vacations rock: the final days. phew.

Pre-Post Thoughts:

Being the family historian is a lot of work. I love doing it though. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't do it. I also love all silly details. Which explains my urge and tendency to write them all...

I write about how fancy this place is, not to point out how fancy we are, but rather, how unfancy we are. You see, it wasn't too many years ago that we lived in a ghetto town where we actually used one of these:

Ghetto, huh? It wasn't just because I love infomercials. It was because everything kept getting stolen. Another day meant another report of a break in, attack, robbery etc. (This was just a few blocks from where Obama was living, seriously). We got countless things stolen while we were there. So, with that said...

Thursday, is starting to get our snowboarding gear ready and opens the bag and my board is gone. Immediately we try to think of where it would have gotten stolen. After racking our brains, Karl goes down to the front desk, "just in case" they would know what had happened to it. They had taken the board out when they unloaded our car and put it the "ski valet!" This place doesn't let you walk through the lobby with ski equipment so the have a "ski valet." So funny/sad that we just assume it has been stolen. This ain't no Chicago, I guess.

We stuck closer to our ghetto roots as we both used Karl's lift pass. We had the kids and so we couldn't both go at once. We also didn't want to pay the equivalent of a mortgage payment for equipment, lessons and passes for all of us to go. Can you blame us? It was the first time I have ever boarded by myself. I kept saying, "I'm a social boarder." It was icy, but beautiful. While Karl boarded we sat in the hotel in our pj's and watched TV. While I boarded Karl took the kids swimming.

We had lunch at a burrito place. Good, but not picture worthy. Dessert, however, was beautiful. Those chocolates were so pretty and the gelato display was the most creative one I have ever seen. I love this photo looking through the cafe window. Samuel got this super dark chocolate stuff. It was so intense. Just like him. He devoured it. Eva spent the whole time coming up with the perfect chocolate/strawberry ratio. Hmmm, who's kid is she?

For the most part, meals had to be kid friendly. It isn't that we are worried about the kids liking the restaurants. It is more like we are worried about the restaurant liking our kids (or rather the noise they come with). We took a sleigh ride up to a place called Zach's cabin. While waiting for our departure time, Eva played a game with some little girls and Samuel zonked out, again.

This "cabin" was huge and amazing.

We had:

Salad with beets and gorgonzola- beets rock right now

And some other delicious salad

Eva's mac n cheese- she turned down the rest of the kids buffet

Samuel's kids buffet- he ate so much when he finally woke up... chicken fingers, green beans, mac n cheese, salad with ranch, and a cookie dessert. ($25 kid's meal! Seriously. But the nice guy didn't charge us, on purpose. So nice.)

Karl's Elk tenderloin that he loved

I had Porcini Crusted Walleye- I just thought it was funny to eat Walleye because they always talk about it on Prairie Home Companion (we are NPR geeks). The gnocchi it was served with was so so so light and perfect.

S'mores pie- we had a lot of s'mores stuff on this trip.

Fancy water- a waiter guy bumped my head. A minute later he came up to us and said that they have a policy that when they elbow someone on the head they buy them a drink. I said no at first but then changed my mind. We said we don't drink wine and he said, "how about a beer?" I think we stumped him. He brought out this water. Sounds weird but it was so good. Maybe just because it was in this awesome bottle.

That charred marshmallow kind of freaked me out.

On the way back down the hill Samuel was so excited that it made the trip almost magical for me. He asked, "Are we flying?" and pointed out where he was sure where Santa lives.

Seems like whenever we go somewhere as a family, there are several times that we ask, "Where's ___?" Fill in the blank with the missing child and then search frantically. They are always wandering off and are no longer phased by any of our threats. This time we got pretty far when we noticed that Eva wasn't with us. She was making snow angels. It was so sweet we didn't address the fact that she needs to stay with us.

More marshmallow roasting.

Okay, the picture of Samuel crawling was taken in the Ritz Carlton. He was a cat. Not shown: Eva riding the cat. Just another example of how we just don't belong.

The last day we drove an hour to the "World's Largest Hot Spring Pool." And large it was. As grossed out I was by the place, Karl was in love. At one point Eva looked under the water with her goggles and said, "There's a cricket!" Oh great, gross water, gross pool AND my least favorite, most hated bug of all time in the water. Coincidentally, it was also time for us to go.

We thought it was funny that we were three hours from the airport at that point, and six hours from home by car. We made the long drive back to the airport with much thanks to the people that thought of letting kids watch movies in the car. On the way to the airport we were craving non-junk food and found a Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) place that was housed a building that was obviously a former Pizza Hut. I love Pho. I like mine with tons of lime and a dash of hot sauce and lots of the bean sprouts and basil they bring out with it. Refreshing.

In the airplane, Samuel was stoked to "sit in the window." Eva ordered Cheerios from the lady pushing the refreshment cart. So funny, I was looking down and hear her tiny voice say, "Can I have some cereal?" to the lady. 3 bucks. I won't even pay that much for a whole box. Once again, it's vacation.

We finally made it. Samuel was disappointed as he kept insisting that his vacation not end. At our airport Karl took him to get the car. He was so mad that we were home that we didn't have the "black car with all the buttons." Really mad. So mad that he said the worst things he could think of. I would say what they are because, well, they accurately reflect yours truly.

Phew.