Beacon Shores, 2011

Sometimes I ask myself why I spend the time and energy to do these blog posts. But then, I realize that if we're wondering what we did to celebrate our anniversary or a birthday a few years back, I just check out some of my old posts, and the memories come flooding back. Guess I'll keep at it, but I've got some catching up to do!

Last summer, when Jenna and I spent a few days at a friend's cabin on the Whitefish Chain, we decided we really needed to return to Beacon Shores, the resort where we spent many family vacations in the past. We stopped at the resort and made a reservation for a 3 bedroom cabin for this summer. The deal was, everyone had to come for at least part of the week. I wasn't sure it was actually going to happen until we all finally arrived on August 6th.

Kyle stayed 'til Monday night, Corey and Maddox until Wednesday morning, and Jenna, Andy, and Charlie stayed for the whole week! It was so much fun to have everyone together for a least part of the time! The weather was great, the food was tasty (although I missed having a dishwasher - ha!), and the fishing was fantastic!

We had a couple of sand monsters. Charlie doesn't look like he's having much fun here, but he loved the sand and the water!

The water toys were fun, too.

And the sunsets were gorgeous!



The kids made tye-dyed t-shirts.

The dye was a little messy.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the finished products, but they were pretty cute.

We spent one evening at a park in Crosslake

The boys had a great time on all the play equipment...

and an even better time eating ice cream in the town square by the Chocolate Ox.

Maddox is such a good helper!

The kiddos also tried out the minnow races. Choosing the best minnow was quite the project.

Mmmmmmm, this one looks good!

Look at it go!

Yeah!

Charlie's turn....

Go, go, go!

This one is a bit bigger!

Chuck and Andy spent a lot of time in the fish house fileting the many fish that they caught.

I tried to spend time with my birthday gift, a Kindle.

Time for a little fishing for Charlie.

Life jacket on.

Check out the live well - nice fishy!

Catch one, Daddy!

Charlie wanted to jump right in! I think he's doing the splits!

Beach time.

Swim, Charlie!

The last day's catch!

Jenna and Andy celebrated their 5th anniversary on Friday, the 12th, so after cleaning all those fish, they got cleaned up and went out for dinner.

Ahhhhhh, cute!

Chuck and I hung around to babysit. Since Charlie had just learned how to climb out of his crib, my goal was to get him to sleep without any tears. I put him in his pj's, strapped him in his carseat, and drove around for about 20 minutes until he was out cold! I then transferred him to the crib. Success!

We played Mexican Dominoes when the kids came home.

We brought along a bottle of champagne to toast the "newlyweds," but the cork was dried up and it shredded into the bottle. Andy and I got real creative and used coffee filters to strain it into wine glasses. Cheers and congratulations!

Time to go...

but we'll be back!
We checked out a few other cabins after people had cleared out on Saturday morning, and we made a reservation for next summer in a bit bigger cabin. If anyone else cares to join us, it would be fun to rent several cabins and have an extended-family vacation!

Wine Making 101

Ever get the urge to make homemade wine? I had the chance to do so this summer with a group of friends. We went to the Vine Park Brewing Company on West 7th St. near downtown St. Paul and mixed up some Pinoit Grigio and Shiraz. It was quite the process, and, of course, it also involved lunch and a little shopping, too!

The steps involved just pouring, adding "stuff," and mixing, starting with plain old water.

This is the pinoit grigio mix

After adding all of the ingredients, the pail was sealed, but there was a tube for "breathing."

The steps were repeated for the shiraz.

Wood chips were also added to the red - looks kind of yucky.

Here's the shiraz mix.

Ah, that looks better.

After all the ingredients were added and the pails sealed, they were put aside for about 6 weeks. The brewery employees stirred, strained, etc. on a weekly basis, and then we returned for the bottling process (and more lunch).

We started out with sterilizing the bottles by pouring a solution into them,

and letting them drain. That's our pinoit grigio in the background, waiting to be bottled. Looks kind of like....no, I won't say it. :-)

Here's the bottling machine,

and the corking machine.

Finally, we added the labels. Now, the wine has to age for awhile, 6 months for the white and 9 months for the red.

Looks like a lot of wine - sure hope it's good! I think we better have a BIG party! Actually, I only got 6 bottles of the pinoit, since I'm not a big fan of red wine. Jean only got red, and the others got some of each. If anyone is interested in more details, just google "vine park brewery." You can make many different kinds of wine, and also various kinds of beer- it was a fun time!

Star Wars Quilt

I promised Maddox a long time ago that I would make a quilt for him, but somehow it just wasn't getting done by itself. Finally, one day this summer, after taking him to swimming lessons in Apple Valley, we stopped by JoAnn Fabrics so he could pick out some fabric. We looked at Toy Story, Spider Man, Incredible Hulk, every licensed character fabric you could imagine, and he finally decided that all he really wanted was Star Wars. And did they have Star Wars fabric? Of course not! I told him I would have to shop around, but at least I had an idea of where to start. I checked with a few other fabric stores, and NO ONE had Star Wars fabric. But then I remembered - we're in the computer age!! So.... I googled "star wars fabric" and sure enough, I had several choices of things to order. I ended up ordering some on e-bay and it arrived several days later. Talk about painless fabric shopping (but expensive!). However, it only came in fat quarters (if you quilt, you know what I mean), so I had to seriously alter my pattern.

The center panel is two fat quarters, and I was able to find a cool galaxy print to fill out the total center panel, and then lots of fun coordinating colors for the border - no mini flowers or calico prints for a Star Wars quilt!!

I also made a couple of pillows with some of the leftover fabric.

Maddox loved it, and it goes great in his super heroes room!

Another Birthday (sigh)

Celebrating with my two favorite grandsons!

Well, it's that time of year again. The end of July seems to roll around faster and faster! It seems like I was just celebrating the big 6-0, and now it's already 6-2 . YIKES! How does that happen? I started this year's activities with our usual "birthday lunch." Jo, Linda and I all have birthdays within 2 weeks of each other, so we've been celebrating together for years. This year we ended up at MOA for shopping and lunch at Crave, after checking out Jo and Roger's new house in South Minneapolis (they move in the end of August), Corey's apartment in the old Sears tower, and the Midtown Global Market. It was a very busy day!

Since Sandy's birthday is in January, she treated the birthday girls to a bottle of wine with our lunch, and we all shared a delicious piece of cake.
Our family dinner was at Corey's roof-top party room where we grilled brats and hamburgers. We've decided it's much more relaxing to get the whole group together at a home instead of a restaurant, especially with the little guys who don't have much patience for "slow food." Maddox thought we should have my birthday dinner at McDonald's, but I wasn't too impressed with that idea.

Angela, Andy's mom, was here from Pittsburgh so it was fun to have her join us. After dinner, we went back to Corey's apartment for cake and presents . The kids went together and got me a Kindle - I love it, especially for reading in the car when we're traveling. I'm also looking forward to this fall when I can download free books from the library. The cake (see first picture) turned out great! I'll have to admit, though, that I made it myself - fudge strawberry cream torte - YUM! There wasn't much left over, but Corey ate Jenna's unfinished piece the next morning, and he said it was still awesome after sitting out all night!

The kids worked off the calories with a little dancing after eating that rich cake.


I'm not sure what Maddox is doing here - break dancing, maybe?


My birthday surprise from Chuck this year was a North Shore weekend trip to attend a Log Cabin Concert at the home of Michael Monroe, a folk/contemporary jazz artist who we have followed for years. He performs all over the state, and also welcomes people into his home near Grand Marais for receptions/concerts several times a year. It was awesome!

We set off Friday morning, and took our time driving up to Duluth. We stopped for margaritas and chips at Little Angie's in Canal Park, and then picked up subs and ate them along the lake. It was great until we started getting eaten alive by the flies! We spent Friday night in Two Harbors at Chuck's mom's home before heading up the shore on Saturday morning.




Hiking on the Superior Hiking Trail between Beaver Bay and Silver Bay was on our list of things to do on Saturday, and we had a beautiful day for it!

There was a 10K race going on that morning, in the opposite direction from the way we were going, so we kept having to step aside off the trail to let the runners/walkers get by. One guy was even running barefoot!

I decided I needed a picture of us along the trail, and I finally found a fallen log at just the right height for my camera. I set the timer, ran to get in the picture, and -- oops! -- forgot to check for leaves in the way.

Ah, that's better.

After hiking several miles, we had lunch in Silver Bay and checked into Grand Superior Lodge. We had a soak in the hottub, got cleaned up, and then made our way further north to Grand Marais for the concert.

Here's our "buddy," Michael Monroe, with one of his many guitars.

There were about 18 people attending the concert, and wine and appetizers were served during the social hour before and at the break. We had front row seats on the love seat. This is the first time I've been serenaded with a reggae version of "Happy Birthday."

Chuck got to tour Michael's studio, and we both posed for a picture after the concert was over - very cool!

We woke up the next morning to another beautiful day, and after going down to the lake with our early morning coffee, we decided to be the first hikers at Gooseberry Falls, and then clean up for the trip home.

Early morning at Grand Superior Lodge - we stayed in the unit in the upper right hand side. It was beautiful, and we even had a bird's eye view of a wedding along the shore on Saturday afternoon!

Gooseberry Falls was deserted at 8:00 Sunday morning!

We hiked most of the way to the lake,

and then decided to just hang out, relax on a bench, and soak up all that early-morning peace and quiet. I should have been playing the prelude at the 8:30 service at church in CF when this picture was taken, but Chuck even arranged for a sub for me - what a guy (and thanks, Anne)!
It was a wonderful weekend!

We still had one more celebration before all the birthday festivities finally came to an end. We have a tradition with our good friends, Sandy and Ray, to entertain each other for our birthdays, so my birthday dinner was the next Friday night. Sandy makes a great mojito! Here's to turning 62!

The dinner was fantastic, as usual!

Well, that about wraps it up - another year older, another week of celebrating with my wonderful family and friends, and another new year to look forward to! Thanks everyone!!!!!!!