A little family getaway

My mom and dad celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary in September!! To celebrate, my sister and I treated them to a weekend getaway up to the North Shore in northern Minnesota. My brother and his family also live up there so they joined us.

And of course I have pictures. :)

Just as a little background, even though I was born and raised in Wisconsin and all of my family are Packers fans, I'm a Vikings fan and quite often, it does create a little playful rift in the family.

Being Mark and I were watching Jamie and Jamie was riding with us up to the North Shore, I decided to dress him the way I wanted to:

Here he is sporting his new favorite shirt and I'm wearing my Vikings sweatshirt. Can you see how much he absolutely LOVES his new shirt? :)


My mom with Jamie


Mark, Peyton and Doogie playing on the bed. Yeah, even Doogie got to come with


My mom reading a book to Tyler. He was so into it that he was watching TV


Duh Mark


Jamie


Mark and Doogie


My mom and dad with their grandchildren


The whole family at Gooseberry Falls


Jamie


Doogie and I

As you all know, it's next to impossible to get a picture with all the kids looking at the camera. In fact the above picture with my mom and dad, we thought we were soooooo lucky that it only took 3 takes to get a good picture!

So when the kids climbed up on the rock to get a picture (minus Sam), we knew it might be awhile before we got a good picture.

The first take Peyton decided she had to show the camera her Barbie rather than her face:


Then Adelaide decided she needed to smile at Peyton rather than me:


But surpringly, this one also only took 3 takes as the third was really good:



Mark and I with Bemnet. This was our first time meeting her and we were so proud!


Jamie and I


Peyton and Bemnet


Adelaide


Mark and Jamie

Here is Sam sporting his beautiful pink headband. He was so proud of it:


And of course we had to get the side shot:


We had a wonderful time with the family and it was so good to get away.

Happy anniversary Mom and Dad! Thanks for setting the great example for all of us of what great love is like. Love you!

Day 4--August 31 **second post of the day**

Like I said, this day was certainly one of the highlights of the trip. We got to meet Mrs La La, her hubby, Alex, and baby Nolan! From the time I posted we were going to Vegas, she e-mailed asking if we would like to meet. Of course!!! We were both so very excited.

We decided to meet at the Treasure Island Dishes Buffet. We were so offended by the fact that they got there earlier than us so they paid for our buffets. Can you believe it? How rude! I'm totally kidding. It was so, very nice of them.

They are so very sweet. And they brought Nolan who seriously is the cutest baby! He's sooooo cute and has the sweetest smile. Oh, we fell in love with him right away.

Mark especially loved meeting Alex. You see, Alex recently had a kidney transplant and as some may know, Mark had a kidney transplant back in March 2002. So, it was especially neat for Mark. And you know how guys usually talk sports or something like that? These guys talked medications. :) It was cute.

Here are some pictures. We had such a wonderful time. Thanks Angela, Alex and Nolan! Next time we definitely get to meet the girls. :) I insist. :) :)


Mark and Alex


Me with Nolan...isn't he a cutie???


Nolan


Me and Angela


Alex, Angela and Nolan

After meeting them, we went over to visit the Auto Collections. Mark is totally into cars as most know. I promise I won't show all the pictures....he had me take a-l-o-t. I'll show you a few pictures, though.


Here is Mark


Mark by Elvis' car


Mark picking his nose. Okay, not really...it's staged. :) He'd kill me if I didn't admit that. :)


You can see I sure was in my glory


Me in front of my favorite car, a Volkswagon


And our backsides

Day 3--August 30th

This day started out really, really boring and dumb. Because we were at a timeshare, we were "invited" to sit in on the presentation. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about..."no pressure, you just have to listen to it and then we give you a gift at the end".

Yeah, we were crazy enough to do it.

We're dumb like that.

It took our whole morning and they totally lie when they say "no pressure"...as you know. We did stand our guns and came away with $100 cash for sitting through it. :)

It did make me feel good, though, when our agent told us that she could tell we were so much in love and she could see it in our eyes which was so nice to see. That really touched me. She couldn't believe we had been married for 9-1/2 years. She thought we were on our honeymoon the way we were looking at each other. It was just so nice to hear.

Next we went back to our hotel room and rested for a while. Then, in the afternoon we went to the Venetian as we were going to see Phantom of the Opera there that night. We went and got the tickets and then went to eat some Chinese



After we ate, we walked around a little bit. We watched the boats on the river



And we walked around a little more. We saw this statue which was an actual person


Yeah, that's an actual person. Mark didn't believe me for a long time

Then we saw these musicians when we passed it again


So I thought I would give a little entertainment


After my entertainment, we went to Phantom of the Opera. Our tickets were for the balcony so we had to walk up a couple flights of stairs. It wasn't too bad, but when we got up to the top, they asked if we wanted to be upgraded and seated in the third row. We were excited! So we got to turn around and walk right back down those steps. :)

The show was awesome....very good and we recommend it for sure!

Next day was one of the highlights of the trip FOR SURE! We got to meet a bloggy friend. :) Stay tuned!!

Day 2-August 29

I first want to thank you all for your support, love and understanding with how hard it was going to be to pick up Eddie's ashes....especially Chelle, who really prepared me and was such a big support. You're the BEST girl! Love you!

We picked up his ashes after work today and, man, was it hard. I could barely get it out of my mouth that we were there to pick them up. The vet came out and gave me a huge hug as I cried and thanked her again for everything. She said she knows we miss him so much and all I could do was nod.

It was like having Eddie die all over again. It was tough.

My mom invited us out for supper and the kids were there so that was a nice distraction. And Peyton came home with us to spend the night which has been a HUGE help and distraction for Mark. I absolutely love my family and so glad my sister is willing to share her kids. :)

Anyway, I wanted to show pictures of Hoover Dam!

We took a shuttle bus and took a tour of Hoover Dam. We were the first ones to get on the shuttle, and, you guessed it, we were the last ones to be dropped off. It made for a long day but it was okay. The tour was supposed to take 4 hours from pick up time to drop off time but for us it was 6.5 hours. It felt like our school days all over again...first to get on and last to get off the bus. :)


Here we are waiting for the shuttle. Mark was not cooperating with a picture so I told him I was going to post this one for sure. I think next time he'll cooperate. :)

Here we are on the shuttle. You can see it's completely empty except for us. :)

It was really interesting and we loved seeing it. We rented a wheelchair for Mark so he wouldn't have to walk so far which worked out good. The only real big bummer was that we couldn't actually go down into the power plant of the dam because of Mark's defibrillator and the magnets. So we didn't actually get to see the inside which was a bummer but nothing we could do about it.

Pictures of the dam:





Mark and I at the Hoover Dam


Mark in the Visitor's Center. He's so cool.

After the Hoover Dam, the bus stopped at a chocolate factory where we got some free samples...sweet! :) They had a cactus garden there and of course Mark was being his dorky self....with a little encouragement from me. :)


This is him showing how sharp those cactuses can be :)

After we got back to the hotel, we rested for a little bit and then went out to see the movie "The Switch". Very good movie...we both loved it. Caution! Spoiler alert! Predictable but very cute. I was just glad she didn't end up pregnant at the end like all "infertility" movies seem to do. Struggle with infertility and then end up with up-teen babies at the end of the movie....like that's the way it is in "real life" (dripping with sarcasm).

We're back! Day 1--August 28

We're back and had a great time. It was really nice to get away. It was so nice. I admit....coming home was hard. The house was really quiet and we had received a message while we were gone saying Eddie's ashes were ready to be picked up. It was just hard and emotional for me.

I know...hard to feel bad for someone who's depressed after coming home from a week in Vegas.

Vegas was so fun, though. We saw a couple shows, saw Hoover Dam, met a WONDERFUL bloggy friend and even met up with my brother who happened to be in Vegas this last weekend and neither one knew until last week. Kind of cool. :)

I'm going to describe our trip day by day in different posts. Otherwise, it's going to be a serious picture overload and I wouldn't want to do that to you guys. :)

We spent the night at a hotel near the airport the night before so we could do the park and fly thing and park the car at the hotel.

Our flight was leaving at 2 in the afternoon so we were able to relax quite a bit before we had to leave which was really nice.

On the plane, we sat next to a couple who had twin 2-year-olds and literally when one wasn't screaming, the other was. Both Mark and I were trying to help as much as we could with the kids and I kept telling the parents they were doing the best they could. I know they felt horrible about it but I know how hard it is to keep kids quiet on an airplane.

I couldn't believe how rude people were about it. People would make comments about how they were glad to get off the plane from that "stupid baby". I felt bad for the parents. They did thank us several times for our help and being so understanding. Hey, we had a good time....we love kids. :)


Mark in the hotel room



Mark and I in the hotel room before leaving for the airport (in the top picture, Mark is just being a dork)


Mark in the plane. Mark said the sweetest thing in the plane. When we were in the air, he said he felt better because we were closer to Eddie. Of course, it made me cry. It was really sweet.

When we got to Vegas, we went and picked up our car and then went to the hotel. We stayed at the Grandview. It was absolutely beautiful. We loved the room.

The Grandview

The timeshare room we got was just awesome:

Our dining room/living room. We were soooo excited to have a flat screen TV. :) We don't have that at home


The jacuzzi


Our bedroom. Yes, I should've made the bed before taking the picture...oops. :)


The bathroom. We were so excited that we had 2 sinks. We only have 1 at home. It was awesome having 2. :) And the shower was HUGE. It was definitely big enough for 2...don't ask how we know that. :)


The kitchen


For some reason Mark wanted a picture of the safe. Don't know why, but I took one.

The next day is Hoover Dam. :)