St. Croix Falls January 6 - 8

When I was pregnant with Annie, we took a trip during my pregnancy to Portland (don't call it a babymoon or Ben will slap your face!) - I wanted to do something again this time, but since we both traveled quite a bit this summer and fall, I knew it couldn't be anything too far away or expensive. After talking to a few friends (Molly and Kate) who had both stayed at St. Croix River Inn, we decided to book that for a weekend in January. I knew it wouldn't be as picturesque then, but we were pretty busy in the fall so that's what worked! As a bonus, at least we got off-season rates. Thankfully, Annie was well enough on Friday for us to leave her with my parents - a little later than we had planned (we wanted to leave right away in the morning but didn't go until late afternoon).

Our B&B

We chose the Osceola room based primarily on the separate sitting area and fireplace and I was very glad we did. It also had a beautiful view of the river and a patio, but we didn't use that at all. The huge tub was a nice bonus as well. The only thing that would have been nice was a king size bed, but we made do with a queen. We've stayed at a number of B&Bs in the past, and have had excellent experiences at all of them. This was the first one where there wasn't even the option of eating breakfast in the dining room - it was always just served to the individual rooms at a time you specified. This was pretty nice, but meant you were in your room pretty much all the time. I think of the B&Bs we've been to, I liked the breakfasts in Duluth the best, then here, then London and Bruges. We have been very lucky to never have a bad breakfast at all at a B&B! (Not so much LUCK, as my penchant for obsessively researching things and reading hundreds of Trip Advisor reviews, I suppose :)

At the time we booked this trip, I thought I'd want to do a spa day or something, but I'm glad I didn't book anything. We both ended up being kind of sick, so we just hung out, went out to eat to Tangled Up In Blue and Grecco's (where we had a 50% off LivingSocial.Groupon/Crowdcut/whatever deal - bonus! Review up soon), went to a movie and took long baths. It was exactly the weekend I needed! The photos tell the rest of the story here...

Bedtime snack at the B&B - too bad I had already gotten ice cream and couldn't eat it ALL :)

Coffee and pastries, delivered 30 minutes prior to the hot breakfast - we elected to have it delivered at 8:30 and managed to stay in bed until almost that time - a miracle for us who can't sleep in anymore! Yeah, I had been awake since at least 7, but oh well.

Took a walk into "downtown" Osceola - pretty boring in January, it turns out :)

A bonus of it being deserted is that you don't feel dumb taking timer photos

My lunch at a coffee shop

and Ben's

Ha - yup, I brought my teddy bear, since I need to use all available pillows to support myself and still wanted something besides Ben to hold onto :)

The view from our room

At this point, I was taking an epic 2 hour snoring nap - it was awesome. Ben enjoyed his "happy hour" snack alone (but saved half the fruit/crackers/cheese for me!)

Ready to go out to our 6 course dinner that ended up being 3 hours long!

Breakfast on Sunday

2nd course - yummmm this was delicious

And that's all! We packed up right after breakfast so we could get back to our Annie - we may have stayed longer, but even though we were getting good reports of her health, I wanted to see with my own eyes that she was feeling better! It was great to return to this face instead of what we saw last Thursday...