Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Holy Crap I Didn't Blog About The 4th Yet

You'd think that with my new iPhone I'd have no problem at all keeping up with blogging. My requirements are pretty easy: at least one blog a week, describing what I did that weekend and possibly the week before, plus occasional random entries with pics of the kids and what-not. The problem is that as cool as the iPhone is, it sucks for composition. It just is not the tool for doing more than small bits of typing. It's made for tweeting, not for blogging.

Anyhow, our 4th of July weekend started on Friday. We packed up the van and ventured west to Willmar, MN, where my cousin Andrew has a house out in the country. He's done a lot of remodeling work on the place; it's really nice. Griffin always has fun there because Andrew's son Drew is close to Griffin's age (almost a year older). We hung out there that evening and let the kids go crazy playing in the yard. Then we drove over to Prinsburg, MN, and watched fireworks display #1. After that we went back to Andrew's and watched fireworks display #2 in his backyard. We slept in a guest room downstairs.

On Saturday morning we got up, had some yummy breakfast, and started packing up our stuff. We put up our jumping house for the kids to play with while we were packing. Griffin and Drew dug into some watermelon:

4th of July pics 001

We had our stuff all sitting outside ready to go in the van when it got very dark outside, then started to POUR. We got most of our stuff packed without it getting too wet, but it was raining really hard. We decided to let Griffin run around in the rain and mud - he had a blast!

After cleaning up and drying off we drove to Benson, MN, to Dina's uncle's place. He hosts a family gathering for the 4th every year, and it's always a lot of fun. This year was no exception. We had lots of great fire-cooked food and a very relaxed time hanging out in lawn chairs and letting the kids play with squirt guns and water balloons. And tent boxes:

4th of July pics 005

At night Dina's uncle lit his bonfire to burn all the brush he'd cleared in the past year. The fire was enormous - the tops of the flames were at times above the tops of the surrounding trees. I had the twins in the stroller, and they were throwing old aerosol cans into the fire as well, so I kept my distance. Here's a pretty low-quality video of the top of the fire from about 100 yards away:



We also got fireworks display #3 later that night. Rohan slept through most of it, but Caden loved it - he clapped after every burst. :-) We camped there that night, which we haven't done in a while, and it was nice to do so again. The twins didn't sleep very well, though, so Dina got very little sleep.

Sunday was all about packing up and heading home. We stopped by to say hi to my dad quickly, and stopped by my mom's place, but she was out of town at the lake cabin. We drove up to Dina's dad's place in Glenwood to drop off a present and install a printer. Dina grabbed a quick catnap, and then it was off to the freeway and back home!

Monday, July 6, 2009

June 26-28: At the lake cabin

Two weekends ago Dina's recently-remarried dad and his wife had a reception to celebrate their wedding at her family's lake cabin north of Fergus Falls, MN. Dina, her brother and sister, and all of our families decided to head out there to attend and meet the new family. We weren't sure where we were going to stay, since the lake cabin is a pretty small space without enough room for all of us, but Dina searched online and found a great place to stay called the County Line Cabin. It's a house owned by an elderly couple who rent it out, often as a base camp for hunters. The house was great, though, and worked perfectly for our three families. The best part was that it was only about three miles from the reception. What a find!



On the way there Dina and I got to play with the GPS + Google Maps feature of our iPhones, which was fun. We continue to love our iPhones. :-)

We had a lot of fun staying up waaay to late at the house, playing outside at the house and cabin, and watching the kids swim in the lake. One of the relatives had a brand new pontoon (it was delivered the day before we got there), and he took us out for a ride. We went around the lake looking at cabins, and aside from almost sinking it by having too much weight in front when we stopped, it was a lot of fun! Actually, the almost-sinking was pretty fun, too, truth be told.

Here are some pics from the weekend:

Griffin snacking at the house
Griffin snacking at the house

Rohan playing ladderball at the lake cabin
Rohan playing ladderball

Griffin, Caden, and Rohan playing Baggo
Griffin, Caden, and Rohan playing Baggo

Dina and Rohan on the pontoon ride
Dina and Rohan on the pontoon ride