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!