Our 36-hour trip to Duluth for Quinn's birthday was brief but tons of fun!

As you know, Quinn loves food (especially treats). We eat pretty healthy at home, and don't keep sweets in the house, so when we travel or go out to eat we let Quinn order basically whatever he wants.  So, perhaps not surprisingly, the highlights of the trip for Quinn all involved eating food, although we did do some other fun things too.

Our trip started off with a visit to Dairy Queen (Quinn's choice). Since he can't get the ice cream that comes with the kids meal we took him down the street for a truffle from the chocolate shop instead.

Quinn was cracking everyone in the store up by letting out giant ecstatic moans and yums and "oh, I love this" statements. I think he may be one of the more enthusiastic truffle eaters that they have ever seen in that store.

Next up was swimming in Lake Superior!

There were actually big waves on the lake this time, so it kind of reminded us of home. The water was so choppy that we mostly just played a festive game of "stick throw" which was essentially throwing a stick into the water and catching it when it came back up.

This game is a lot more exhausting than it sounds, particularly when played with an energetic 5-year-old.

I ended up getting soaked!

We attempted to have someone take a family photo, but Quinn was too busy playing:)

Afterwards Moin and Quinn spent some good time in the hotel playing memory game and doing some of Quinn's new 100-piece puzzles.

He's getting pretty good with the 100-piece puzzles now, although he definitely still needs help. He got some 200-piece ones for his birthday from WAPA so he'll move on to those next.

For dinner we drove up to the New Scenic Cafe, a restaurant recommended by my parents.

It was amazing. Easily one of the best meals I've had in Minnesota. Worth the drive up from the Twin Cities, I think.

The cafe was about a 15 minute drive from our hotel and Quinn was getting a bit fidgety - wondering why we were driving so far away for a meal.

Little did he know that we had looked at the kids menu online ahead of time and discovered that THIS was an available option.

Do I need to tell you that he was THRILLED?

Incidentally, he had waffles with syrup for breakfast in the hotel the next day too. But hey, it's vacation, right?

We spent the next day just hanging around Duluth - enjoying the views, watching boats and playing in fountains.

Quinn used the $10.00 he got from WAPA for his birthday to buy himself a sharp-looking Ernie T-shirt.

We finished up our trip with lunch at an amazing Italian Deli Moin found online. It's in the residential area of Duluth but worth the trip. We all loved it.

I would have taken a picture of Quinn's spaghetti and meatballs but he hate ALL of it in about 2 seconds. I think all that food made him sleepy :)

Thanks for the great trip, Duluth. We'll be back!

Oh, and as a P.S. the girls had a great time with my parents. They had little to no reaction to the three of us returning but were very excited to see the Ernie on Quinn's shirt :)