A Little Away Time

Andy's been wanting to get away for a while. I always fight it because it's hard to get the kids out of school, it's a pain to pack and wash everything when we get back, there's so much that needs to be done here... But, finally, he talked us into it. We packed up the car and got ready to spend a week in one of our favorite places--San Diego.

We got a really late start.

Andy was out of town for the week and didn't get home until 9pm Thursday. I had almost everything loaded and was trying to get laundry finished so I could pack clean clothes. When Andy got home, he was mad that I wasn't ready to go. I was mad that he was mad.

By the time we were set, it was 10:30pm. Andy wanted to cancel and leave the next day. I'd been working all day to get us ready, so I was sad. The kids were sad. So, we compromised and drove the 3.5 hours to St. George, instead of the 5 hours to Vegas like we'd planned. We grabbed a hotel, stayed the night, and left first thing the next morning.

We stopped in Barstow, CA for lunch, which got us into southern California right in time for Friday, rush hour traffic. After a bathroom emergency that almost caused a car accident, and too many hours in the car, we made it to our hotel.

We took a quick bath, got into PJs, and enjoyed the amazing view:

Watched some Pee-wee's Playhouse:

Got the kids' beds ready:

 Ordered Oggi's cheese pizza--our favorite!

Then we settled in for the night. It was a long drive, but we're so glad to be here!

On the Road

Dropping Grandma off today was bittersweet. Last night we packed our car full of everything we could possibly need for the next month, and then we woke up early this morning to take Grandma to the airport. We all went in while she checked in and dropped off her luggage, and we blew lots of kisses and watched her through part of the security line. The kids were so sad to see her go. But then we took a bathroom break, and by 9:30am, we were on the road and headed for Portland.

The kids were awesome. They watched movies, played games on the ipad, played with their stuffed animals, and complained VERY little. They didn't sleep at all--I have no idea how you do that on a long, boring car ride--but they were well-behaved so it all worked out.

 I read The Maze Runner (which I highly recommend), took lots of pain killers, and dozed off sporadically like an old woman in front of the tv. Andy was bored. I kept waking up to rumble strips because he would sneak his phone when I wasn't watching and try to read his work email at 80 mph. I drove some, but mostly he liked to. I felt the worst for him because the rest of us were entertained.

He kept saying things like, "How did we get in Kansas?" and quoting Dumb and Dumber:

     Harry: I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.
     Lloyd: I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver's full of s!&*, man.

Northern Idaho and Southeastern Oregon were much flatter and much less exciting than we had anticipated.  But then toward the end of the drive, we got to scenes like this:

 And we were happy.

We pulled into the hotel at 9:30pm, which was almost exactly 13 hours after we had started. Not bad considering all of the stops you make with kids: Lots of gas stations, Subway for lunch, Wendy's for dinner, and one side of the road because the boy had to go and there wasn't a building in sight.

The hotel only had valet parking, so we felt like white-trash as the bellboy stood there and watched us unload 2 disheveled kids, 4 large suitcases, 1 pack of diapers, 1 pack of pull-ups, 2 Tupperwares of toiletries, 3 backpacks full of electronics that Andy didn't want stolen, and 1 each Rapunzel and Mario pillow, plus a big bag where I threw in a few plush toys, half empty containers of chocolate milk, my books, and whatever else caught my eye in the mad rush to load the luggage cart. I felt like a leper as we walked through the big lobby with all of the fancy people. Next time I'll insist on a Motel 6 where WE can look down on people.

Kids took baths. We took showers. Four of us piled into the king-sized bed. I'm pretty sure the kids were asleep in 10 seconds flat.

We're happy to be in Portland!

5/30

Valentines in Vegas

Because nothing says romance like smoke-filled casinos and cheap buffets, Andy and I spent Valentine's in Vegas. Actually, Andy was presenting at a conference that week, so he asked me to come along. We left the kids with my mom at 8 pm MST on Sunday night and landed in Vegas at 11pm PST.

On the cab-ride to the hotel I knew it was going to be a great trip because the driver was a rocker looking chic who was driving fast and crazy while blaring Delilah's Valentine's Day special on her radio. There's nothing like soft rock love songs to get you excited. The strip, as always, was bright and lively with all kinds of characters.

When we got to our hotel, the Palazzo, it was the nicest of the Vegas hotels I've stayed in, so I was excited. Then we got to our room. And Oh. My. They had upgraded us to a suite, which I looked up on their website--it's a $650/night room. Everything was gold and marble and luxury. It had a bedroom, living/dining room, workout room, monster bathroom, powder room, and a guest bathroom. My phone camera sucks, but here are a few shots:


Andy finished up some work and I took a long bubble bath. Best trip ever already.

Day 2:

Today we both slept in after having slept through the entire night. It was magical. I worked out in our room while Andy did work, and then we went down to the Grand Lux Cafe. He had some kind of club and fries, and I had the best pasta carbonara ever. Seriously it was divine. He had to go to a few meetings so I worked on my thesis and dressed up for our night on the town.

We ate dinner at Wing Lei, an upscale Chinese place, and to be honest, it was a bizarre experience. We thought it was something else until we had already been seated, so we decided to stay. When we got there, there was a large round table of very drunk Asians and nobody else. The speakers switched off between Top 40 hits and what sounded like Chinese folk songs. It was eerily quiet and all of the staff stared at us while the other customers didn't speak, they just kept pouring wine and toasting each other with every swallow. I ordered pork moo shu because I've wanted to try it since Mulan, and Andy had some shrimp dish. They charged us $10 each for two sides of rice. It was good food, but not somewhere we'd want to go again. Mostly it felt awkward.

Then we went to our show for the evening: Le Reve (The Dream), a cirque du soleil type show that was an odd mix of acrobatics, synchronized swimming, dancing, warrior fighting, and strange things falling from the sky (like picnic tables, beds, people, cages, and such). Impossible to describe, but a lot of fun.

On our way back to the hotel we grabbed a hot chocolate and then watched a movie in our room. A very self-indulgent day, and a life I'm sure I could get used to.

Here are our two stellar photos of the day while we waited for Le Reve to start:

Day 3:

Andy left early for meetings and his presentation, so I worked out, did some homework, lounged around, and then met him for lunch. We went back to the Grand Lux and had soup and salad. Then he went back to work and I went back to the room for more thesis and some Castle and Project Runway. Andy came back and then we went out for our Valentine evening.

We ate at SushiSamba, and it was amazing. Seriously the best sushi ever. The only disappointment was that we ordered warm chocolate banana cake with rum flavored ice cream -- sounds good, right? It was a piece of cake the size of a golf ball, and you couldn't taste any chocolate or banana because the whole thing was doused in rum. It tasted like it should have been lit on fire ala flambe, but nope, just a bottle dumped on top. We'd go back in a heart-beat though, the dinner was fantastic.

Next we went to see Blue Man Group. It's a show that Andy has wanted to see forever. It's also a hard show to describe. It was funny and weird and tense. Tense because they did audience participation stuff, we were on the front row of the side section, and I so did not want to be picked. And then they did this thing where they dumped about a million yards of toilet paper from the ceiling and I had flashbacks to when I was younger and we would get toilet papered and my mom would put it all in a brown paper bag on the back of the toilet and we would be forced to use the whole bag before we could open a new roll. We were recyclers way before it was trendy. Anyway, the show had stressful moments for me. But it was also a lot of fun and I'm glad we went.

The view from our room:

Our self-pic before the Blue Man show:

After the show we walked about a mile down the strip through a maze of casinos, homeless people, prostitute solicitors, and vendors to see the fountains at the Bellagio. They run every 15 minutes, so while we waited we made friends with a cute couple from Switzerland.


Our Swiss friends took this shot:

We grabbed a cup of hot chocolate and walked down to the pirate show at Treasure Island where scantily dressed sirens and a ship full of sailors battled it out and then danced. Only in Vegas. By the time we got back to our room, it was late and I had blisters. I packed all my stuff and felt sad that I was leaving but excited to see the kiddos.

Day 4:

Up at 5am, kiss Andy goodbye, cab to the airport, fly home, drive to Grandma's, pick up the kids. I don't know what Andy did for the rest of his day, but mine involved a lot of this:

I bet mine was best.

It was a great trip. I'm grateful for my amazing husband.

Lake Tahoe

I wrote a bitter blog post on my five year anniversary in June. Maybe someday I'll post it. I was sad that Andy never even wished me a happy anniversary that day. His parents called and sent a card, bless their hearts. And my mom called. But Andy was out of town and he didn't say one word about it. Granted, we had agreed to celebrate later because he would be gone (he always is on our anniversary), but I thought he would at least send flowers or call or leave a note. Nope. Nada. So I may have overreacted late that night when I freaked out at him on the phone. He said he was sorry, but that what he had planned would totally make up for it. I was doubtful.

But then this weekend we took our little anniversary outing, and it was perfection.

We left the kids at my mom's house at 9am on Friday, and then we headed for the airport. We took a flight into Reno, NV that was just less than an hour. Once we landed we headed for the rental car. I thought Andy was going to the rental counter (I forgot that he does this several times a week and at this point they have the car waiting for him), so I stopped to look at some brochures about Reno and Tahoe. Next thing I know, I was being approached by a man about my age. He was good looking, but his eyes were horribly bloodshoot and he had a strange twitch in his shoulders and neck. I probably wouldn't have noticed anything else except he came really close to my face and asked if I was there alone. I said no, I was with someone, and started to walk away. He followed me very closely and said "you looking for a way out of here?" I turned around to tell him no, that I was fine when I noticed his very raw, scabby nostrils. Ah, cocaine. That explains a lot. From now on we will call him CG for Crazy Guy (or Cocaine Guy, you choose).

Me: No, I'm here with someone. He's getting a car. I'm fine.
CG: Come back here. Hey, come 'ere.
Me walking away
CG: (Pressed against my back) Let's get out of here. You wanna get out of here?
Me frantically looking for Andy
CG: Come here. Don't leave. Come here.
Me panicking.
CG: Come on. Let's get out of here.

He was following me this whole time, breathing down my neck, when all of a sudden he stopped dead. I had turned around to tell him to leave, so I saw him look scared and then back away. I turned around to see what had happened, and there was Andy giving him a look that could kill. My hero. Mr. Nelson looked devilishly handsome as he stared down the crazy man, grabbed my hand, and lectured me all the way to the car about "how he couldn't leave me alone for a minute..."

That was the exciting beginning to our Reno time. We stopped and ate lunch at Baja Fresh (not romantic, but it's our favorite so don't judge), and then we headed for the lake. Reno is this hot, sagebrush covered, FLAT, desert town, and then about five minutes out of town, bam, you hit forest and your ears go crazy as you start to climb quickly. It feels totally random.

It was beautiful and it smelled like mountain heaven, so we stopped the car several times just to wander around. Here are some of those wandering shots: (Also, I finally got our Nikon fixed, so these are much better than the cell phone pictures I've been taking for the last several months.)

Our first view of the lake from the car:
An overlook where a nice couple insisted on taking our picture:
So we're driving around for about 40 minutes in the forest that looks like this:
When suddenly tall buildings shot up out of nowhere:
We checked into one of those tall buildings, and this was the view from our room:
We were in South Lake, CA which is literally 2 steps from South Lake, NV. It's very Alps-y, with a definite Bavarian vibe to all of the buildings. They had the ski lift going to go up and see the view, but we never did make it. After we got settled in, we walked for about five minutes through the forest to the beach that looks like this:

It was gorgeous. The water is so clear, and it's a perfect turquoise color. The mountains, forest, and beach are all amazingly therapeutic on their own, but put them together, and it's just sublime. The sand is perfect. It's not so fine that it's annoying, it's got some grit to it, but it's still incredibly soft. The beach was foot heaven. As soon as I stepped on it, I told Andy that it was absolutely perfect pedicure material. I tried to resist the urge of looking like such a commoner, but I couldn't. I sat down on the water's edge and scooped up fistfuls and scrubbed down my soles and heels:

I was right. It was incredible.

After playing at the beach for a while, we headed North again to an amphitheater on the beach to see a performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. It's one of his funnier plays, and we loved it. The stage is right on the edge of the lake, so from our seats it looked like this:
There's a "premiere" section of cushioned Adirondack chairs where the staff waits on you, and everyone indulged in great food, tons of wine, and fruity little liquor drinks. We both had a burger and fresh fruit early on, and then right before the play started we had ordered a plate of cheese and crackers. There was some kind of confusion because we ended up with breads, cheeses, and salami, but it was still really good. I forgot to take a picture before we had eaten most of it. It was very fancy.

At intermission the waiter brought us turtle cheesecake, and then for the final act we had hot chocolate and hot apple cider. Yeah, we're disgusting. We ate way too much. But we felt like royalty and couldn't resist.
This is a terrible picture, but you can see behind us all the way up the hill is beach chairs. These were reserved as well, but then behind that was open to the general public for blankets and their own beach chairs. It was a beautiful venue and a lot of fun. A perfect, romantic evening. One thing I love about Andrew is that he likes this kind of thing and he gets it. I've taken other boys to plays, and they yawned the whole time and checked their watches. While he definitely catered the evening to the nerdiness that is me, I love that he laughs and applauds and appreciates it as well. It couldn't have been a better anniversary date.

Saturday morning we spent hiking. We didn't do as much as we would have liked because we got stuck on this one lane road with a lot of traffic going both ways, and we traded off between running into the mountain on one side, or falling off a sheer cliff into the lake on the other. It was a really slow, tense drive and by the time we finished it, we didn't have time left to wander. Andy later told me that he had an escape plan hatched in his mind for when our car plummeted into the water. It was that bad. But what we did see was fantastic. Here are some random shots:

The pine cones from these trees were as big as my head.
Andy's like my little travel gnome. I make him show up in all of the random pictures.

This was one of the first summer homes built at Tahoe in the late 19th century.

I love that this kitchen style is back in and trendy right now:

The view from the front porch:

After we finished hiking, we went back to the beach and had lunch at a little restaurant on the water front. I'm not a picky eater at all, but the food was terrible. I got a pork sandwich with sauteed onions and apples. Sounds interesting and flavorful. I was imagining a pulled pork type thing, but it was small bits of pork fried so long that you couldn't taste what kind of meat it was, and then some soggy apples placed on the top. Andy had trout and his wasn't any better. All in all, we decided the food is free and you're paying for the location.

After lunch, we walked the beach and talked about how sad we were to go. We missed the kids and we always cut our trips short because we don't want to leave them alone very long. We feel magnanimous rushing home to them. Tonight, of course, we went to pick them up and they both cried and clung to Grandma and didn't want to leave with us. We bitterly thought of our long, lazy meals, our full night of sleep, and walking everywhere without dragging two whining little balls of attitude. As they cried and dug their heels in, Andy said, "remember this moment next time you want to hurry home to them."

Here we sat on the beach saying our final, sad goodbye:

We loved it there and intend to go back every chance we get. Of course as much as we complain, we're dying to take the kids and show them the next time.