weekend adventures

This past weekend friends of ours generously offered their cabin to us for a little family vacation. 

view from the back

A really lovely little getaway with new and different things for both the kids. Benjamin was very taken with the stairs, wanting to climb up and down them many, many times. Jacob actually enjoyed the stairs, too, but in different ways (like sliding down them and rolling things down them and throwing things up them). He also loved the snow, ice and frozen lake outside. 

 Jacob was very fascinated by the frozen lake and being on it ("This will be my first time being on a frozen lake!"). He wanted to go into the middle of it. We also checked out some guys ice fishing which was neat for Jacob also. Even Fraser, being from the South, hadn't ever been on a frozen lake or seen ice fishing up close. 

A cute little cabin I liked

my restless one

sunrise... yes, we are always up before the sun

 It was a nice change of scenery. I had a few moments to myself-ish, but mostly it was nice to get out of our regular routine and switch things up. 

The trip back was even more of an adventure, though. We left the cabin at 12:30, thinking we'd be back in about three hours. However, not long after getting onto the highway, I heard a tell-tale thocking sound coming from the front right of the car. Fraser pulled over and, sure enough, flat tire. So, he gets out, hauls all our crap out of the trunk in order to get to the spare while I'm in the car entertaining two kids for 20 minutes.

Finally, he gets the spare on only to find out it's almost flat (lesson learned: check your spare every now and again). So we mosey to the nearest exit in order to turn back to get to the nearest gas station but as we're on the on-ramp, Fraser says, "I don't know that we'll make it." Thankfully, there was a general store on this exit (the only thing there, mind you) where he found some compressed air-in-a-can (Fix-a-Flat). Notice the Squatch there... oh yeah...

 Sadly, our spare was not willing to be pumped up with compressed air. Everyone out of the car, over to the general store. This place had a strange assortment of stuff: gas station food to hand-crafted artwork, Sasquatch paraphernalia to birdseed. Luckily, they also had a nice room for Jacob and Benjamin to play around in as well as the nearby river into which we all enjoyed throwing stones.

First French fry

 After many phone calls by Fraser and some time passing (this was not the time to be checking the clock a lot... or at all), a tow truck showed up. This was my favourite part. Not kidding. The tower brought a flat-bed trailer to put the car on and we got to be in our car on top of the truck!! I mean, that's cool, right? And actually not legal in all states so I considered us pretty lucky.

what better time to take a selfie?

 Off to the nearest town in which we could get a new tire. The only place that had tires for our car and that would be open long enough was a Walmart. And now I know why people shop there: things are so cheap!

yes, I know sitting my child on a Walmart floor is gross

 Fraser deals with the tire guys while I walk around with the kids which was going pretty well (playing in the toy aisle, hangin' out) until it turned into, "I want these water balloons. Can you buy me these balloons? Why can't you buy these balloons? When are you going to buy these balloons? I'm going to throw a fit until you get these balloons. Why can't you get these balloons? You're mean". All said, of course, in a wonderfully whiny voice. Sigh.

As we waited for our four new tires (yes, four, because we had earlier discovered that our back left tire had a slow leak but if we only got two we'd have to have them rotated to be on the same end of the car and the tire folks aren't legally allowed to rotate your tires if there isn't enough tread on them... hahaha..ha. Don't judge us, please), we tried to find a place to sit and have food, heard more about the water balloons and had more arguing over getting a Subway sandwich or not. Yes, the adventure was losing it's shine by this time. 

Eventually, we all made it safely home (six, not three, hours after leaving) with some new tires and the knowledge that one of our tie rods was also almost completely shot, making our car very unsafe to drive (sorry, Ma, you really don't need to hear all this and yes, we have had this part fixed).

Overall, I'd say it was a pretty successful event, though. We had phone service, the weather was good, we had a fun place to hang out and, minus some whining at the end about balloons and sandwiches, the kids were really amazing. Douglas family: 1, unexpected "stressful" event: 0.