Father's Day festivities

Stella and I took our annual father's day trip last weekend. This year I got a little more bold and opted for an overnight. We drove up to Taylor's Falls, MN and went on a boat ride on Saturday night, spent the night in a cabin, and went to a water park in the morning.

This was definitely a case of it being more about the journey than the destination. The boat ride was nice, although Stella enjoyed buying chips at the snack bar more than the scenery. We had a very nice meal at McDonald's, and then arrived at our accommodations. We stayed at a little cabin that was modeled after a country store. Everything was going splendidly until the smoke alarm mounted to a very high ceiling went off at about 9:30 pm. Stella was in a pretty deep sleep, so the first two times it went off (for about 5 seconds at a time) she didn't really wake up. The third time it started cranking for about 30 seconds. At that point I was still trying to figure out what it was. When I turned around Stella was standing in the middle of the floor with her ears covered. She was pretty distressed. I gathered up her bedtime stuff and had her lay down in the truck while I called the proprietor. He came down with a ladder and we agreed that we would forgo the fire detector for the night.

The remainder of the night went smoothly and we awoke to sunny skies and ants on our pastries. Stella was the one who spotted them. I didn't have my glasses on yet and probably would have eaten them if she hadn't been there. The pastires looked great, but needless to say, we skipped them and went to town for some breakfast - then it was off to the waterpark. The clouds rolled in right about the time we got there and I learned that the kiddie area didn't open until 11am, despite the rest of the park opening at 10am. We killed some time and then did some splashing around. It was a little brisk, so we only hung around for a couple hours. It was fun nonethelesss.

So that was it. Enjoy the pictures - if you are wondering why she is shirtless, we decided the wet swim shirt made her colder.