{"id":7578,"date":"2011-07-26T12:49:47","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T16:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/?p=7578"},"modified":"2011-12-16T11:32:59","modified_gmt":"2011-12-16T16:32:59","slug":"365-days-of-bliss-5-favorite-blissful-moments-from-our-northern-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/2011\/07\/365-days-of-bliss-5-favorite-blissful-moments-from-our-northern-adventure\/","title":{"rendered":"365 Days of Bliss – 5 Favorite Blissful Moments from our Northern Adventure!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi SSDers!!! It’s Erin here with today’s blissful post. Sorry for the delay in getting this post up, I sat down last night after work with every intention to do this blog post but I had to upload all my photos off my camera.\u00a0 I had over 700 pics that needed to be uploaded! It took well over an hour! So here I am this morning all ready to share my vacation memories!<\/p>\n

We spent this past week up in Northern Minnesota. My aunt and uncle have a beautiful cabin that they were kind enough to let us use for the week.\u00a0We created so many different and fabulous memories while up there! Here are my 5 favorite \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

1. Discovering the native wildlife.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Minnesota State Bird is the loon. And the lake we were on has about 10 different loons that call it home over the summer months. The loon is an amazing bird. It can dive underwater and hold it’s breath for quite a long time. It also has some beautiful colors – black and white with red eyes. Oh and the loon cries are just absolutely beautiful!<\/p>\n

We saw the loons while out paddleboating, canoeing, sitting on the dock, on the speedboat and while swimming. The swimming story is one worth retelling \ud83d\ude42 On our last day we went fishing and boy was it hot! So after we finished fishing we went to the special sand bar swimming area.\u00a0 It was a perfect area for Blake to swim since there weren’t any weeds and he could walk for quite a while. While we were walking in the water all of a sudden there was this cry. We all glanced up and saw a loon about 10 feet away! The loon was flapping it’s wings and making all sorts of noises. We definitely startled it and it certainly startled us! (it had just re-surfaced from diving and was warning us away). That was a close encounter!<\/p>\n

2. The Turtle Races<\/strong><\/p>\n

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One of the towns near the cabin has Turtle Races every Wednesday. While it was a HOT day – we had an absolute ball!! Blake was able to race 3 times (but he only decided to race twice\u00a0 – he choose ice cream over the last race!). He raced in his number heat (there were over 400 people racing turtles this Wednesday!) and the out-of-town heat. He got to chose his racing turtle and persuade it to move! While his turtles didn’t win, the smile he had when the races were over was fabulous \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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(a little info about the turtle races: the turtles are from 3 surrounding lakes.\u00a0 they are “borrowed” for 11 weeks during the summertime. after the summer is done, they are returned back to the lake they were found at.)<\/p>\n

3. Meeting Paul Bunyan (and Babe the Blue Ox)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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While driving thru Northern Minnesota, Paul Bunyan is EVERYWHERE! In store fronts, store names, at parks, etc. I knew I wanted to introduce Blake to the talking Paul Bunyan which can be found at Paul Bunyan Land amusement park. There is also a HUGE blue ox outside the park which Blake thought was hilarious! While Blake wouldn’t go near the talking Paul, he had no problem standing next to Babe.<\/p>\n

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4. Cooling off in the gorgeous lake waters!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t think a day went by without us at least putting our feet in the lake. Blake had so much fun swimming too. We bought him a really neat life jacket\/flotation device that assisted him without being annoying. On our first day at the lake, we all swam out to the swimming raft – we certainly didn’t expect Blake to accomplish that until the end of our vacation! But by far, the favorite place to swim was the sand bar. Blake especially enjoyed swimming on my Dad’s back. (one of the things we used to do when we were kids!)<\/p>\n

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5. Fishing!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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We aren’t big fishing people in our house. My husband makes me put the worm on the hook! So when my parents decided to come up for a few days with us, I knew I wanted my Dad to take Blake out fishing. And Blake was so excited for Grandad to show him how to do everything! After a trip to the bait shop (where we saw minnows, worms, and leeches!) we headed out on the lake. Blake used a cane pole to fish (my Dad thought it would be easier then using a normal\u00a0pole that you had to cast out – and it was pretty easy!). We caught a bunch of fish – all sunfish. We released them all back to the water – decided to not have a fish fry for dinner.\u00a0 Blake definitely enjoyed himself – and I know we all enjoyed watching him!<\/p>\n

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Okay – I’m adding a 6th favorite moment! My husband participated in the Warrior Dash race up in Minneapolis on our last day. Blake and I had so much fun watching the people get muddy! Here’s a photo taken of my hubby before the race:<\/p>\n

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And after:<\/p>\n

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It took him a while to get clean!<\/p>\n

So those are my favorite memories from our Northern Vacation. It was a week that went too fast…but don’t vacation always go fast?! We created some fabulous memories as a family of three. Ones that we will definitely remember and hold close to our hearts!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi SSDers!!! It’s Erin here with today’s blissful post. Sorry for the delay in getting this post up, I sat down last night after work with every intention to do this blog post but I had to upload all my photos off my camera.\u00a0 I had over 700 pics that needed to be uploaded! It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[129],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7578"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7585,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7578\/revisions\/7585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}