Vacation

On Saturday we left for a trip up to Long Lake with the Reese side of the family. We returned yesterday around lunchtime as Jason had to go to work in the afternoon. It was a fun trip and Sam said more than once today that he missed "the cabin". For my Minnesota readers, the Reese family doesn't go to "The Lake" as most Minnesotans do, we go to "The Cabin" on Long Lake. There used to be a cabin in the family, but now Grandpa Duane and Grandma Verna rent two cabins at a "resort" on Long Lake and we stay there with whoever can come from the Reese family.

We shared a 3 bedroom cabin with Grandpa Don and Grandma Sue and our family of 5 shared 2 bedrooms for which we were grateful. It started off that Sam and Matthew were going to share a room and Jason, Abby and I were going to have the other room. However, the boys enjoyed sharing a room too much that Jason had to intervene and sleep in the room with them. Matthew had his own pack-n-play and Sam was supposed to sleep in the bed, but after bedtime they were switching locations, laying in the bed together, laying in the pack-n-play together, swapping books, laughing and talking and having all sorts of fun well after they were supposed to be sleeping. After two nights of that arrangement, I decided that the boys needed to be split up if any good sleep was going to occur between Sam and Matthew, so Matthew and Jason got one room and Sam shared a room with Abby and I. That actually ended up working pretty well. I don't know why it took us two nights to figure out that arrangement would be better, but now we know and can be better prepared for the future.

I knew that Miss Abby would be a challenge for sleeping arrangements as she has a hard time tuning out her surroundings when she is sleeping and needs a dark, uninteresting place. She sleeps like a champ in her room, and in the walk-in closet at Grandpa Don's house, but anywhere else is difficult. She just looks around too much and gets too into her surroundings that she has a hard time sleeping. So Grandpa Don put together a frame out of PVC pipe which we draped a large, dark blanket over and Abby had her own pack-n-play "room". It worked stupendously well. She napped without problem and slept at night very well. She woke a bit more than usual, but it may be that I just heard her more easily than I do at home since she was two feet from me rather than down the hall.

Anyway, here are some of the pictures from our trip. I will post some more tomorrow, but this gives you a taste of our vacation.