Marked by Minnesota

While up North in Park Rapids, MN last month, Dave made the comment that he has always "marked" his years by his time spent up there. Ever since he was a baby, his family has spent 2 consecutive weeks in Park Rapids - even his dad grew up vacationing there has a child. So needless to say, a lot of memories have been made in the Perkins family in those parts. I remember while being there last year 5+ months pregnant having a hard time believing that Graham would be almost 9 months already for this year's trip. It really is amazing how time flies, as every time we pull into the resort we think, "it feels like we were just here."

It's a good 9-hour haul, so we didn't get our hopes up that Graham would do very well, but he actually did much better than we anticipated. The first time we took Will up there, he was already in a front-facing car seat, and he did great. Poor Graham, however, is still rear-facing, so he was stuck staring at the back of a seat for 9 hours - ugh. I sat in the back for a good chunk of the drive to help keep him occupied, but you can only play peek-a-boo for so long ;-)

I loved having so much family time with Dave and the boys, Dave's parents, and his sister, Kristin, as well as her soon-to-be-hubby, Dan. It was so much fun having Dan around...he fits in great with the fam, and we hope that he and Kristin can join us again next year!

As always, we had a wonderful trip full of some much-needed R&R. Grammy & Grandpa even offered to watch the boys one evening so me and Dave and Dan & Kris could go out to dinner, which was really fun. We spend most of our days outside while there, between boating, riding the wave runner, fishing, hanging out at the pool, campfires (okay, so maybe not...we tried it this year and got eaten alive by mosquitoes!!), and just walking around the grounds. During my high school and college years I worked at a camp in Michigan, and one of my favorite activities during my time there was going kayaking. I was able to venture out onto the lake a couple times this year, and I it was so relaxing - I loved every minute of it. We see bald eagles up there pretty frequently, and one morning while I was kayaking, I saw one perched high in a tree, and then minutes later it took off with one of it's babies following closely behind. Pretty cool to see them in the wild - they're just beautiful.

The resort hosts a kids fishing contest every week, and one of Will's highlights of the trip was that he caught his first fish...a sunny. He was pretty proud of the little sucker ;-)

And the always-sad car ride home...'til next year, Park Rapids!

mmmm...smell that fresh farmland!