What another beautiful day we have here at the lake house. I slept in most of the morning and awoke to a clean kitchen (thanks guys! Seriously, awesome treat). We’ve spent most of the day today doing absolutely nothing – and it’s been wonderful. I came to a revelation today that if you are traveling for longer than a week (notice I said traveling, not going on vacation) that it is ABSOLUTELY essential to take a day off once a week, or at the least every 10 days. Take one day, spend it in a hotel or other semi-private lodging arrangement and do nothing. No sightseeing, no tours, no landmarks. Go to a park, catch up on your blog, write some e-mails, upload your photos, watch TV, sleep in (and don’t feel guilty). I think this is the biggest piece of advice I’ve run across during this trip and needless to say, I was very grateful for today. We were actually supposed to leave this place today and spend the night in Minneapolis with Michael (a couchsurfing friend) but it’s so wonderful here, that we decided to stick around and get up early in the morning to finish he drive to Fargo.

We also decided to take our band’s first album pics today. Rockin’. We also attempted to put the rowboat down by the water into the lake, but it’s heavy and we found nothing around we could row with. As the second scene for our band pics, we decided to climb this awkward tree that leaned out over the water. En route to said tree, Emma, bless her heart, steps right into a pile of what I can only describe as Gloop. It was muddy shore water that was likely had at least a 60/40 water to dirt ratio; it was like quicksand. She stepped in with one leg, submerged up to her mid thigh in gloop and then made the all to easy mistake of stepping her second foot down next to the first to try and pull herself out – no dice. Now she’s got two legs in gloop up to her waist practically. I think, honestly, I was more hysterical than she was. I saw her sinking farther, and in between laughing and taking pictures from atop the tree, I had moments of panic that we wouldn’t be able to get her out. Brian saved the day though and drug her out with a large tree branch and his manly strength (*cough*). Emma even had the guts to reach back into her leg holes after she was out and fished out her shoes. All of this, combined with 40 degree temperatures made a frozen little Aussie girl, so we promptly cleaned off all the mud and ran back inside to escape the cold.

We watched a little more football this afternoon and then drove to Madison about an hour away to drop off Brian at the airport (he’s renting a car and driving one-way back to Chicago where’s he’s spending a couple more days with Sam and then flying out of there). Once we got back to the house, it was all cleaning, laundry and eating leftovers. We polished off the turkey and casserole pretty quick and grazed on the pies for the rest of the night. It’s early, now (about 9:30) but we’re headed to bed because the “plan” is to leave at 2:30. HA. We’ll see if that actually happens.

XOXO

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