Take the trip

Tara’s Takes

July was a busy month, and as it came to a close last week, I had two things going through my mind. First, I’m so far behind from this month. Second, I’m so ready for a vacation.

Yep, way back in April, we had booked and paid for our annual vacation to Cragun’s Resort on Gull Lake. With the chaos of this summer and how far behind I felt, there was part of me that thought if we hadn’t already paid for it, maybe we sit this summer out.

But there was a bigger part of me that knew how important this trip was. My kids and I look forward to this trip every summer. We go with friends of mine from college and their kids. this year marked our fifth year of going to the same resort.

My favorite part of Cragun’s is there is so much for the kids to do. The lake has a great beach with va olleyball court, water activities, fire pits and more. The resort also has an outdoor pool (which in five years we’ve never used), and an indoor pool and hot tub. They also have a multitude of water activities you can rent along with bikes. The indoor pool area has games, ping pong tables, pool tables and air hockey.

We have some traditions we do every year and some things change each time we visit.

This year, we left our rooms by 8 a.m., and other than to grab more food or drinks, we were doing something until almost 10 p.m. every night.

Usually, we rent a pontoon to take the kids tubing, as well as time for fishing and swimming.

After last year, we discovered our teenagers are too big to knock off the tube behind the pontoon. This year we made the best decision ever.

We split the boat time between a speed boat for the first part and a pontoon for the second half of the day. Not only did this allow Alex the speed and power to knock every kid off the tube several times, it had an added bonus for Tracy and me. The speed boat is smaller and therefore could only fit Alex and the five kids. That meant we got to sit on the beach and relax while we watched our kids fly across the lake.

This year, we also had better luck fishing off the pontoon. We weren’t catching any keepers, but the fish were being reeled in as fast as we could take them off the hook. I discovered that while Natalie loves catching fish, she hates taking the fish off the hook and honestly won’t get close to them.

We also spent time in the paddle boat, paddle boards, canoes, bikes and more. We ate smores, played many games of bean bags and ping pong, laughed a lot during board games and made another season of memories at our favorite get away. We also took our annual photo by Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. This year, we added matching shirts to start commemorating our “family vacations” even more. Natalie joked that Xander and Braylon (Alex and Tracy’s sons) become more like brothers every year because they annoy her more. As the only girl in the kid group, she holds her own with all the boys.

By the time we made it home, my lungs were sore from all the smoke, and I was beyond tired, but my heart was full. Despite all the stuff that should have been getting done here, I was so glad we had booked before the chaos of the summer so I couldn’t put the trip off.

While Tracy and I didn’t show the kids that we could still tube and ride the banana boat, we will be back next year to prove that fact. We just took a year off.

And we added another year of memories with those friends that have become family.