i've had warmer days

Dear heat, I miss you. Please come back to me. Today is a tease. It’s currently 48 degrees outside. But I won’t be fooled. I know next Monday is supposed to be back down in the teens. In case you didn’t know, I am a warm weather girl. I hate the cold and it makes me cranky and unpleasant. Every year, sometime in January I start to feel hopeless and impatient concerning spring. I start making lots of blanket statements using superlatives: Spring is taking FOREVER to get here. I haven’t been warm AT ALL since July. We’re NEVER going to make it out of winter alive!
To reignite my hope today, I’m taking a mental vacation back to a trip David and I took in July with his parents to northern Minnesota. Hello, sunshine.

This little cutie of a town is Grand Marais, Minnesota. My parents lived here for almost ten years until my siblings and I crashed the party. It’s a little odd, but my life began here, and now I only know it as a vaguely familiar spot on the map where we used to vacation every few years. Oh well, it’s still a special little town to me, and I loved being there this summer and enjoying the artsy, clean, simple feel that radiates from every building and shop.

It’s situated right on Lake Superior, and the harbor is edged in by a rocky point with a Coast Guard base. The day we were there, the weather was glorious. *Sigh*

Because I know everyone enjoys a good self-timer shot, imagine the ten seconds before the shutter clicked. Me bent over on my hands and knees lining up my shot, then leaping to clear the puddle and perch myself casually next to David. Oh, and then doing it all again, after realizing some random girl got in my background. Rude. Doesn’t that make this picture more fun? I think so.



And now, ladies and gentlemen, be prepared to be amazed as you witness the style and grace with which my husband and I skip rocks. Wow. That follow through is spot on. Spot. On. Perfect torque. That rock must have skipped….oh….ten or, thirty times, probably. I guess we’ll never know.

Niiiice. (please don’t overlook the sarcasm with which I occasionally write)

Here’s David with his dad. These two both enjoy a good vacation, let me tell you. It’s one of my favorite things about them that they have in common. They truly love the goodness of rest and know how to slow life down enough to enjoy things like a good view and a peaceful place to just sit.


Ahh. I feel better now. I know. I am lame. I’m even cheating my way through withstanding the depressing late winter months by planning a trip to Los Angeles. So really, I only have to wait a few more weeks to bust out my sandals!
My goal for the trip, which I am logging here in order to have some semblance of accountability, is to focus (no pun intended) on taking intentional photos while we are there. I love taking pictures when I travel, and having the time during a trip to explore with my camera. However, my DSLR is kind of huge, and I feel like a total stereotypical tourist when I have it out (see image above of me skipping rocks with a camera bag clung across my back). I often let things like that keep me from getting the photos I really want. I know it’s not even important what some passerby thinks of me when I’m taking photos, so I’m resolving to attack my photography fears head on during our upcoming trip. As a secondary goal, I’m hoping to figure out a way to get myself in more of my photos, even when using my camera. We always bring along our point and shoot so that David can hold his arm out and get our typical, heads-close-together, bottom-of-my-face-often-cut-off, and including-at-least-some-of-a-pretty-background shot. Not that I don’t LOVE those, but I really want to play with other ways of getting in my pictures. So wish me luck – I’ll keep you posted. Enjoy the nice(ish) weather if you have it this weekend!