Anniversary Getaway to Brainerd

To celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, we decided to take a little trip. Living in a house with my two daughters, age 28 and 13 and the almost 6 year old grandson, not to mention the two dogs, we felt it would be good to have some much needed "together alone" time. We headed northward on Thursday night, about an hour and a half from our house to Brainerd, MN. Thursday had been an absolutely gorgeous day, (as almost every one of our anniversaries has been, so far) with barely a cloud in the sky, and about 72 degrees for a high. Friday was supposed to be a beautiful day too...just not quite as warm as Thursday had been. Not bad weather for the end of September/beginning of October in Minnesota.

We arrived at the AmericInn at about 9pm and checked in. We splurged and got the jacuzzi suite. It was nice, although according to their website, the king-sized bed was supposed to be a "sleep number bed." It wasn't. I was a bit upset over that, since it was one of the main reasons I chose this particular hotel. I'm going to call and let them know of my disappointment. Hopefully, I'll get at least a partial refund. Anyway, since we hadn't had dinner yet, and it was now after 9pm, we opted to go to Applebees for their half-price appetizers. We returned to the hotel and went for a swim. We had the entire pool and hot tub to ourselves, since it was "adults only" from 10pm - midnight and it was a Thursday night. After our swim, we retired to our suite at the opposite end of the hotel.

Upon awakening on Friday morning, I was a bit disappointed when I looked out the window. It was cloudy, gray and looked really wet outside. We checked the weather channel though, and it looked like it would be clearing shortly. I'd made plans with a friend of mine from high school (who now lives in the Brainerd area), to stop in for lunch with her and her husband. So after stopping at a grocery store to pick up some sandwich fixin's we headed over to Karen and Kevin's for lunch. They live on a beautiful piece of property, right there on the river. After we finished eating and chatting for a bit, the weather had improved quite a bit, and we slipped out onto her deck and I took these pictures of their back yard.

You can't see the river real well...but it was very pretty.

After visiting a little longer, we set out on our fall colors tour:

I'm thinking I should have cleaned the windshield of the truck first.

We pulled over and took a couple more pictures:

The trees here were pretty, but probably not QUITE at their peak of perfect color. We saw a lot of yellows, oranges and browns...but not so much red.

I took this one with my arm out the window of the truck. Yes, that's the antenna. Oops!

Here's a better one.

Ray liked the red here, framed by the yellow. The funny thing is, this picture looks like I took it crooked. I didn't. The TREES are that crooked. I guess they were reaching for the sunlight.

We stopped again, and I got out and took this one. If you click on it to enlarge it, I think you'll be able to see the awesome array of colored tree tops in the distance...on the left side of the road:

This one is cool...but what is that black line across the sky?

Oh yeah...it's the crack in the windshield of the truck!

This is still through the windshield...I just tried to take it between the lines:

The picture below represents most of what we saw on our drive...beautiful colors:

The trees bowing down over the road here, made an awesome tunnel effect:

It was a beautiful drive...too bad people have to litter this lovely road with political signs. That's always irritated me. Sorry, I'm not voting for ANY of these people...I don't live there. But even the signs around here are NOT going to make me more likely to vote for a certain person. In fact, if I've seen too many signs with a particular name on them, I'm likely to avoid voting for them altogether.

We found some fishermen and stopped to take a pic of them:

We stopped at a rest stop along the way, and I took a few more pics there.

I liked this one, of some people fishing, framed by the trees...

but the sun wouldn't come out from behind the clouds, so we waited a bit and I took the one below. I thought I preferred this one when they were on the camera...now I'm not so sure.

And one of the beautiful fall foliage across the lake:

Heading toward home, while we were driving over the Mississippi River, I quickly snapped this picture through the passenger window:

I didn't think it turned out badly, if you ignore the reflections in the window.

Almost back home, I looked over and saw this rainbow in the sky...it hadn't even been raining there since that morning. It's a little hard to see here, but it was more brilliant in person:

It was nice to spend some time alone with my husband...I wish our time together would have been longer, but it turned out to be a pretty nice day after all, and we had a good time.

Ten Years Ago Today, I Married My Best Friend!

(l to r: Joel, Dan, Jessica, me, Molly, Ray, Sarah, Jeremy and Ruth)

This was our entire blended family, 10 years ago today. Joel, (my son) was 17; Dan, (Ray's son) was 16; Jessica, (my daughter) was 18; Molly (my daughter) was 3 1/2; Sarah, (his daughter) was 19; Jeremy, (my son) was 21 and Ruth, (his daughter) was almost 14.

A lot of things have changed for this family in the decade we've been together. We now have 2 sons-in-law, one daughter-in-law and 3 grandsons. Jeremy had recently been married, (just a few weeks prior to our wedding), but that marriage unfortunately ended in divorce. He is the father of our oldest grandson Alex, who was born in January of 2003. Grandson #2, Christian was born to Jessica in October of 2004. Sarah married the love of her life, Brad on May 21, 2005. Dan married TeriAnna in the fall of 2006 and their son, Hayden was born just before Christmas of 2007. Ruth married her husband, Dan in August of 2008, and sadly, they lost a baby in Ruth's 5th month of pregnancy. It was another grandson, named Jeramiah. Oh, and do you see that cute little flower girl in the picture between us? The one that barely comes up to my waist? Yeah. That's my baby girl...at age 13 she now stands just a 1/2" shy of 6 ft!! For reference, that's about as tall as Jeremy was, (and still is, I presume), in the picture.

Jeremy and Alex are still living in the Phoenix, Arizona area, and Sarah and Brad make their home in northern Minnesota. Jessica and Christian are currently living here with us, and Joel lives in the town I grew up in, which is about an hour west of here in central MN. Dan, TerriAnna and Hayden are MUCH farther west, in the Portland, OR area, and Ruth and Dan live about an hour toward the SE of us, near the Twin Cities.

Ten years may not seem like that great of an accomplishment to most people, but considering it was the second time around for both of us, (he was widowed, I was divorced), and the fact that we were in our forties, I think we're doing quite well. We've decided to celebrate our decade of togetherness, with a short "getaway." I think we're long overdue for one. We can't afford to do a real vacation, so we're just going to drive north about 2 hours, and stay in a jacuzzi suite at a moderately priced hotel. We plan to enjoy an anniversary dinner on the way there, and then go for a nice drive after we leave the hotel on Friday. The Fall colors should be about at their peak where we'll be about that time, so it should make for a lovely day. The weather tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, with a high of 68 degrees. It was even warmer than that on our wedding day, and to my recollection there have only been one or two anniversaries that were NOT absolutely gorgeous days. I think we picked a pretty good date. I will definitely take pictures (of the scenery) and post them here for all to see.

In the past ten years, we've definitely had more "poorer" than "richer," but fortunately, we've also had a lot more "health than sickness" as well. And for the most part, we've enjoyed much more "better" than "worse" times too. We intend to be together "until death do us part," and as long as we keep trusting in God, who put us together, I'm positive we will do just that. Happy Anniversary, Honey!!