bear lake

Today, it's a travelogue from our relaxing, three-day getaway to Bear Lake last week. Tom was at scout camp up there so my friend, Crystal, invited us to stay at her family's "cabin" (otherwise known as a big, gorgeous house in a gated community overlooking the lake). I never turn that offer down so I packed up the kids and we headed up.

We spent Sunday hanging out at the house and going on a 4-wheeler ride. Monday was adventurous--as we were loading up Crystal's car to go down to the beach we noticed that one of the tires was totally flat. So we moved everything to my little Civic (I had Tom's commuter car because he needed my Sequoia to tow the scout trailer and take all the boys to camp) and one of the wheelers and made our way down to the beach. Everything was fine until I decided to try to drive my little car out onto the sand and promptly got stuck. After several pathetic attempts to remove it--and getting it further lodged into the sand in the process--three men finally took pity on us and came and pushed me out. Meanwhile, all the kids were down playing in the water totally unsupervised (oops!). We quickly shuttled everything from the car to the beach, set up our station and enjoyed several relaxing hours chatting, playing, swimming and picnicking. It was heavenly. After dinner in town at LaBeau's, we were ready to call it a day.

On Tuesday, we hung around the house in the morning and then took the kids to Minnetonka Cave in the afternoon. Cool, interesting, different experience for them--and for us. I was just impressed that we were able to do it with one 8-year-old, two 6-year-olds, two 2-year-olds and 2 infants. What were we thinking?!? To go through the whole thing, we had to go up and down 440 stairs on the way in and then do them all in reverse on the way out. It was a pretty good workout--especially because I was carrying Hudson and helping Ava through the entire way. Anyway, we all had a good time but we definitely ready to go have some pizza when we got out.

After dinner we packed up all our stuff and started for home--on the way we stopped at camp to visit Tom. We sat around the fire for a bit, the girls told their dad about all of our adventures and then it was time to bid the scouts farewell (and Tom good luck) and go home. It was our one vacation this whole summer, but it was a good one--low-key and no schedules which was just what we needed. Can't wait to go back!