Going to the Bear Lake

The little noisemaker-peacemaker. On the drive up, when Clara would fuss, he'd usually yell along with her/at her. Once, though, he stopped mid-sentence to say, "Oh, I need to talk to my sister. Calm down, Clara, it's okay." It didn't really work.

What do you think you're doing, dad? Taking my picture?

 If you can't be rich, you should know rich people. That's my motto. It's helpful. Some people my dad knows let us use their beach house for a couple of days and we turned it into a vacation extravaganza: seven adults and nine children in a two-bedroom house.

 We spent one morning at Minnetonka Cave. I'd never been before, so it was fun. The kids were a little nervous, but they enjoyed it.We even got to see a couple of bats sleeping. That was Nathan's favorite part.

When we got to the farthest point of the tour, the guide turned off the lights. Did you know if you lived in total darkness for a couple of weeks you'd lose your sight? Turns out eyes like light. While the lights were off the guide tested everyone's diamond rings. She'd shine a laser at the diamond and tiny refractions of red light would bounce on the uneven rock ceiling. Luckily everyone's turned out to be real.

I was impressed at Clara's vocabulary demonstration: dark, wet, outside.  She asked to go outside for about half of the tour.

 The rest of our time was spent at the beach. The water was high and the weather was slightly stormy. It was good times.

 Unless you dislike getting dirty. She was really unhappy if you set her on the sand.

 Going through a tunnel.

 Being unexpectedly pleasant about being in the water. She'd reach over and touch it, but didn't want to be too much in. I can't blame her, though. It was pretty cold still.

 Rediscovering as a family our love for speed rummikub. We grew up playing Rummikub at my grandma's house, and then somewhere as we got older we learned speed rummikub: you just play as fast as you can until all your tiles are gone. What's not to love about that? We could have played all morning if the kids hadn't insisted on going to the beach.

 The next day I put shoes and pants on her, and she gladly sat down to play in the sand. Then she'd want her shoes off to touch the water, and then she'd want them back on because the sand was sticking to her.

 Luckily the cold water didn't diminish our enjoyment of the sand. There was no shortage of sand toys and castles, swimming pools, and roads were built.

 The boys made this little swimming pool and she liked that, until a curly-headed little boy started splashing. Oh, cousins.

We had a great time. Then we came home to catch up on all the sleep we missed. Turns out kids (clara) don't like to go to sleep when not at home. And other kids (Nathan) stay up until 11 and still get up at 6:30. Naps were solely in the car. And we're thinking of going camping for a week? Parenting is a state of perpetual forgetful optimism. Probably because we're so tired we forget how awful it was. But really, we had a fun time.