Brodd Family Fun Time

Slip and Slide

A missed blog post from last summer... sending warm thoughts your way this cold winter week!

It has been a while since we have posted, but with school starting back up tomorrow and us headed back into the office, we wanted to share a quick Happy Holidays post.

We headed out to Cokato Lake for Christmas this year. While the day of was pretty brown, we got 6+ inches of the white stuff on the day following Christmas.

Perfect for snowmobile rides...

Chucking tennis balls to the pups...

and snow angels!!!

We also cleaned the heavy snow off the tree branches for Grandma.

Winter is finally here! Looking forward to more fun times both in Woodbury and Cokato Lake throughout the rest of the winter! We may even get around to another blog post :-)

North Shore

Our North Shore trip with the extended McCracken crew was a great adventure for the whole family. Between the 12 or so of us, we shared three cabins right on the water. I mean RIGHT on the water. Steps from our front (or back) door was Lake Superior.

While the shore was more one large rock, than the millions of small Lake Superior rocks we are accustomed to, it did make for some fun adventures.

Sylvia taking dad to her "climbing spot"

The girls chillin' on the ledge

Another rocky beach with some nice waves...

Of course we needed to stop at Gooseburry Falls

Big cousin Jared hanging out on the rocks

For the most part the weather was great... it was a bit warm to start the trip, but we survived due to multiple fans in the cabin. As a matter of fact, it was enjoyed so much, we are already booked for 2016! See you in 11 months North Shore!

4th of July Celbration

Long overdue post, but wanted to share the fun we had over the 4th....

Crafting time with Grandpa & Grandma

I love the sand beach!

Tubing time

The Jetski was moving this year...

Charlie in the sand

Oasis Island 2.0

More and more tents each year... we must be getting old!

Dinner time

and cake time!

Happy Sisters!

Thanks again to Jim and Virginia for giving up the cabin to celbrate the 4th of July! The weather was perfect and the company was ever better!

Duluth Zoo

We have another trip to Duluth scheduled in less than a week, so we should finish all the posts from our last trip!

Even though Jamie and I spent 5 years living in Duluth, we never once visited the zoo. I guess when you have kids, things change! So when we decided to check out the zoo, we didn't know what to expect. While small, I think the entire family was pleased with out visit.

All smiles in front of the bobcat exhibit.

A couple of monkeys!

This bear is huge!!!

The nice part of the exhibits is how close you can get to the animals. The bald eagle is about 6 feet away!

The cockroaches are even closer!

The lion was warming itself in the sun

and Mr. Green Python greeted us to the reptile exhibit!

It was a great way to spend the morning in Duluth and now Violet has a new favorite Raffi song - "Going to the zoo"

Happy 7th Birthday Sylvia

For Sylvia's birthday today we started it off with some COLOR!

We participated in our first ever Color Run 5k. Basically it is tons of people that walk, run, whatever around the fairgrounds and go through "color stations" where the staff throw colored stuff onto you.

The jogging stroller was a great idea to get the girls from station to station. Here we had just fished up the blue and Violet is saying "Yes!!!"

Getting ready to head to the last station - the Glitter!

Family photo - post race... I think Violet wanted to get more color on her!

It was a fun experience - but man was it hot out there... We got home, hosed off, and relaxed during the afternoon. Tonight we are headed out to dinner. Sylvia's pick? Sushi!