Family Vacation

We managed to take a short family vacation...2 nights in Duluth. We managed 4 nights last summer...camping, but couldn't quite swing it this year. 2 nights camping with Andrew has all we've been able to manage this summer. My pictures didn't get uploaded into the order that I wanted, but.... oh, well. We had a lot of fun with Henry contributing a few laughs...though he didn't think they were always funny. Charles swimming at the pool. The boys loved the water and, of course, that's all they wanted to do. We practically had to drag them kicking and screaming from the hotel to go do anything else.
Hiking at Gooseberry. For those of you with boys, you'll understand the appeal of sticks, rocks, a nd water. As we looked through our pictures it seems like we had a ton of the boys and at least one, if not more, of the above items included. Charles was finding sticks that he wanted to throw in the water as we were hiking. He only has one handful on this picture, but ends up with quite a few more. I should know.... I carried a few : )
Henry took this picture. Andrew fell asleep when we were walking down by the Canal in Duluth. Actually, he was having trouble falling asleep because I forgot his blanket to throw over his head... less distraction that way. Henry had gotten a shirt and let me borrow it. I threw it over Min's head and he was sleeping in about 30 seconds. This is us on the trolley going back to the hotel.
Charles, too, fell asleep on the trolley. It seems that the hiking at Gooseberry did them in. Of course, they didn't fall asleep in the car on the way back to the hotel like you would expect. He falls asleep at 5:30 on the trolley. He did sleep until morning!!

This is when we were about 45 minutes from home. Min had had enough. This was taken at the verge of a meltdown. One of Henry's many contributions to a funny family weekend. We weren't even to Duluth yet. We had stopped at J. Cooke State Park to hike around. Henry was obsessed with jumping from rock to rock and making it out to these little islands... the water was very shallow where he was jumping. We warned him many times to be careful so he didn't fall in the water. But, alas, he slipped. First he slipped and fell on his behind on a rock. Then he got up and slipped onto his knees and scraped one. We tried not to laugh, but how can you help it? He got mad.
I really liked this picture of Charles. It reminds me of my favorite poem...'The Road Less Travelled.' We actually have quite a few pictures from this weekend that would fit that title.
At Gooseberry. Charles got tired. He had put on quite a few miles by this time. Thankfully, we didn't have too much farther to go.
Henry climbing a tree at Gooseberry.
Min spent a large part of our vacation in here. Of course, he loved it!! But, when he's on my back he needs to peer around the side so he can see what is going on.

All in all, we had a good time. Yes, there was plenty of whining and complaining...mostly due to tired boys. But, we had a lot of laughs too.

We're gearing up for a visit from my brother, his wife, and two kids. They are planning to come on Thursday. We're very excited!! It's been awhile since they've been down. Aside from my parents, they have been our most frequent guest. And, we've really missed them the past couple years.