It is the weekend...remembering my happy place

Well, we are this ---|              |--- much closer to being business owners. Some of the big pieces of paper work got signed and sent off to their respective places on Thursday, only thing left to do is to "officially" close on it, which happens early next week and then it becomes officially "ours" on November 1. It is getting very exciting.

It will be nice to have the purchase completed and start learning the business - the daily operations. DH will be the one who will work it full-time, so he will be the one who will go to training (one week in Southern Cal and one week on the east coast at the corporate headquarters). I am definitely looking forward to being in the store, to help out and to work on the marketing side of it...however, I am also keeping my current job because I really enjoy being there (it is something that I feel is mine and I enjoy all the people I work with!). So, while it sounds like things are settling down...they really won't feel that way until the week of Thanksgiving - when the business is ours and DH is done travelling; when Robert (older son) had gone and come home from the Medicine Hat Hockey Tournament; and when Matthew (younger son) & I return from Phoenix from his hockey tournament...that will all happen around November 22 :)

Well my family from Minnesota (my parents and sisters) are taunting me with their current travels to Lutsen, MN. Lutsen, MN is a ski resort which is located about 50 miles south of the Canadian border on Lake Superior. Back in the late 1970s, when my family moved from Kansas to Minnesota, the household was filled with stress...Dad needed to move us for a job, but mom wasn't really happy about moving (they did work through their differences and built a stronger marriage by doing so), I started going through and struggled with adolescence at that time; my younger sisters also dealt with the move in their own way. But as per a recommendation from a friend,  to "get away from it all", we started driving up north to a small ski resort in Lutsen in Mid-October.

Back in the late 70's and early 80's, Lutsen consisted of the ski lodge and a few cabins, which were situated right on the shores of Lake Superior. The only restaurants around was the one at the lodge or the pizza place at Aspen Lodge, which was 10 miles back down the road. The cabins had a kitchen, family room (no reception for tv or radio back then) and, depending on the kind of cabin you got, it either had a couple of bedrooms or a bedroom and a loft (that is where we, girls, liked to stay and hide out). We would travel up there in mid-October, when we would have a school break - we would leave Wednesday afternoon and stay until Sunday mid-morning. Kids at school always asked me: "Why do you go to Lutsen in the fall? There is no snow to ski on. What do you do?"

What did we do? We read, we listened to my father's music (classical and new age composer George Winston)...my sisters & I would play school, play house or come up with other ways to entertain ourselves...we played family board games...I wrote poetry and stories...we talked, we discussed, we bonded as a family. We also found gorgeous places to hike - Gooseberry Falls, Superior Hiking Trail, to name a few. We explored little cities, like Grand Marais, (about a 45 minute drive north from Lutsen, had a little doughnut hole store - they only made cinnamon doughnut holes. If you didn't get there before 11, you were out of luck).

This was our haven...it is my "happy place"

A view of Lake Superior from our favorite cabin I-6

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Well, over the year, just like every thing - it grew and developed. The last time we were there was the weekend of my parent's wedding anniversary several years ago. There are shops, restaurants, houses...the roads have been widened, trees cut down, our quiet nature walks have become official parks...it has totally taken on a new character. The little, quiet heaven of a place only exists in my mind...in my memory.

Well, as I said my family, who are up there as I type this, have been taunting me. They are all staying in one of the cabins we requested year after year...and my sister found one of the journals that the cabin owner leaves out for guests to sign and found this entry:

My entry from the Lutsen I-6 cabin journal from when my family and I stayed there in October 1983. 

I guess you can say that I have "officially" left my mark on this world :) (well, I probably have in more ways than one).

Well, enough of my "memory walk"...back to reality. This weekend we have a hockey weekend on tap. Robert's team is play a league weekend here in San Jose. They already placed 2 games yesterday - lost 1 and won 1. They have 2 more today and one on Sunday. Other than hockey, I am looking forward to catching up on a few things...sitting and stitching being one of those things on my list.

So, my blog friends, I bid you a good weekend. Take care and remember...

Live, Love, Laugh and Stitch often!

Lisa