Our August Lake Vacation

Happy Monday! I'm back from our relaxing week at my parents lake home in Battle Lake, MN. I had been looking forward to this trip for so long but it sure went by in a flash. We hadn't been to the lake since early November. Usually I'm up there about once a month during the summer months, but COVID has prevented that from happening. Case counts in their area are low, but between Paul being in daycare and potentially being an asymptomatic carrier and me being pregnant/immune compromised due to my RA meds, we've been very cautious. This is the only time we'll be up the the lake until sometime in 2021. But I am glad we were able to go up there for 5 days of relaxation.

Here's a photo-heavy recap of our time at the lake!

Water play:

Paul was not as into the water as I hoped/thought he would be. He enjoyed swimming in the lake with me earlier this summer but for the last month he has not been interested. We did get him in the lake a couple of times but he was "all done" sooner than we hoped he would be. But oh well - hopefully he embraces the water more as he gets older. It will help when we can get him back in swimming lessons. He did enjoy going in the kayak with us a couple of times.

Speaking of water, Phil did his 2nd annual swim across the lake.We estimate that it's over 1.5 miles across. The picture below was taken at he start of his swim. I kayaked alongside him. It took him 1 hour 8 minutes to swim across. Then the wind came up on our way back and it took us 40 minutes to kayak back! I ended up getting braxton hicks contractions (which are totally safe/not a big deal - just surprising to already feel them at 23 weeks) as it was pretty strenuous to paddle into the wind!

We went on one pontoon ride. I had Paul wear his infant life jacket and he HATED it. It's so bulky on him. In hindsight, I should have put him in his puddle jumper which is less restrictive. We had him drive the boat for a while with daddy but he was not impressed as you can tell from his expression!

Paul's favorite thing to do by the water was feeding crackers to the fishies. He also go to see a huge muskie that tends to hind under my parents dock. After he saw that, every fish he saw was a muskie in his eyes.

Another thing he enjoyed was playing with this splash pad I bought this spring. We had tried to use it at home but he hated it - I think because the water from our hydrant is freezing cold. My parents have a pump that uses water from the lake which is pretty warm so we hooked the splash pad up to that and he had a blast. 

New-to-Paul toys:

Paul played really well during our time up at the lake since there were so many "new" toys to discover. They are new to him but quite old as most are toys that me and my siblings played with. His favorite thing to play with was this tackle box full of cars and trucks. He had fun lining them up.

He also played with the golf set my parents had bought for my older nephews. Usually he will not take direction from Phil but he actually let Phil show him how to hit the ball.

2 of the 5 days at the lake were rainy but he didn't mind too much as he enjoyed playing indoors with puzzles and kitchen stuff from my youth. I think we might need to get him a small kitchen set at some point. He loved playing with the washer/dryer and all the different kitchen accessories. I have good memories of playing with these toys when I was young so it was fun to watch him get excited about them!

Grandparent time:

I did a terrible job of taking pictures of Paul with my parents. This is the only one I took all week! Parent fail! My mom got to read him lots of books and she got some alone time with him on the afternoon that Phil swam across the lake as he woke up early from his nap. During the week Paul kept saying he didn't want to go home and wanted to stay at papa-nana's house.

Other highlights:

Other highlights from the week included delicious meals, our nightly card games, Paul sleeping incredibly well (he slept past 8 some mornings!), happy hours on the patio (I brought my N/A Prosecco), and getting to celebrate my mom's 72nd birthday on Friday!

We ended up heading back on Friday afternoon as it was a really crappy day (I think they got over 3" of rain and it was super windy/nasty outside). It was nice to be able to get out house back in order on Friday night. The painters had left earlier just before we got home so we had a lot to do. Then we got hit with a big storm that night and lost power from 8pm on Friday until 3:30pm on Saturday... So we ended up going to Phil's mom's on Saturday morning and then to Phil's high school friend's house on a lake. I was relieved it was restored on Saturday afternoon! So not the best/smoothest return home but we got back on track on Sunday.

How was your week last week? Do you have any vacation plans for 2020?