a trip to duluth and a guest post

splitting my weekend recap into two posts. friday night i attended a cooking class with my fellow blogger ladies, so i'll have a recap of that tomorrow. today i wanna share about the fun little road trip azalea and i took to duluth on saturday. we visited my friend dani, her husband, nick and their little boy gino (16 months). it had been months since we had been up there (or seen them at all), so it was fun to get to hang out and watch azalea and gino together. i forgot my real camera, which was a bummer, but i managed to get some pics on my ipod. 

we left bright and early saturday morning and made it up there in the late morning. i was hoping azalea would sleep for a while in the car, but she didn't sleep a wink, of course. ;) duluth had beautiful weather this weekend, just like the twin cities. not quite as warm, but still comfortable for having fun outside. first thing we did was take the kids to playfront park. it was pretty crowded, but they had fun. 

we grabbed lunch at vitta pizza in canal park and then head back to their house so the toddlers could nap. i managed to get azalea to fall asleep in the guest bed after i laid with her for a while. dani and i decided to set up some camping chairs and sit on her deck in the sun. it felt amazing! after nap time, we headed back to canal park on a mission to get ice cream from coldstone and walk the board walk. 

it was so beautiful, and the water was so calm! of course the ice cream was a hit too :) that night, nick grilled up burgers for dinner for us and we just hung out at their house the rest of the evening. 

after the kiddos went to bed, dani and i drank wine and watched clueless. all of a sudden around 10:45, i heard a "thud" and azalea crying out. poor girl fell out of the bed! she wasn't hurt, just startled. she was freaked out and wouldn't let me leave after that, so our clueless date was cut short. oh well! i also have to share how awful my night of sleep was. azalea is the craziest sleeper i have ever met. she flops around the bed like a fish all.night.long. limbs flying, hitting me in the face, etc. it's so bad! haha. so needless to say, i did not get much sleep. but the snuggles were worth it (sort of). 

sunday we headed to target and the mall. all i bought were some cute gray flats from dsw on ridiculous clearance. not shockingly, the toddlers weren't super into shopping. we picked up noodles and brought it back to the house to eat. after lunch, i got the car all packed and ready to go, but when i tried to start my car, i discovered the battery was dead! eep! first time that has happened with this car. luckily nick was able to jump it for me and we were on our way. when we got home it was 77 degrees out! i took azalea to the park. it felt like a summer night. soooo appreciated after the last few months of freezing temps and snow. i can't wait for the coming months! 

 ps. i'm guest posting over on katie's blog today! go check out my post about my trip to london and venice a few years ago. there's an engagement story in there too :)