought we might explode. Oh wait….that was just me.

There was this goose that would not leave us alone. It was freaking the kids out. Rightfully so. Those things are big. And mean.

Dannie did lots of snacking. Girl likes her food.

There was more rock throwing. This was definitely the most favorite activity of the weekend.

Searching for perfect rocks.

This was right after Maddie and I had a tickle fight on the beach.

Dannie liked the rocks, too, but her main goal was trying to eat them, so you had to keep a pretty close eye on her.

There’s a boardwalk along the lake between the two sections of the resort. It is one of my favorite places there.

More crafts. Last year Maddie wanted nothing to do with rock painting. This year she was so excited and was so sad we wouldn’t let her paint more. I think she painted three. Although she may have painted more, but we only brought three home. They are on our front porch.

More rock throwing. I love Chelsea’s outfit in this one. These girls have such personalities and love to pick out their own clothes!

One afternoon, we took a short hike. The girls were so stinking cute the whole time! Just wait until you see the other pictures! This one just needs to be blown up and framed somewhere!

The dads carried the babies around in these backpacks that we rented from the resort. The kids loved them.

This is just because Chelsea is adorable and I love her little face!

There was a brief break from rock throwing to eat Cheerios.

The Fisher family.

A little North Shore family photo.

As we were leaving, the girls wanted to hold hands. They held hands almost all the way back to the car.

Not only can you rent backpacks, you can rent bikes, too. So we got a couple bikes and a bike trailer for the girls and took a little ride along the shore. The real reason for the ride was that I wanted some ice cream. So we thought a little exercise beforehand was a good idea.

More rock throwing. I love that they both have tutus on.

This was what we got to wake up to every day. We had the windows cracked open so you could hear the waves crashing and the birds in the morning. I could have stayed in bed and looked at this view the whole weekend and been perfectly happy!

We stopped to visit Chuck’s dad on the way home and after our visit and the long, exciting, fun-filled weekend…we had two tired little girls on our hands.

We are so happy we were able to make the trip to Bluefin work again. I hope we get to go every year! And we are so blessed to have wonderful friends with kids the same age to share the weekend with! HERE are all the pictures from our trip.

Here are Trisha’s posts from Bluefin in case you are interested.

• Friday Night at Bluefin Bay
• Saturday at Bluefin & Grand Marais
• The Chelsea & Maddie ‘Show’ at Bluefin

Back in August, we made a trip down to Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska to visit both sets of Chuck’s grandparents. We hadn’t been down there in a long time and since Chuck had the month off (this was when he was taking his paternity leave), it was time to take the trip down.

Luckily, Chuck’s mom was able to come with us. This meant we had an extra set of hands in the back of the car to help with the girls. She read books, gave bottles, had fun new crafts for Maddie to try….it was wonderful! Plus we were really happy we got to spend a bunch of time with her since she spends the winters in Florida.

Linda (Chuck’s mom) stayed with her parents and we set up camp at the other set of grandparents’ house. We had the whole basement to ourselves and didn’t have to worry about a bunch of stuff getting in the way at their houses.

Here’s a rundown of our trip.

Riding in the car. Grandma brought pipe cleaners and made whatever Maddie requested. This time it was a camera.

There were lots of walks. Usually they were spent to kill some time before a meal or to collect some goodies.

Sometimes we used our collected goodies for a craft project.

There was silliness!

Lots of visits to various parks.

And sliding.

And swinging.

And a trip to a farmer’s market where Maddie pointed out all the foods she knew.

And some walking hand-in-hand with great grandma Hays.

Playing with chains attached to walls. (We were making a pit stop to feed Dannie and Maddie decided this chain was loads of fun!)

We ate candy.

We ate ice cream cake.

We played with cousins.

We fed fish at the zoo.

And looked at Gorillas.

We waved at the underwater creatures.

And even got to brush goats.

We played in the sand.

We posed for pictures.

There was more swinging.

We walked across a really cool bridge between Iowa and Nebraska.

Played at another park…where we were surprised that Maddie fearlessly walked to the top of this slide and didn’t skip a beat and slid right down.

And did some more swinging.

We played in in the water.

And played dress-up at the Visitor Center.

Oh, and made cute faces.

We went to a splash pad and played in the water.

And posed for some more pictures.

We were able to get a pretty good family photo of us (considering the kids weren’t in the mood for photos) with grandma and grandpa Schminke (Chuck’s mom’s parents) before we left.

Then we drove home and grandma made more of Maddie’s requests out of pipe cleaners. This time it was glasses!

We had a wonderful trip and it was so fun to bring the girls when they could enjoy many of the fun things there. And it was fun to explore some of the things we’ve never done before. Playing at parks and running around splash pads is usually questionable behavior without children in tow.

Believe it or not, there are actually a bunch of pictures I left out from the trip. If you want to take a look at the ones that didn’t make the cut, HERE is a link to all the pictures from our trip.

We have been doing a lot of fishing. Maddie really likes it and we have fun bringing her. We have been trying out a bunch of lakes in the area to see what we like best. And before this outing, we got her a fishing pole. We let her pick out the one she wanted. It’s a Barbie one and there’s a little rubber fish you can tie on the end of it to help them learn to cast. She would drop it in the water over and over and over, each time proclaiming “I got one!”

This was on the 4th of July. It was really hot this day! We tried out one lake first. we weren’t having much luck catching anything, but Maddie was having fun!

Here’s a video of Maddie.

After not having much luck at this lake, we went to another lake by our house. Chuck caught a few little fish, but Maddie really liked being able to stand (and sit)

in the water and fish.

Maddie was really starting to get the hang of casting.

After all this fishing fun, we went to Wendy’s for lunch. Then it was home for the girls to nap so Chuck and I could clean before his mom and step dad came over to grill and hang out.

We took some pictures of the girls in their festive attire, ate some watermelon, played on the porch, ate dinner on the porch, rode bikes, played with fireworks, ate popsicles and played some hockey.

It was a very busy and extremely fun day.

We really wanted to take Maddie out for fireworks. My dad was going to come and sit at our house while Dannie slept, but Maddie wasn’t feeling well a couple days before the 4th, so we decided we would try next year. Plus, they were really late and Maddie isn’t used to staying up past her bedtime. Oh well. Next year!

I hope you had a wonderful 4th of July with your family!