A Week Up North

Park Rapids, MN - a quaint town about 9 hours northeast of here. Sounds like a long trip, but somehow the ride to & from went pretty quickly. Reading that last sentence sounds strange...especially considering we had a very active 11 month old with us. Will did amazingly well for such a long trip. It helped that he still takes 2 naps during the day, so that broke up.

Will and I road-tripped it up there with Dave's sister, Kristin. She was a huge help along the way - feeding him and reading him tons of books in the backseat. There's no way I could've done it without you, Kris - thanks so much!!!

Another help was our recent purchase of a portable DVD player...my parents gave us money towards one for Christmas last year, and we figured this would be a great trip to test it out for the first time. Now for those of you thinking we just popped in one movie after another, that wasn't the case...I'm very happy to say he only watched 30 minutes on the way up, and at most 1 hour on the way home. I thought that was pretty darn good if I do say so myself ;-)

Dave's parents arrived a few days before us. We stay in a cabin on a lake, and it was great to be back, 'cause it had been a few years since Dave and I were able to join the rest of the fam. Dave came up for a long weekend. We did a lot of relaxing...eating...napping...eating...shopping. Did I mention eating :-) The weather was great - a lot cooler and less humid than Omaha which was welcomed!

As I've mentioned previously, Will loves the water, so he thought hanging out on the beach was great - loved the sand, too. We also went on some boat rides and did some fishing, but it was a little chilly to ski or tube last week.














Eagle Bay Lodge
































Jumping with Aunt Kristin




















On the boat with Grandpa

NYC weekend with the girls

The weekend spent in The Big Apple with my Taylor girls was even better than I thought it would be...I feel so blessed to have such wonderful friends! Hard to believe we graduated over 5 years ago already, but I'm thankful we've kept in such great touch, and I know we'll be friends for a lifetime. Despite the hundreds of miles that separate us, we always seem to be able to pick up right where we left off. We reminisced about our days spent at Taylor, and shared a lot of laughs.

There were 8 of us in all, and we shared 2 hotel rooms at The New Yorker Hotel. It isn't short of a miracle that we were all able to make it, considering we had only planned it 2 months in advance...the possibility of 8 girls finding a weekend that worked for everyone seemed impossible, but somehow we did. With the exception of 2 of the girls (Nell & Siby) living in the Indianapolis area, everyone else came from different states/countries. Mary is from Milwaukee, Nikki (St. Louis), Kate (Connecticut), Megan (Virginia), and Alex (Nassau, Bahamas).

A girls weekend wouldn't be such without shopping...of course we did a lot of it. Megan served as our tour guide, as she and her hubby used to live in the city, which made it a lot less stressful finding our way around - thanks, Megan! It was fun to experience NYC from a local's perspective. We dined at Serendipity3, and an awesome Italian restaurant that Kate suggested in the Soho area.

We also threw a combined shower for 4 of the girls in our hotel. Mary's getting married in September, and Alex, Nell & Nikki are all pregnant. It was so fun to be able to do that together. We don't get to see each other near enough as we'd like, but we're hoping it won't be too long before we can plan something again.