Heading to Lutsen

The 4 Smith kids, our spouses and 13 children were excited to head to Lutsen on a Sunday morning!  Luke, who booked the resort, was most anxious to get going, and was hoping to be on the road by 7am.  Yeah, that was not going to happen with this group!  So we compromised and were hoping to leave by 10am.

As I opened the fridge to get a quick breakfast going for the group staying at our house, I was shocked to see pink milk.  It looked just like a gallon of strawberry milk, except I hadn't bought strawberry milk.  We were all completely puzzled, did a lot of googling, and couldn't come up with anything except that it might have spoiled.  What was strange was that I had bought the gallon less than 12 hours earlier.  I was sure I had broken the seal that morning.  Some of the brave souls still poured the milk on their cereal, others passed, and eventually we dumped most of it down the sink.

A week later...a full week later, Jake (13) and Ben (12) admitted to getting up in the middle of the night and adding red food coloring to the milk.  While I was certain I had broken the seal, Jake convinced me that he had screwed the lid on as tight as possible, and in the hub bub of the morning, I THOUGHT I broke the seal, but actually didn't.

As we were figuring out the milk situation, a text came through from my parents' house with a smashed driver's side window on my brother's van.  It turns out 15 or so cars got hit that night in my parent's neighborhood, and unfortunately, my brother's car was one of them.  After some time trying to find a repair place that could fix the car that day, to tossing around driving up with an open window and getting it fixed up north, to cramming Luke's family of 5 into other vehicles, it was decided that the rest of the group would go on as planned, and they would figure out what to do for their family.  It really put a damper on the day, and we all felt guilty heading out of town without them.

Fortunately, their story had a good ending!  Their van was fixed the next day, and Luke and his family drove from Lakeville to Lutsen without stopping once!  Incredible!

We spent our first evening settling in, swimming, hiking down to the Poplar River, and making S'mores around the campfire.

Hittin' the road

Our view

S'mores

These 3 became known as "The Mediums" 

(big kids, medium kids, little kids)

Fascinated by a chipmunk that was quite lethargic

Luke beating up Torrey

The river was high and rushing!