21 day fix. days 9 through... i stopped counting.

so my brief hiatus from blogging is now over, seeing as we have returned from the woods only slightly unscathed.

days 9 through 14 of the fix will have to be considered a 40% wash. i know the phrase all too well "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail". so, i spreadsheeted the fun right out of this trip. i carefully planned our menu and wrote out what i was allotted for carbs, proteins, freggies and fruit each day in a very cute notebook. i packed 4 workout outfits, my dumbbells and the fix workout DVDs (because there's a DVD player in the woods...) and even went through the painful process of writing out two of the 30-minute workouts from the dvd's in said notebook. however, in our 5 days of vacation, i only put on a sports bra once (and that was only to sleep in) and referenced the aforementioned notebook twice; once to grab a handful of paper to help get the fire started, and the second time to give nash something to do.

but here's what i did differently from my usual "eat.all.the.things." frame of mind on vacation - i ate less. like, way less than i usually do. and i tried to get in some form of exercise/movement every day, even though it was never an all-out-sweat-fest-workout. however, setting up a tent while trying to keep two four-year-old's from breaking your tent poles, using a bungee cord to strangle themselves and/or lighting themselves on fire must be a pretty good all-out-sweat-fest-workout. i got on the scale yesterday and managed to lose a pound on this vacation, so i'll take it.

we hiked (although in minnesota, you should really just call it "a walk in the woods with a lot of bugs" because there aren't really any mountains to hike)...

we went into the boundary waters so i could explain the word "wilderness".
they kept asking where the refrigerator was.

we canoed and swam almost every day in fall lake...

good luck kids! mommy's having a campsite cocktail. see you tomorrow!

we hung out at our waterfront campsite...

totally ugly.

and the highlight of the trip? "hunting for frogs"...

butterfly net: best $3 ever spent.

nash was more thrilled with the ringpop on her left finger.

we ended our camping "vacation" by surprising the kids with a trip to a hotel. they love hotel swimming pools almost as much as they love chocolate cupcakes and hitting each other. it was a really nice way to end 4 days of roughing it in the woods - hot showers, a swimming pool and hot tub, and a really nice restaurant where someone other than me had to feed my family.

and now would be a good time to tell you that nearly every camping trip we take involves a trip to the ER. and inevitably, these emergency rooms are in small towns. well let me tell you - small town emergency rooms don't come any nicer than the one in ely, minnesota! 

zeke somehow managed to get two super-cut/super-blisters on his feet that looked pretty swollen and infected on thursday. we have no idea what happened. his only story remains to this day: "i stood on my tippy toes to unzip the tent door and now i can't walk!" which totally can't be true. right? since when does standing on your tippy toes erupt into cellulitis?

i tried some home (campsite) remedies and self-care, but by saturday his toes had blown up so badly that he could barely walk. and then he dropped a water bottle on his toe and things really exploded. so i had to breakdown and acknowledge that we would, yet again, be spending a portion of our family vacation in a hospital waiting room. the doctor was amazing. AMAZING. he looked like he paddled and portaged his way straight to the hospital employee entrance approximately 5 minutes before walking into the exam room. he was about 70 years old and wearing a pair of those waterproof pants where the lower part rips off and a polo shirt with a boundary waters logo on it. we got sent back to minneapolis with a cellulitis diagnosis, oral antibiotics and an oozy wound in the backseat.

to(e)tes. gross.

also of note: this entire hospital trip, including registration, took 24 minutes from car door to car door. and they apologized for making us wait so long. and they gave us a coupon for a free ice cream cone. seriously. this trip at any ER in minneapolis would've been a 3-4 hour ordeal. i want to move to ely.

no hopsital stay is complete without ice cream...

a little chocolate ice cream can go a long way.

getting home was a bit epic. in typical fashion, i really didn't want the vacation to end. i wondered about staying another night at the lodge to drag things out, but we decided that paying our bills and getting zeke's toes home was probably the wiser choice. on the way home we took the 'scenic' route through parts of minnesota that the badger had never seen, like hibbing, crosby, and aitkin where we stopped to play mini-golf.

do i have to actually use this thing? can't i just sit here and be pretty?

here zeke. i know your toes are throbbing, so let's just walk around on that toe a bit
and force you to play 18 holes of minigolf. sound good?

after the mini-golf excursion, nash spent approximately 90 minutes screaming "i want to be home right now!". so that was fun.

trip summary: on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being our hellish trip to black lake in the summer of 2012, and 10 being staying home and getting a lot of sleep instead, i give it an 8.

21 day fix update coming next,
ashley "i prefer the teepee method of building campfires" rebekah