Vacation in Nisswa

This morning I woke up at the luxuriously late hour of 9am snuggled up to my sweet baby T and my big boy M. Both were sound asleep again, (after waking up when Chris left for his 5am shopping excursion with my Dad), and sleeping so peacefully I couldn’t help but just lay there and watch them dream. I think there must be nothing better in the world than snuggling up to a warm, sweet smelling baby. When T woke up I snuck out of the room so as not to wake M and found myself smack in the middle of a Pannekoken breakfast. Apparently, one of Danny’s best kept family secrets is how to make an authentic Pannekoken pancake, and it was good. I was a bit appalled at how much butter it takes to make one, but I am trying to forget about that and just enjoy the tradition with my family. We managed to get packed up and on the road by 1pm and got to our cabin for the weekend by 3:30pm, just in time to go watch the annual lighting of Christmas lights in downtown Nisswa. The boys got donuts and hot apple cider while Chris got his beloved cheese curds (he says he didn’t get to go to the State Fair this year so he was entitled to have them now). We wandered around the shops, looked at the lights, watched the horses pulling the sleighs, and stood by the bonfires for a while before we decided we were cold and headed back to the cabin for pizza. We have a kitchenette and wood fireplaces here, and our view looks out to the water. The lake is so beautiful I almost want to go for a swim, it’s just the water is ice cold, I don’t have a wetsuit, and am not a polar bear. There is a trail nearby that should be good for hiking tomorrow, so I am excited for a relaxing weekend with my family.
My sister reminded me to share a story from Thanksgiving: Last Monday I told M that I had bought a turkey for Thanksgiving. He asked me, “is it loud?” (He hates loud noises). I told him no, it was not loud. He asked, “is it alive?” I told him it was not. He asked, “where is it?” I told him in the refrigerator. He went to look but couldn’t find it, so I showed it to him. He wanted to know where the feathers were, so I explained to him about how we eat some animals, (cows, turkeys, chickens, pigs, etc), but we don’t eat others (horses, dogs, cats, or people), and how we eat some parts of the animals but not others (like feathers). He seemed to accept that information better than I had expected - I had thought he would gawk at the idea of eating animals, but it was okay with him. Then, on Thanksgiving, when we got to my parent’s house M walked in and told Mom, “we brought you a turkey. We can eat the turkey, but we don’t eat Efan.” Of course, Mom didn’t know about our earlier conversation and was very glad to hear we weren’t going to eat “Efan.” The pictures I posted here are of our view of Gull Lake from our cabin and of the boy's favorite activity in the cabin - which I never let them do at home.