I'm Not Lost

We had a nice time on our vacation to the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Hubby has relatives there, so we were able to also catch up with family a little bit.
We spent a couple of days driving, both there and back, and we spent 3 full days in the cities. Miss 15 was thrilled heading over to the Mall of America again. Personally I could skip that destination, but when you are 15 you are all about shopping. Mr 18 enjoyed the mall as he bought himself a long board to further endanger his life on. Hubby and I were less thrilled, but let the kids have their fun.

Although it wasn't as exciting as last years family vacation to California, it was great to get out of our normal routine and do things that aren't normally an option for us like museums and malls and traffic. Not that any of us enjoyed the traffic.

Miss 10 was most excited to swim in the pool at the hotel. I think that was the highlight of every evening for her. She usually had the pool nearly to herself and would practice all her strokes and do "shows" for Hubby and I. The shows consisted of a lot of water flying around and lots of underwater things that I couldn't really see.

I enjoyed not doing many dishes for 7 days, and not being responsible for cooking meals, just helping with the cooking meals. I liked sitting outside at my sister in laws without being carried away by mosquitoes and having someone else make the bed after I got up (thank you hotel maids!). The destinations we went each day were more for the kids then for me, with the exception of the St. Paul Cathedral, which a portion of is pictured above. In fact since I didn't have my camera the first time we stopped (It wasn't our destination) I begged Hubby enough that he drove me over there again so I could take a few pictures and do some more exploring. The Cathedral was finished in 1912, and has the most amazing little nooks and crannies. I could easily have stayed even longer exploring, but Miss 15 had swam with her cousin at a 6 a.m. practice that day and she was so exhausted that I think she was ready to collapse.

Mr 18 and his similar age cousin got to feel the independence of getting themselves to and from a Twin's game one evening. I think that was a good experience for him. He hopes to go and visit the cities once he has settled in at college this fall.

I'm glad to be home in some ways, but I'm not having a lot of fun working my way through 10 loads of laundry and trying to find places to dry it all. Aaaah, the drudgery of home life....