Oh Nuts

Whelp...I'm back from vacation. It was a lot of fun though and I can say that we got our tent taking down and packed up skills down to around 45 minutes. And that is with taking down two tents. While we all enjoyed ourselves on the trip, we are all glad to be home and to have an extra day in there before having to go back to work. Between the pictures that I took with the camera on my phone and my nice Canon camera I have over 100 pictures from the trip and that doesn't count the couple pictures that I deleted off of both devices. In my last post, before going on vacation, I mentioned that I was going to start the photography scavenger hunt thing while on vacation. While I had brought it with me I didn't really take any pictures for it. Although some of the pictures that I took on vacation could have worked for it, I decided not to keep them as vacation pictures and then just start doing it now that we are back. When I actually start doing the scavenger hunt is anoth...

Last night I was scrolling through Pinterest to see if there was any new pins that sounded delicious (food), crafty, writing related, or something that fit into one of my other boards and one of the pins that a friend of mine had pinned was for a photography scavenger hunt. Of course since I enjoy doing photography and haven't taken any pictures with my camera lately, the camera on my phone doesn't count, I decided to pin it and then print it out so that I can bring it along on vacation next week. I would start doing it this week but I am rather busy with work and trying to get ready to leave for vacation, so the scavenger hunt has to wait until next week to start. Once I start the scavenger hunt and come back from vacation I am planning on posting the pictures on here to share. found on:  http://www.doodlecraftblog.com/2012/02/picture-scavenger-hunt.html

This week is my family's vacation. On the 26th our church was having a BBQ with the Bishop to help raise money for the shrine to St. Gianna Molla and one Sunday we went to a presentation that one of my dad's cousin's was giving by the canal about an art piece that he did and was in the canal. Monday morning we went for a seventeen mile bike ride and it took us 2 hours and 15 mins to do it all. The first part of the ride was really nice because the trail went through some forest preseves as well as past some nice subdivisions. Once we were done we all agreed that we could have gone without the second half of the loop because it went past a bunch of smelly warehouses and past several busy roads. We were sore after that and when we got home most of us took naps. Tuesday afternoon we went to the waterpark that is about 25 minutes from our house. It was fun. One of the water slides that I went on was covered and pitch black so it was a little scary going down. When AJ went down...

Friday was the last full day that we were on vacation. Other than getting to sleep in and the guys fishing in the morning we didn't do much. We played another round of Farkle and I came in third. I was in first for a while but then Amanda and TJ got more points than me. For lunch we had fresh fish, that was my mom's idea. It was ok. For dinner we went out to Culver's and then we went over to the lake for the water ski show. It was pretty neat to watch. When it was over we went back to Culver's for ice cream. On our way back to the cabins afterwards there were a lot of bugs out. Sometimes they looked like mini clouds. When we got back to our cabin we watched the rest of "Fireproof" since it was on tv. On Saturday other than packing the car and driving for six hours we didn't really do much. Though we did stop at Lake Redstone for lunch and at Red Robins for dinner.

(If you missed part 2 you can find it at the bottom of my post from Friday ) The Wednesday that we were up there we went to Paul Bunyan's for a very yummy late breakfast. Since they serve a loggers breakfast they brought out platters of ham and sausage, biscuits and gravy, pancakes, hash browns and eggs. They also have really, really good donuts! After we finished breakfast we went over to the gift shop that they have and looked around. I got postcards for some friends and a stuffed animal for one of the kids that I nanny. When we finished looking around there we left and did more souvenir shopping. For the other two kids that I nanny I got them shirts. I got a sweatshirt that has the name of where we went on the front of it :) The last place that we went to was the fudge shop. You can watch them make the fudge, my mom made my four younger siblings watch because you don't usually get to see something like that every day. I watched for a little bit before looking around at the...

--- 1 --- --- 2 --- --- 3 --- On Tuesday Roseycheeks had a tea party with a bunch of her friends for her tenth birthday. Though I had to work they all had a good time :) Since it is a tradition since we started having tea parties for all of us girls on our tenth birthdays she also had all of the girls who came bring flowers for a friendship bouquet. Here are pictures that I took of the flowers :) --- 4 --- On Wednesday I had a doctor's appointment so my mother and I went to morning mass together and then drove to the office. Since we were a bit early we stopped at Caribou Coffee and got something. I had the Carrot Cake Muffin, which was delicious, and their cold Peach black tea, with sparkling water, you could get it with non sparkling water as well ;), that was good as well. My mom got a coffee and a raspberry scone. There was a cute looking tea shop next door but both my mother and I agreed that the tea shop that's closer to us is cuter....

Since I couldn't think of anything else to post I figured I'd do a couple posts about our family vacation from the beginning of the month. Day one was just traveling up to the northern woods of Wisconsin for several hours after going to morning mass. It rained for the first half of the trip so I wasn't able to get the Wisconsin sign when we crossed the boarder. We all were looking forward to this trip because we got to stay in cabins instead of our tent, so we just had to carry all of our luggage and food into the cabins and not have to set up the tent. The weather was really nice. the cabins we stayed in Day two we had a rather interesting conversation over breakfast and while we got ready for mass. After we got back from church mummy, Yavi and my grandma went to the store to buy a bunch of stuff that we didn't bring up and my dad, grandpa, Amanda and her knight in shining armor went to put my grandpa's finish boat into the water and drive it over to the  do...

Here are a bunch of pictures that I took while my family and I were on vacation at the beginning of this month! Big Lake St. Germain Lake Superior Me standing in Lake Superior My sister excited to be standing in Lake Superior Lake of the Clouds Excited to be eating delicious donuts at Paul Bunyan's Random telephone booth in the middle of the woods