The Annual Minnesota Trip

I don't always love my job. Spending most days getting insulted and disrespected by 3rd-5th grade students with "emotional disabilities" takes its toll on me. This school year I was spit on, sworn at, called every name in the book, and dodged furniture either being thrown or tipped over in my direction. One of the things that gets me through each week is the knowledge that each summer, I get around 10 weeks off to enjoy life work and mostly stress-free. And the best part is that it allows us the opportunity to enjoy our home state of Minnesota during its best season!

The new lake has lots of pelicans!

My OB recommended flying over driving, so Noah and I flew and poor Brian drove solo. In order to allow Brian to pick us up from the airport on each leg of the trip, I booked evening flights. Big mistake. Both of our flights to and from MN were delayed. Frontier apologized by giving me $60 in vouchers, but I don't think I'll ever be using them! Despite our bad fortune in on-time departures, Noah was his usual silly self in the airports and made everyone smile. I'm so lucky to have such an easy, funny kid!

Flying on his dragon on the way to our gate at MSP.

We left just two days after my last training of the year, in time to attend my step-dad Ed's retirement party on June 13th. We usually try to avoid starting our trip so early into summer because the weather can still be pretty iffy through early June. However our plan was to stay a month so in order to accomplish that before travel restrictions were put on me, we had to make it as early as possible. We avoided the lake place right away because Ed's siblings were in town and they all headed out there for a rainy weekend of fishing. Brian and I instead spent the first week with his parents. We had dinner with my brother-in-law and his wife, Brian's grandparents, and we also had dinner one night with Brian's aunt and uncle. It's always such a treat to see extended family since it happens so rarely for us. Most of the week with my in-laws included rain, so we weren't super adventurous. We did make a few trips to the country club pool, and Noah was once again brave enough to try the water slide. He asked me to catch him, but being super pregnant didn't make it very easy. He did it once and then chickened out on his second attempt. But he did it again a couple of weeks later when Papa Tom was willing to catch him. Brian got in a few rounds of golf on drier days. We also went to see the new How to Train Your Dragon movie. Noah was upset at a few parts. The second movie is definitely scarier than the first! In between all of these events, we also spent a couple of evenings with my dad, and saw my best friend from high school and her son. We only see each other once a year, so it's pretty wild to see her little baby suddenly turned into a walking toddler. All of us attended a Twins game, and they actually won!

At the pool:

How amazing is this picture? I die.

Other fun:

Catching turtles in the backyard

At the park

How To Train Your Dragon 2

Catching frogs at Papa Jeff's

Twins Win!

After a week, we headed out to my parents' new cabin. We spent several evenings cruising the lake on the new pontoon, and fished off the dock. A couple of nights we had bonfires in the firepit, and Noah ate s'mores and lit sparklers (or as he sometimes pronounced, sprinklers). Each evening after Noah went through the whole "everyone must come sing to me" routine, the adults stayed up and played Phase 10. I lost every single round until the very last game on the very last night. I've never had such bad luck before! A couple of nights I also put in drink requests for Brian so that I could sample a couple of sips of my mom's favorite cocktails. It was so hard spending 2+ weeks at the cabin without indulging in margaritas and stormy nights. Ah well, totally worth it! On the 4th we played some lawn games, cruised the lake, and had a fire at night. We thought about going into town for fireworks, but decided to stick around the lake and see how people out there celebrate. It was a great idea, because all of the surrounding neighbors had to have spent hundreds of dollars each on their own displays. And it definitely went on sporadically for a lot longer than a typical fireworks show. Plus, no traffic and crowds! 

Learning to swim. Kind of.

On the 4th I posted this on FaceBook and claimed that I ate more hot dogs than Joey Chestnut.

Baking patriotic cookies and being silly

It's crazy to think that next year, another tiny little person who we know so little about right now will be in all of these pictures. So exciting, and I can't wait!