The first summer of our marriage Josh and I went up to Lake City, MN with my in laws and absolutely fell in love with the little town on Lake Pepin on the Minnesota side. This darling little town is a total tourist trap; however, it has its charm from the cute little antique stores all the way down to their local grocery store Fiesta foods. Before they had always rented out vacation houses for us all to stay in that were super cute and just within walking distance from the lake, but last year my father in law announced that he had purchased his very own lake house there!
It totally is a fixer upper, but with a lot of tender love and care the place has turned into a quaint little home away from home for us all to use as we please for a little R & R or a weekend getaway. This picture was taken in one of the upstairs bedrooms facing the lake and as you can see we're literally a couple of blocks away from the lake, so TOTALLY within walking distance!
The drive up itself wasn't HORRIBLE with a dog and a toddler in tow. The originally plan had been to wait until sometime Thursday to make the four hour drive up to the lake house, but after talking it out it made more sense to try and go when Liam was sleeping for the night instead of trying to coordinate nap time and pray that he would stay content and napping the whole way up. We ended up leaving shortly after 6 PM and made it until about one hour left of our journey to when Liam was starting to get a little anxious(which I think for a 17 month old he did REALLY well!). We arrived at the lake house around 10 PM/11 PM and tried to wrangle the grumpy toddler the best we could to go to sleep, but of course after being cooped up in the car for so long he had been full of energy. Eventually we were able to lay down our weary heads and go to sleep, ready for the day's adventures. Thursday was pretty relaxed and honestly I don't remember much of that day's events. We went to Ellsworth, WI to visit Ellsworth Creamery(A must always when we are up there) and bought some fresh cheese curds, fried cheese curds, Spotted Cow(a Wisconsin delicacy) and a Strawberry Rhubarb wine made from a local winery. Liam even got to share an ice cream cone with Grandpa Phil(They have the best ice cream!) and see some dairy cows getting ready to take a trip in the trailer.
Afterwards we drove to Red Wing to pick up some supplies at Menards and Walmart and then made our way back to the Lake House to relax. Josh got to show his dad how good he had gotten at grilling and I made my famous baked beans as a side. After clean up from dinner we all just hung out in the living room and enjoyed each other's company.
Friday was an amazing day! Josh and I got to sneak out a little bit and be baby free for a few hours. We hopped in the Ford Escape and just took off towards Red Wing for a little mommy and daddy adventure. We just kind of poked around through the town of Red Wing. With the Covid-19 out break a lot of things were still closed, but the places that were open requested for us to wear masks and obviously maintain social distance guidelines while we were in the stores. We ended up finding a cute little baby boutique and picked Liam up a tool box pop up book. We didn't stay in Red Wing too terribly long and decided to just get in the car and drive. We ended up just driving and enjoying the scenery with no true plan or itinerary in mind. Eventually we knew that we would need to stop for lunch somewhere, but decided that if we saw a place that looked interesting we would stop there.
Josh and I decided on a road that would take us around the lake and eventually we found ourselves in the little town of Stockholm, Wisconsin. They had this darling little eatery called Stockholm Pie and General Store and found out that they sold sandwiches and other lunch items there as well.
After poking around in the general store and buying some dark chocolate salted caramel truffles, we decided that we would stop there for lunch and the hubby had a roast beef sandwich and I had one of their chicken pot pies. To wash down our tasty finds we got a couple of Jones sodas from the cooler and found a little, two seater table by the window. Let me tell you this, the chicken pot pie was TO DIE FOR. It was so savory and even writing about it right now makes me want to make the four our trip up there just to load up a cooler full of them.
After lunch Josh and I grabbed a 10" blackberry/raspberry pie to bring back to the in laws as a thank you for watching little man. Which as you can tell in the pictures he was having a blast going on his own little adventure with grandma and grandpa. 
As a thank you we made some grilled chicken thighs/ hind quarters, cheddar broccoli rice and some baked broccoli for dinner. We even had some additional guests! Great Grandma and Grandpa had come up to the lake and even had taken Liam on his first boat ride!
After dinner we all enjoyed the pie, vowing that we would have to make a special trip back to Stockholm to go get more if they were open, being as it would be the Fourth of July.
On the Fourth of July, Josh and his dad went on a father son day while grandma and I hung out with little man. The morning was pretty relaxed and after morning nap we decided to go hit the beach to take Liam swimming. He absolutely loved the water and I had him in this cute little baby raft thing I had bought from amazon to help keep him safe and secure in the water. He kept singing 'row row' from the nursery rhyme.
After about a hour of swimming we went back home for a snack and an afternoon nap. By that time Josh had returned to the lake house and was getting ready to BBQ some ribs and I needed to help with the sides.
Josh and I love cooking and we especially love cooking for our families and people that we love. He smoked two racks of ribs on the grill and I made corn bread, my baked beans(I know again, but they're so good!) and my famous baked
macaroni and cheese. To say everybody left with happy tummies is an understatement! And for desert we had some more of those awesome Stockholm pies topped with vanilla ice cream. After all you cannot have a Fourth of July celebration without pie! That's simply un-American! After dinner was cleaned up we headed towards the marina to go watch the fireworks on great grandma and grandpa's boat. We had a little time to kill so we decided to take a little boat ride around the lake until we found an amazing watch that was perfect to watch the fireworks.
It was an amazing fireworks show with a grand finale like nothing I had ever seen before. Allegedly it had been very last minute thrown together due to them not sure if it would still be going on or not due to Covid-19. Needless to say I was impressed, after all who doesn't like a FREE fireworks show?
Sunday was return home day and after sweeping the house to make sure we didn't leave anything behind we packed up our little caravan and said our farewells.
We had an amazing weekend, but one thing was for certain it is always an amazing feeling to return home. I cannot wait to go back up to the lake house and create more memories with my little family.
I hope you all had an amazing Fourth of July and got to create memories even though this year we've all been trying to be safe and practice social distancing.
-xoxo
Midwest Mommie
