Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the car accident that changed all of our lives. It was also the day we arrived back home after spending a week at Pine Beach Resort on Side Lake Minnesota with family.
For Patti and myself, the vacation was a bit subdued. We kept track of the kids, kept them fed and safe, played with the kids when our bodies let us, and slept when we could.
The kids, my nephew Ben (pictured above with Claire) and my brother Matt kept us awash in fresh fish all week, and we brought a few meals home of fish as well.
This is just a shot of the cabin we had for our family (my dad rents out most of the resort for the whole family) with Piper on her favorite perch when she would be banished from the cabin after swimming until she had dried off in the sun.
We had a brief experiment, mostly as a joke, tethering Baby Violet, which really didn’t work well, but was funny enough to take a photo of.
One of the traditions there is celebrating all of the summer birthdays the extended family has, at Bimbo’s Octagon, which is a pizza, music, bar, and arcade on Side Lake.
My BIL Keith make birthday cupcakes for the occasion which were consumed with great pleasure and gusto after short work was made of 6 extra large pizzas.
Piper got as much of a swimming/retrieving workout every day as my body could handle. The walk to the beach, and then the long walk out to the end of the dock, the walk back to shore to accept the retrieving dummy from Piper, and the walk back out to the end, I would do until my body could not take it any longer …
Then Piper would perch on her stump in the sun to dry off, keeping track of all goings-on.
The blueberries were just getting going, and for those up in northern Minnesota, I would say this next week is going to be peak for picking.
Baby Violet caught on quick, and happily stuffed her face the entire time.
The kids all chipped in but were far more interested in immediate consumption than winter food preservation, which is fine. We went as a family the first time, and then once I realized how great of a negative impact the picking had on me physically, Patti went back with Nell once, and then just with Piper for a third picking. Piper even caught and ate a chipmunk on the last foray. <grin> She does love her crunchable rodent treats.
We ended the trip with a bit over a gallon of berries we had not consumed, which will make a fine batch of blueberry preserves for winter sandwiches in the kid’s school lunches.
Every day, except for Friday, which was cold and rainy, the kids spent the greater part of their time in and around the water.
Baby Violet would stay in the water until she was shivering so badly she could not hold onto her plastic sand toys and needed a warm up wrapped in a towel and a robe. Temps never exceeded 75 during the day, and often the water was warmer than the air temperature. The cool was a nice break from the baking heat we had back at home in the weeks before the trip.
I started a sourdough starter the first day we arrived, and by the 4th day it was wonderfully sour. We went through a lot of bread, and I am happy to say I baked it all myself up there in the cabin. Everything from sandwiches, to French Toast, to breadcrumbs for Crabby Patties (crab cakes, made with northern pike instead of crab, which honestly tastes better than crab).
We made a day trip to my Cousin Sue and her husband Jeff’s homestead, lovingly referred to as Podunk Paradise. Everything from a 32X70′ high tunnel, to a pond, free range chickens, and a herding dog. The kids ate themselves silly on raspberries and fresh veggies all day, and we ended it with grilled pork sirloins, more veggies, and a Patitza for desert.
I am quite envious of the high tunnel. The plants they have in it are ahead of where mine were before we left our house.
We even got a visit in with my uncle Joel who lives on another lake in the area. The kids love playing with his dogs, and the perennial gardens Aunt Juanita has created there are stunning.
The trip up, which if driven straight through, is under 4 hours, we stretched out with a lot of breaks for Patti and myself to stretch out, and split into two days. Up, and back, we stayed with our friends the Clements in Duluth. They have two beautiful daughters the age of our two middle kids, and the kids had a great time playing together, making messes, and putting on “fashion shows” of the myriad of Halloween costumes they have collected.
Their neighbor Jon, whom I met years ago when they moved to Duluth, had a bonfire both nights we stayed there, which was a lot of fun and we (adults) stayed up laughing and drinking until the wee hours of the early morning while Piper happily hunted chipmunks in the woodpiles.
We made a short jaunt on Sunday nearly up to Two Harbors, stopping at Kendals Fish Shop for smoked fish, cheese curds and crackers for lunch, then back to the pebble beach just south of the Sucker River where to my and Patti’s delight, we found that unlike our previous daughter’s toddler forays onto pebbled beaches, Baby Violet only wanted to throw rocks into the water and not put them into her mouth, which freed us up to enjoy the beach and view as well.
And now we are home, safe and sound. The only trauma of the vacation was experienced by Baby Violet when Patti set her on a log in order to put a shoe back on her, and to all of our horror, discovered the log was the home to a nest of wood-burrowing bald-faced hornets which swarmed Baby Vi and stung her 8 times. Luckily, other than the initial pain of the stings, she suffered no adverse reaction and was back to her normal happy self in a few hours. Here at home, the gardens grew gangbusters, there are ripe tomatoes, beans need to be picked, and plants need to be tied up. All of the cats, and the bunny, were happy to see us and none the worse for our being gone. I think it is going to take Patti and myself a while to recover from the adverse physical trauma of the drive itself, but we made it home safe, the kids had a great time, and it is good to be home.
