At the cabin

Last weekend the kids and I headed up to my parents cabin while Nate was away at a conference. Halfway through the drive up, we stopped at a gas station that had some deer in a large pen. There were a couple albino deer that were really cool to look at. We got to get an up close look at them when my dad fed them some carrots.

One of the first things the kids like to do when we get up there is play in the sand. But this time, Maya seemed very intent on getting a shovel of sand, walking over to the wooden mushrooms and dumping the sand on them. I have no idea what the purpose of this task was but she did it 7 times. Sort of odd, but made for a funny picture!

As I had put in an earlier blog entry about our last visit to the cabin, my grandparents had bought Jordan and Maya a battery powered vehicle to drive around. Jordan was kind of apprehensive about it the first time and took a while to master how much pressure to put on the pedal, how to turn and stop, etc. But this visit, he hopped right on and never turned back! He absolutely loved having a golf cart that was his size and spent alot of time driving around, giving Maya rides and helping with chores (as will be shown below). We had to keep reminding him to watch where he was driving because he liked to look at the tracks he was making and tended to get a little off the road.

Nothing better than relaxing on the porch with Grandpa and a bowl of ice cream!

And here is the little lady herself....looking cute as always.

The first night we had a big storm so the next morning Jordan told me that he had some work to do. My mom found him a pair of work gloves so he could help Grandma and Maya pick up sticks that had been knocked down by the wind.

After the kids loaded up their golf cart, they followed Grandma in her big golf cart to drop of the stick at the burn pile.

Next Jordan helped Uncle Mike load some stones in the tractor. Mike and my dad were building a stone wall on the side of the cabin.

We celebrated Mike's 23rd birthday early with a yummy cake my mom made.

And it's always nice to have Uncle Mike and Kari around for bedtime stories.

At dusk my parents almost always have deer that come to their feeder but we got an extra surprise Saturday night when a doe and her twin fawns came to eat. The little deer had almost identical spots and were really fun to watch. After they left, 3 other deer stopped by at different times before it got dark.

Overall, it was a great weekend! We missed Nate but this was the first time in almost a year that I have been at the cabin and not been sick! This spring my dad had purchased 2 kayaks that I had yet to try so on Friday him and I took them out on the lake. I wasn't sure how it was going to go...I had never been in a kayak and the last time I had been in a canoe was probably over 10 years ago. But they were really easy to paddle and we ended up staying out for 2 hours! We paddled down a very curvy creek that met up with the next lake over and then turned around and came back. The creek was filled with lily pads which were very pretty but tended to get caught on our paddles and slow things down a bit. I was really surprised that my arms were not sore the next day!