Girlfriend's Duluth Weekend Getaway

Sarah graciously agreed to be our driver for the weekend. She has the biggest vehicle, so that worked out well. Actually, her van is the exact make and model that mine is, but mine has not been running since shortly after the start of the year. After she and baby C had picked up Anna, then Lisa and then me, we all headed over to Jody's to pick up her and baby K. Here we are in Jody's driveway, about to set out on our journey...with 5 ladies, 2 babies...and a bunch of stuff.

When we arrived in Duluth, we were hungry, so we stopped and ate at a Chinese buffet. The food was very good, but they must have been getting ready to close or something, they were almost out of everything...and they didn't seem to be restocking anything. Oh well, I probably didn't need to eat any more than I did anyway.

By the time we reached the hotel room, the babies were both fast asleep. They did a lot of that over the weekend, and I must say, they were both very good babies.

Shortly after we arrived, we decided to get a group picture, laying across one of the beds. I had the fun part. I set the timer on my camera, set it on a half-wall and had 10 seconds to run over and jump on the end of the bed and assume the pose that the rest of them were in already.

Well, almost. I didn't hear the part about raising just my right foot here. There was one other one I took, that I was laughing really hard because I almost fell right off the bed. I won't post that one.

Our hotel room was right on Lake Superior, with a very cool view. This is an old lighthouse we could see from our window.

On Saturday evening, we looked out our window and saw something way off in the distance...could it be a ship? Yes, it was! We wondered how long it would take to get in. Anna called down to the desk and they said it should arrive in about 10 minutes. She, Jody, baby K and I all took a walk down to the pier to see it come in. I got a video of the lift bridge going up, and then this one of the ship making it's way toward us. It was HUGE.

There, my ship has finally come in. Well...at least A SHIP has finally come in. It was pretty cool to see up close like that. Here is a video of it going under the Lift Bridge:

After the ship passed under the bridge, I turned around and got this picture of the lighthouse. There were seagulls flying all around so I waited until there were a couple of them in my viewfinder. I like the results...especially the gull that looks exactly like people draw them in pictures up there in the right hand corner.




After we saw the ship come in we walked around to the front of the hotel, this picture was taken from the hotel's driveway. That's how close we were to the lift bridge. It was a very nice hotel too.

I had to take this picture of two little ones...aren't they adorable??

The girls decided they need to do some slumber party/girly-girl things too. Here's Lisa applying some cute little butterfly decals to Anna's fingernails, while Sarah dyed her and Jody's hair in the bathroom. I was sort of babysitting the little ones during all this and enjoying every minute of it.

After that they really got silly and a few of them thought it would be fun to have an old fashioned jumping-on-the-bed pillow fight! It did look like, fun but being the "token old lady", I decided I'd better behave myself and chose not to join in. Jody (Make a Joyful Noise), must have been really tired, because she and baby K slept through all the noise, and didn't participate either. I didn't get any pics of them, because I didn't want to leave baby Cole on the bed to go find my camera, but I'm pretty sure if you go to Lisa's (Our 7 QTPies), or Sarah's (Sassyfrazz) or Anna's (Moving Forward) sometime this week...you'll be able to see a picture of these silly girls. For some reason, about 10 minutes after they were finished with their pillow fighting...security showed up and the door and asked us to quiet down...I have NO IDEA why they would do that! LOL!



After a fun-filled weekend, and cleaning up our very messy hotel room, (can you imagine what the bathroom looked like after 5 women were using it for 2 days?) we checked out, packed up the van and walked down to the shore to get another group shot. There just happened to be another ship leaving at that time. A very nice gentlemen offered to take the picture of us...so I agreed and gave him my camera. Little did he know that 3 other women were going to hand him their cameras too! He said he didn't know what he was getting into when he offered...but he was a good sport and took a picture with each of our 4 cameras!

Here's one last picture of the babies on their "first date". Who knows, this could be a budding romance... And if they end up married to each other some day, they may just want to go back up to Duluth for their honeymoon.

We had a wonderful weekend, and I want to thank all my buddies for inviting me. Also, thanks to Jody and her husband Dan for allowing us to use his hotel points for a free 2 night hotel stay. Many thanks to Sarah too for driving us all up there in her van. We'll have to do it again sometime!