Is a picture worth a thousand words?

Regardless, this post will be heavy on the pictures. Hopefully I can choose from the vast amount of pictures I took and give a synopsis of our vacation with just a few comments. We went to our family vacation cabin on a lake in MN during the last week of July.

Lydia woke up with a yucky runny nose the morning before we left. She doesn't look too happy here, but thankfully she did not get a cold or anything worse.

We visited Ben's Grandpa Don and Joann for a delicious dinner at their place in Minneapolis when we arrived Thursday afternoon.

Friday we met two of Ben's friends from college, Kris and Rachel, at Annie's for lunch. Afterwards we walked around downtown and visited a few favorite spots from their days at the U of M.

We spend the first weekend visiting Ben's relatives in Pine City. We stayed on Chris and Hadley's farm and had a great time.

Ben's mom was also there and she enjoyed her time with Lydia.

Lydia and Auntie Chris

We headed up to Orr, MN and the family cabin on the lake on Sunday. It was a packed house with 10 of us in a small cabin with one bathroom, but we all had a good time. Lydia slept GREAT every night and all of you with children know that peaceful sleep is key for an enjoyable vacation!!
The boys did their share of fishing (this time once was enough for me) and brought home 30+ fish for dinner one night.

Lydia and Catharyn (my cousin Brigette's 18 month old) met and "played" - as much as it is possible for two such young ones to play together. Lydia LOVED going outside and took advantage of all of her doting relatives by walking up to any of them, raising up her arms (to be held) and then pointing outdoors and saying , "side?". Uncle Josh was, and always has been especially kind to take her outside whenever she asks. The other day I was talking to someone, not directly to Lydia, and I used the word "outside" in conversation and Lydia immediately looked at me and said, "joss?" (her word for Josh).

Although she wasn't "bad" on the plane ride up to MN, she did have a little meltdown near the end of the flight. However, she did MUCH better on the way back to GA. For those of you who don't know her personality, she is a little "busy bee" and rarely wants to sit on your lap. She is constantly in motion and always exploring her surroundings. You can probably imagine what she thought of a two-hour plane ride where she was pretty much confined to mama and daddy's laps!! (On the way to MN we were upgraded to business class and the man across the aisle must have had 3-4 drinks. I was wondering if her wailing for the last 30 minutes of the flight had anything to do with his rate of consumption!)
The drive from Orr to Minneapolis is about 4.5 hours, then you have the airport time and then the 2 hour flight. We decided this would probably be too much for Lydia to handle very well so we broke up the trip back to Minneapolis by staying Friday night in Pine City again. Josh and Liz were helpful as ever and kept her entertained in the backseat.

She decided to start picking her nose (lovely, I know) and we caught her in the act while on vacation. As impolite as it is, it was pretty hilarious to see her doing it(she had us all laughing as we tried not to give her any encouragement) and I attempted to capture it on film...this was the best I could do.

It was a wonderful vacation and we were all so happy that Liz was finally starting to feel "normal" again. We had a great time seeing all our relatives up north and also spending time relaxing with the family we see every week!!
For a more detailed account of our vacation exploits, visit Elizabeth's blog!! http://bellablogga.blogspot.com/