Mothers Day (a camping weekend)

 

The inaugural camping trip for 2021 is officially in the books.  If you know us, you know we typically try to schedule an early season camping trip to "get the bugs out" before the real camping season begins.  It's not about actual bugs, though, there is always a good deep clean that happens before we take the camper out each year.  Its about figuring out what's broken, what needs to be updated and what small changes we want to make for the coming season.  This years list included a nice new mattress for our bed (why did we wait so long to upgrade this?) and fixing the fridge which was inexplicably broken when we fired it up this year (eye roll).  But, that's the whole point of this trip!

So - this year's first trip was scheduled for Mother's Day weekend at Devils Lake.  Devils Lake is one of the most popular campgrounds in Wisconsin and scoring a weekend there in the summer is nearly impossible, but we've found that if you go just slightly off season and plan ahead you can usually get a handful of sites.  

Our group was perfect for this trip - essentially the core Yellowstone group that will be heading West this summer - July is less than two months away!  We had the opportunity to start planning meals, stops, activities and chatting about all the things we're each brining to support this big 2600 mile, 17 day trip.  Actually, my parents will be gone for over a month since they are adding Glacier onto their trip and leaving a few weeks ahead of us.  Long story short, we'll have lots of summer vacation posts ahead!

All in all, it was a great Mother's Day weekend - spent with family and enjoying every minute of it (including the ice cream!).  

A First - Lost Tooth!

 

A few weeks ago Hazel joined the tooth fairy club.  Is there a club?  If there isn't, there should be.  She is so very different than her sister.  Abby could have a loose tooth for 6 or 8 months, gingerly eating fewer and fewer foods and in a more creative way to avoid every moving her tooth an millimeter (trust me....we've been through it) and Hazel went from no wiggle to out in less than 36 hours.  

One afternoon she asked me if her tooth was wiggly and I SWEAR it wasn't.  One string cheese later and her tooth was bleeding and wiggly.  That tooth fairy was visiting her pillow 2 nights later.  In fact, she "lost her tooth" at around 5 am the next morning.  I have a feeling she was laying in bed wiggling it until it came out, which sparked much excitement at 5am.  

She's so adorable now, talking with a tiny lisp because of the missing tooth and diligently wiggling any tooth that just might have a little give in it.  I have a feeling she'll be yanking them out and catching up with her sister before we know it.

1 Family x 12 (April)

 

Typically my monthly family photos only include the 4 of us, but I couldn't pass up the first opportunity to post all 10 of us, back together again, for the first time in nearly a year.  This group hadn't been together since we camped in Iowa last summer, but with the majority of us fully vaccinated there are better days ahead.

This past weekend also included my first trip back to Wishful in well over a year.  When the pandemic first hit and our new reality finally started to show itself I said that one of the first things I wanted to do when things got "back to normal" was to go to Wishful with all the regulars that I missed so much.  This past weekend it was just Mom, Dad and I (well, the kids too) and it was exactly what we all needed.  Next time I hope our group is bigger and includes Ryan and many of the Mom and Dad's Freeport friends.  I miss the Mulligans, the Pinters, Deb and so many others so much!  I can't wait to see you all soon.