Our Niece Stacie's Visit to Duluth

I will have to say that a highlight of 2011, will have to be the visit from our niece from Pennsylvania. Stacie is the oldest daughter of my brother, Jerry. We lost Jerry to cancer in 2003 and he is missed very much by all of us. The other highlight of 2011, of course was my visit home to PA and my family and friends there that I made in April. When I am home I always encourage everyone to come and see us in Minnesota (and our daughter, in Hudson, WI). It has been a very, very long time since anyone has come to see us from PA. My brother Steve and his wife, Donna came to Hudson last summer (the highlight of 2010) and visited there, our family went down and spent part of the week with them at her house. That is because Steve and Donna were in Duluth, but never down by Dawn's area. Dawn wanted to host them and we had a wonderful time.

I told Stacie to fly into Mpls airport, so that she could spend some time with Dawn and family and then we had her up here for 5 days. So, she was able to spend time and see both of our areas. She came the first week of this month, and I was able to take the whole week off work to be with her. The weather was hot when she arrived, so Dawn and Bob took her boating on the St. Croix River. Also, a trip to The Mall of America. She loved the boating and the shopping!

I loved being able to show her around our beautiful Duluth, North Shore and area. I love being a "tour guide", her visit and our time together was just the energizing that I needed. I was feeling down for some reason, all summer... pretty much sticking to home on weekends and going no where.. and I really did need some pepping up. Thank you, Stacie for coming!!!!

I took SO many pictures of our adventures that week... of the beauty of the area...and to record the fun we had. Since I have so many photos to share with you...I will have a post for each area we visited. I hope you will enjoy the photos and think of the joy we had as you read the posts and look at the photos!