The North Woods 2010

What can I say about our third annual Wisconsin trip? It is easily my favorite vacation, and probably for the same reason that many of you would hate it. There is nothing to do. I mean nothing. Now, don't get me wrong I guess there is plenty to do, but nothing that takes a lot of effort. We fish, we sit outside the cabin, we walk to the play ground, we play shuffleboard, we go for a boat ride, we hit the Sportsman bar. But, nothing we do takes more preparation than simply grabbing a sweatshirt and a drink and shutting the cabin door. You don't need hair products or make up. In fact, you can walk into any one of the bar/restaurants up there in cargo pants smeared with fish guts and a camo jacket and fit right in. There is just no real planning or thought required to do anything.
Among the nothing we did so many fun things that I can't even include all of them in this blog. But, I will say that Lilly enjoyed herself more than I ever could have imagined and Bryan and I were both heartbroken on the last day when she woke up excited, ate her breakfast and cheerfully asked to go to the playground. Later that night when we got home she cried after her bath and said "I'm a go back to my cabin".
Lilly on our first full day at the cabin. She is wearing her 'Lil Fishin' Chick' T-shirt and playing her new fishing game. She was surprisingly good at it. I was worried it was too old for her, but she proved me wrong. Notice the tongue hanging out to indicate the amount of concentration.

This is a terrible picture from one of our evening trolling missions (they were all unsuccessful), but it is the only photographic proof that I was even in Wisconsin.

We didn't catch a lot of fish, not nearly as many as last year. All year we kept saying "we don't need to clean 300 crappie" "we don't need to bring so much fish home"...little did we know it wasn't our choice. This year we only caught enough to have a single fish fry. See, we caught so few fish that Dad was even excited about catching the world's smallest bluegill. Don't worry PETA, we threw him back.
While taking a cruise to a connected lake Lilly wormed her way onto Wes's lap and then wasted no time in taking over the wheel.

After losing interest in driving the boat Lilly took in the afternoon sun with Tiki.

Lilly is a budding fashionista, however, some times she seems to struggle with accessorizing. For example, I never would have thought to pair a light blue tu tu with bear claw slippers. But, it seems to work on her.

Fishing with Daddy. They tried almost every day to catch a fish off the dock with Lilly's little Tinkerbell fishing pole, but they were unsuccessful. I tried to convince Wes to swim under the dock and attach a fish to her hook, but no luck.

This picture is dark and I don't if you will be able to see it or not, but as we pulled out for a nightly trolling cruise Lilly sat on Papaw's lap waving good bye. But, as we pulled away she needed her binoculars to see us leave the cove.

I couldn't resist including this picture. Lilly asleep in her little bed. So sweet. Bryan, Lilly and I shared a small room with two sets of bunk beds. After much debate we decided that I would sleep on one of the lower bunks, and Lilly would sleep on the other with her toddler rails attached. We finally decided it would be best if Bryan slept on the top of my bunk...also with toddler rails.

Oh yeah, it wouldn't be the Wisconsin trip blog if I didn't at least mention the mustaches. I don't have a picture of all three of them, but for the second year in a row Bryan, Wes and Dad have grown mustaches while on our trip. The comparing of, grooming, discussion of and giggling about the mustaches takes up quite a bit lot of time.