Vacations

Since we got married, we have spent our vacations camping. While we’ve done nights in hotels, as the years progressed more of our nights were spent in our tent. Even as we added AJ to the mix, we continued with a trek into the backcountry (camping remotely where you hike in with all your belongings). When Teddy joined our family, we knew backcountry wouldn’t be feasible at least for few years until the kids could hike in themselves (hahaha … if only we knew with Teddy), but we continued with our camping adventures. In fact, the year Teddy turned one, he did so in Crater Lake National Park on our longest adventure with 3 full weeks of camping and exploring our national parks.

But each year Teddy got older, it got harder to enjoy vacations. Sleep has always been a struggle for him, especially when we aren’t at home. We’ve had vacations where he’s been up for the day at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. or wouldn’t fall asleep until he screamed himself to sleep for several hours finally at 11 p.m. Not pleasant for any of us, and really tired parents don’t make for the best travel companions.

Our vacation 5 years ago nearly broke us … we came extremely close to turning around and coming home after the first 2 days. That’s when Dave decided we needed land where we could all enjoy nature, where Teddy could learn to sleep and we could actually enjoy ourselves and relax. That’s what led to our beautiful piece of heaven on earth, for which we’re extremely grateful.

That coincided with the global pandemic that shut down the world in 2020, and we continued to live in a bubble through 2021 and the first half of 2022. When we decided to adventure on vacation in 2022, we brought reinforcements: one of our beloved childcare providers aka adopted daughters. And we decided then that vacations should always include an extra set of hands.

Our adopted daughter was in charge of the selfie family photos.

So we headed on a short vacation at the end of June to Duluth, MN and the surrounding areas with our other adopted daughter, Sigrid. We spent the entire time in the same hotel, which helps Teddy adjust for sleeping, and did day trips to surrounding national parks (Apostle Islands, Voyageurs and Grand Portage), waterfalls and Canada.

The entire family for this vacation!

Our trip was very different than our trips of the past with all our time in a hotel and much less time in our parks, but we got to explore places in different ways. We did a train ride from Duluth, and Teddy was oh so excited because trains are one of the coolest things in the world.

He loved the boat rides!

We also did 2 different boat rides. The first was to Kettle Falls in Voyageur, and Teddy adored that board ride on the smaller boat. He even managed to keep his cool when we were stranded right by the dock for an extra 30 minutes riding out a storm. The second was the Apostle Islands Grand Tour. We intentionally waited to make sure the first boat ride went well before we committed to the second set of boat tickets. While Teddy was far more squirrely on the bigger boat, we managed to enjoy the scenery and the tour (and were quite glad we brought his chair to help him settle down. OK, fine, he got put in there in time out several times because playing on the stairs on a boat is not cool.)

This is why we need extra hands.

Our trip to Canada included several beautiful waterfalls and an adventure into Walmart to stock up on Canadian candy (and ketchup chips to try). We also had to find maple donuts for AJ’s cravings—that’s what he wanted most on this vacation.

While it was different than our trips of the past, it was a fantastic vacation filled with family time, happy memories, natural beauty, history and most of our sanity.

This is the best picture of vacation.