Catch up

I have been awful about blogging during th summer, so I have been playing a little catch up. Enjoy the two posts today and be on the look out for the others that are yet to come!

The North Woods

Once again in July, we made the 12 hr drive up to the Gunflint trail in MN. We had a wonderful two weeks full of hiking, biking, fishing, and swimming. There were no tvs and limited cell service. Just the vacation we needed to recharge our batteries.

Kylie fell in love with Fishing! Every night after dinner my dad would take to boat out to go fishing and Kylie always wanted to go with him. She did great with her little fishing pole. She actually ended up catching 4 fish total! Not bad when you only spend about 15 minutes fishing at a time (she fell asleep most of the times out on the lake and other times she just wanted to look around and have someone tell her stories).

We hiked around our cabin area a lot. Shea loved the exercise. We also hiked to Devil's Kettle, which is a waterfall that has two falls. One goes straight down and forms the lower falls. The other goes into a huge hole and they have NO idea where it comes out. Mike thought it would be a great idea to get a close up look of the hole and jumped across the stream to get there. I was worried I would be coming home without a husband!







We also went to Gooseberry Falls which was about 1 1/2 hrs southwest of Grand Marais (very close to Duluth). It is a huge waterfall. Too bad it had a low water flow the day we were there. The kids had fun swimming at the falls and hiking around the area there.

We hiked the Magnetic rock, let over from the glacier period and found a lot of yummy blueberries. We came back and made some blueberry cobbler after that!

We brought our bicycles and did some mountain biking on the trails around the cabin. I had a lot of fun, Erin struggled and Michael was stuck pulling the kids in the cart (100 extra lbs makes for a heavy load up hill) But we got some great pictures and lots of stories to tell.

And what's the north woods without a campfire and smores. We found out that Caleb LOVES marshmellows!

We had a great time and look forward to next year and all the new things that the kids will be able to enjoy up there!

Museum of Science & Industry

For Father's Day (yes, that long ago), we all went and spent a day at the Museum of Science and Industry. Mike is a huge weather freak and really wanted to see the severe weather exhibit. I wasn't too sure how the kids would do at this museum as it seemed a little over their heads, but I was really surprised. We had a great time. They had a kids center that Caleb loved. There was a water center, air tubes that pushed balls, magnetic tables, rainbow centers, and I'm sure I'm leaving things out. It was our first stop at the museum and it was hard to get them to leave it. We also toured the submarine exhibit, but didn't go on the inside. Kylie was amazed by how big the vessel was but how small the crew's quarters were. She said it was Kylie size... not big enough for daddy! We went to the dollhouse and Kylie fell in love with it. Caleb loved the old fire engines and the farm center was a huge hit. Both kids drove the tractor through the corn field (apparently we should call up some of the farmers in town and see if they need helpers this fall because it was hard to pull them away from that thing).

Mike loved the weather exhibit and so did the kids. It was a great day out as a family!