New Year's Weekend at the Cabin

We went to the cabin for the last week in 2011. It was the longest time we spent at the cabin, four nights and five days. We played games and cooked and relaxed. We built lots of fires and watched movies. Martin spent a lot of time caulking windows. I spent a lot of time cooking and cleaning. But the first night, I was so tired, and the fire was so cozy that the only thing I could manage to do was take a nap. The boys joined me. 

Luckily, the next morning found me revived and able to make omelettes.

We went into Michigan City for the afternoon and had lunch at Swingbelly's.

On the morning of the 31st, Otto and I went out to get groceries and look for party supplies while Martin and Max took Lilli on a walk.

We were really hoping for sparklers and party hats and were very disappointed to find almost nothing for celebrating. But Otto had the idea to get supplies to make root beer floats for dessert. He really wanted to find something to surprise Max with, since Max and I had gone on a similar shopping excursion another weekend and returned with goodies for Otto.

We had scheduled a tour of the Journeyman Distillery in Three Oaks for 1:00 p.m. We arrived at 12:30, thinking we were early. But it turned out we had forgotten that Michigan was on Eastern time, and we had missed the start of the tour. All was not lost. We joined a tasting and walked away with a fine bottle of whiskey to take to our friends Warren and Laura, who have a farm house not far from the cabin. And there was a cute swing out front.

We walked through downtown Three Oaks and stopped in a few antique shops, had lunch at Froehlich's, where we found lots of funny housewares on sale. It was the last day they were open for the season. So many of the cute places are closing until March or April. At least we took home some tasty bagels and fresh pickles. 

Also, we realized that we were checking the wrong places for sparklers. After a CVS, a couple of local pharmacies, a few grocery stores and one funny country store, we finally noticed that we were passing big fireworks stands every few miles. Duh.

Although Mike's Country Store didn't have any sparklers or party supplies, they did have a funny pirate game for $5 which we brought home.

We played the pirate game while I made a beef stew, which took a couple of hours in the oven. This worked out fine, since we were trying to stretch out the evening and make it to midnight. After the game, we set the table.

Lilli was not nearly as excited about her party hat as the boys were.

Happy New Year!