Weekend Excursions

What a wonderful weekend we had in our little corner of Minnesota. I love weekends anyway...even the most ordinary weekend is cause for celebration in my mind. Even when I'm not working, the weekends just feel different. We move a little slower around here on Saturdays and Sundays. I stop worrying about cleaning the house, making sure that I've done all the errands, filling the cupboards with food, then cooking that food, doing the eternal loads of laundry, keeping up with the yard work, playing with the dogs, making myself presentable, working out, keeping up with my blog, being good company for my husband, and oh yes, taking good care of my baby, which includes making sure she is always fed, dry, clean, happy, and intellectually stimulated. Just typing all of that is tiring.

So it is with great relief that I surrender to the weekend and my urge to do ...nothing. Except enjoy life. We lay in bed together as a family and laugh at Addie's antics. We sleep late AND we take naps. We cook if the spirit moves us, and snack if not. We nearly always find time to sit on someone's porch and drink and chat with our friends. We watch television. We watch movies. We watch our baby. We smile, we laugh, we have random conversations about random things and enjoy the fact that we're not trying to squeeze necessary and relevant information into our few hours together.

Essentially, ANY weekend is a good one, but add a holiday into the mix and it becomes a reason to really live it up. So we did. This weekend we left Addie with Mimi and Steve for an afternoon and watched a movie together...only our second one since she was born! I'm a bona fide movie lover, and I got a little bit emotional at the sight of all that overpriced candy and oversized portions of popcorn and soda. You think I'm kidding but I'm not. I love my daughter endlessly, but a break every now and again is not a bad thing. And when you can get a huge white cherry icee in the bargain...well....words fail me.

After the movie, we picked Addie up and went over to the Brogans for our first cookout of the weekend. We sat out on their back porch and laughed and talked and ate delicious cookout type foods until our sides creaked. I lolled around in a lawn chair and enjoyed the heck out of the brilliant people that we're lucky enough to call friends and Addie slept while I rocked her in car seat with my foot.

This is Addie in her sunhat and watermelon dress, ready for some fun in the sun. It's impossible to capture in a picture, but the smell of sunscreen on baby skin is one of the best scents on the planet. It's summer and innocence and love and newfound joys all in one delicious whiff.
This is her new pose whenever I say her name. "Addie! Aaaaadddiiieee!" And she looks at me like "Yes?" with this adorable little head-cocked-to-the-side stance.

I included this picture because you can see her prized dimple in this one. It's hard to capture in a photo thus far...but this fleeting little dimple is #56 on my list of "Things that Make Addie Adorable".

And then Tim let me sleep in on Saturday. Bliss, bliss, bliss. I slept until 11 Am. It's impossible to describe how wonderful extra hours of sleep feel until you've been consistently denied sleep on a regular basis. That was such a gift. Thank you, husband, thank you, for the chance to recharge my batteries.

And then we took an impromptu trip to Lanesboro, Minnesota. Impromptu road trips are quite possibly one of my favorite things on Earth. To me, there is nothing that says "WE ARE ALIVE" quite like rolling the windows down, singing loudly, and discovering this beautiful country. I think Addie quite enjoyed herself also. She sang also, loudly and with feeling....the words weren't very diverse but she had a lot of emotion. "Ohhhhh, ohhhhh, OHHHHHHHH, ohohohohohoh, ohhhhhhh", something along those lines.

Lanesboro is a lovely little town on the banks of the Root River. It's got some serious biking trails, and the Root is great for tubing and kayaking. I can't wait to come back and float down the river when it's a bit warmer. The town itself is full of interesting shops and restaurants and b-n-bs. We wandered around for a while and enjoyed the scent of the lilacs and the breeze.

Here are some tubers on the river, if you can see them...it's a bit far away.

A bridge on the Root River Trail.
Addie's pudgy little hand exploring the flowers. She loves the great outdoors and likes "smelling" the flowers aka "attempting to eat them". Tim calls her hands "little sausage casings" and I think that's a great description. Her skin is actually taut. So cute. She loves having her fingers nibbled, which is a good thing because I find these fat little paws irresistible.
And on Memorial Day itself, we had cookout #2 with friends in the park. I should have taken more pictures of that one, but it was basically a repeat of our earlier cookout, with the addition of an intense bloodsport deathmatch...er, I mean, a friendly volleyball game. Here's a quick snap of Addie with her Daddy at the picnic. Addie is a bit tired in this one, but Tim is happy because his team is winning. This was between matches and before he sacrificed the skin on his knees in pursuit of victory.




All in all, a fine fine weekend. Life is pretty grand.