Life and Times of the Murphy Five: Spirit Lake 2012

We went to Spirit Lake for a little family vacation during the week of July 4th. We went up on Friday, June 29th and came home on Thursday, July 5th. Here's what we will remember from the trip.

We chose the hottest week of the year to vacation at a lake house with no air conditioning!! The temperatures were in the high 90s-low 100s for the whole week we were there. The first couple of days were bearable, the last half were not.
We stayed at the House That Jack Built. It's the same house that we've stayed at the past few years. Grandma Kathy and her sister, Marilyn, rented the house for a month this year.
At one point of the week there were 6 adults and 7 children in the house.
On Sunday, we sat in the parking lot at Wal Mart with all of our transmission fluid on the parking lot. We are lucky to be able to drive Brett's company car for vacations and personal use. Thankfully, Brett's employer uses a company to help with all car issues. After spending some time on the phone and calling an SOS call out to Grandma Kathy we cleaned out Brett's car and made it back to The House That Jack Built.
Monday and Tuesday morning we spent our time trying to figure out where to get a rental car and what was going to happen to Brett's car since it has 167,000 miles on it. Still, an entire week later we still don't know if Brett will have to drive back to Spirit Lake to pick up his car or will wait to get a new car. For the time being, we're enjoying a little upgrade in a rented Malibu.
Riley loving following "the girls" around the house and wanting to be in the middle of everything. She found a new favorite game, Mario, on the DS.
Riley loved being in the water and "riding the waves in" with Daddy.

Harper enjoyed her first day in the water as she floated in her little turtle floaty. She was kicked back with her head back and her toes up out of the water. Too cute! The rest of the time in the water she didn't care much for it. She hated her life jacket.
Harper loved playing in the sand. Mostly she loved picking it up, throwing it in a bucket, and then eating it. Yum!
Harper ate two dinners almost every night. Since we ate most meals later than she was used to she wanted to eat early, but we couldn't eat in front of her without her eating half our plates!
Riley loved fishing with her Barbie pole off the dock. She caught two fish with it. One of them was the biggest of the trip. Daddy caught two fish.
One one of the really hot days we left the house to explore some of the attractions and get out of the heat. We went to The Fish Hatchery where the DNR "grow" fish to stock the lakes with. Riley loved seeing all of the fish, turtles, and stuffed animals that were on display. We went to Arnold's Park where we went to the maritime museum. Not much of hit, but we did finally find a hat that fit Riley's head! We then headed over to Arnold's Park. It wasn't very busy because it was 97 degrees and we learned the hard way that we should have only purchased a ticket for Riley. Harper loved riding the merry-go-round, and Riley went on her first "roller coaster" by herself. Riley loved it, of course. But after an hour and a ride on most of the kiddy rides we were all ready to get back into some air conditioning.

Some friends of Kathy and Marilyn's graciously offered us their guest house a few houses down so that we could get out of the heat. We were so thankful because we had just decided that we would probably pack up and head home. I don't do heat well, both girls were beat red, and neither were sleeping well.
The House that Jack Built was dubbed "the hot house" and the other house was dubbed "the cool house."
We had Riley stay up late on the 3rd to watch fireworks. When they finally started around 10pm we had to force her to watch about 5 as she cried to go inside.
The 4th of July we swam, eat burgers and brats and then headed in to Arnold's Park to ride bumper cars and possibly watch fireworks. Bumper cars were closed, but we were able to mini golf at Pirate's Cove. This was Riley's first time mini golfing and she had a blast. It was much more fun than fighting the crowds to find a spot to watch the fireworks and concert. Because it was so late and we didn't have good luck with Riley and fireworks the night before we decided to call it a day and head back to the cool house. As we drove home we were able to see some of the fireworks.

Riley now says that she wants to "hockey golf" or "puff puff golf" every day.
Somewhere Riley picked up on "oh, nuts!" and we heard it all week long!
On Thursday, we waited around until 1 to see what was going to happen with Brett's car. Because we hadn't heard anything and we were ready to get back home we decided to head home.
When we came home we found much of our garden wilted, despite getting watered throughout the week by Grandpa Kevin. Most of our ripe tomatoes were burned on the bottom. We had two zucchini that were at least a foot long and 5 inches thick! After a break in the heat and some more water the plants are doing much better, and we have 6 tomatoes on our counter just about ready to eat.
Pictures:

Harper and her pretty smile!