Chicago with my kids

image from wiki commons

So I learned a number of interesting things this weekend:

• The Grove is a really cool place to hang out with children whilst near the Chicago temple.  We headed up there this weekend and while Neil was in the temple, the kiddos and I wandered around the walking trails looking at the buildings and counting wildlife (we saw a deer, a raccoon, ducks, and a wild turkey.  Not bad!)  We actually arrived after the buildings were closed for the day, but I'm excited to go back another time and do more exploring!
• I think we've outgrown staying in a single hotel room.  I'll spare you the details, but the girls fell asleep around 10 pm and Isaac around 12:30 am.  Yikes.  We've been going up to the temple overnight for years (ever since a very wise stake president counseled our stake to focus on temple worship rather than temple attendance; going up overnight was one of the things that we felt we could do at that time to reduce the stress level and make it a more enjoyable process for everyone, but...as I said, it's now to the point where it's becoming stressful again.  Any advice from older/wiser readers on how to continue our temple trips in a way that is conducive to a wonderful experience?  We are about 3 hours from the nearest temple (4-5 in traffic) and we try to go at least every other month.  Seriously, any advice would be much appreciated!)
• The Field Museum is much cooler than the Adler Planetarium.  We spent almost 6 hours at the Field Museum before we felt like we'd exhausted all of the exhibits we really love to revisit (my favorite, as always, is Egypt; Abigail is particularly partial to the Grainger Hall of Gems, both of which we've focused on for learning days the past two weeks).  So since we have an annual membership to our local science museum that gets us into museums around the country for free, we decided to head over to Adler--where we've never been--for the remaining two hours before the museum campus closed down.  Seriously, I was so disappointed!  There was one cool exhibit ("Planet Explorers"--especially the part where you walk through "space") that our kids enjoyed, and the rest of it was pretty bland, plus the staff was much more focused on guiding around people who were considering having their weddings/receptions/whatnot there than they were in assisting museum patrons.  At one point, one of the docents told us that we could no longer use the elevator (with our stroller) because they needed it to set up a dinner occurring that evening (this was two hours before closing).  I assume that if we'd paid the extra $60 to go to one of the shows, we probably would have liked it better (but probably not $60 worth of better).
• We exited the planetarium and saw 8 wedding parties (!!) taking photos with the Chicago skyline in the backdrop (pictured above).  Easily the best view of the skyline I've ever seen, and I could suddenly understand why the planetarium was cashing in on this (still irritated, but whatever).  So.  If you want to get a really amazing picture of the skyline, walk out to the very end of the promontory by the planetarium and clamber down to the concrete and snap away.
• Isaac loves seagulls.  We spent half an hour or so down by the lakefront in front of the planetarium just watching Isaac and Jules chase the seagulls back and forth.  It was positively idyllic (oh camera, camera, you need to be replaced pronto).
• It is a 4.25-mile roundtrip walk from the planetarium over to Millennium Park and back, via the Corner Bakery on Michigan Avenue (where we ate dinner, yum yum yum), the Millennium Park fountains (where we let the kids play and they got COMPLETELY soaked, but due to the fact that nobody had gotten filthy enough to need the extra clothes I'd packed earlier in the day, everyone mostly had dry clothes to change into (Juliet had to wear my cardigan, and she was somewhat indignant over the fact that the buttons started near her navel).  I think the kiddiwinks had the time of their lives.  Then we walked over to the Bean and the kids went crazy laughing at their funny reflections, and Isaac entertained us by dancing to the music of a nearby band, and then we waltzed past Buckingham Fountain and caught the very end of the hourly water extravaganza.  It was a really lovely evening (thankfully it cooled off nicely) and I was so impressed that the kids managed all that walk/hike/exercise in endurance AFTER going around the museums all day (we did have a stroller wherein we traded people in and out as their feet got tired).  We had a lovely time strolling along Michigan Avenue, walking through the Art Institute and Millennium Park gardens, and craning our necks back to see the tops of the skyscrapers (Luke in particular was fascinated with the buildings).  It was really delightful.
• We learned that if we wear our kids out this excessively, everyone falls asleep in the car, wakes up on arrival at home, goes into their room, puts on pajamas, and goes uncomplainingly to bed.  AWESOME.  Now how do I replicate a similarly easy bedtime every day?  
• And last but not least, this officially wraps up my gone-every-Friday-night for the last four weeks tour of extravagant fun.  It's going to be weird to have a whole week at home--I'm already feeling a little jittery!  Must plan fun thing now!
  
  
  And seriously...can I get some temple advice?  How do you do this with your family?  I really would love to know!

Chicago with my mom

Last year when my sister Ruth visited my parents, she & my mom took a couple of days to have fun in downtown Chicago.  I was home with my brand-new baby, and perhaps a bit outspoken in my envy?--but my mom promised that she would take me the next summer when Luke was weaned.

So this past weekend, my parents drove down and my mom took me to Chicago while my awesome dad stayed home with my children (Neil was there intermittently, but he had some unchangeable work commitments, so it was absolutely wonderful to have Dad there.  Actually, I think the kids were all way excited for me to leave so that they could spend two days with my dad.  Popsicles! Sprinkler!  No Mommy and her crazy list of rules!).  We were all quite giddy when we said our goodbyes.

We drove up to Chicago, checked into our hotel (the Essex Inn on Michigan Avenue, right across from Grant Park--it was lovely & my mom upgraded us to a suite!), and proceeded to have the most wonderful couple of days.  Since I've spent so much time in the museums (as a matter of fact, I'm taking the kids up there later this week to hit the museums again) we decided to just do things that are less fun with kiddies, like walking for hours, checking out architecture and shopping (my mom's translation of my request to "just walk around a lot").  Mom had purchased tickets for us on the double-decker bus tours, which I absolutely loved.  We go to Chicago quite a bit, but it's really hard to see much when you're either a) a pedestrian frantically jostling for elbow room or b) in a car cursing traffic.  I totally loved being able to have a 360-degree view and just focusing on what I was seeing, rather than worrying about traffic or my kidlets!  Plus the tour guides were full of super interesting facts, anecdotes, etc.  I learned a TON about Chicago's architecture and history.  And the best part is that the tours are hop-on, hop-off, so you can use them like a cab to get all around the city.  And the second-best part is that we literally did not wait longer than 2 minutes for a bus all weekend (usually they arrived just as we were walking up.  Awesome!)



We rode down to the Magnificent Mile part of Michigan Ave, and hopped off to do some window-shopping (and some not-so-window shopping).  So nice and relaxing to be able to spend all the time I wanted lingering over breakables and intricate gadgetry!  We even ventured into American Girl Place (which I would never have dared to do with my girls), but which was very interesting from both a shopper's and a cultural/anthropological point of view.  I bought a couple of cute shirts at Forever 21, got a hand massage at Lush, and spent far too long wandering around the LEGO store checking out all the awesomeness (like the above & below pictures).  AND we had lunch at Grand Lux cafe (top photo), which was AMAZING (fabulous bread and like the best salad of my life), and then we went to Wow Bao! for an afternoon snack, which was also amazing.

After we wore ourselves out (for the first time) on the Mag Mile, we headed back to the bus and took a tour of the south neighborhoods.  This was totally fascinating for me because I read Devil in the White City last year and found it to be a total page-turner, so I loved learning more about the World's Fair site from the tour guide.  And since President Obama was in town for the weekend, we got to see the extreme security cordoning off his street, which was pretty cool.  (His neighborhood has some of the most beautiful old homes I've ever seen, btw--very close to a cool Frank Lloyd Wright as well.)

Once we were back downtown, we went to the old Chicago Public Library, which is now the Chicago Cultural Center.  There was a gallery opening and we decided to stop in for a minute because I saw a cityscape painting in the window that I really loved.  On a total fluke I decided to check the price and it was $10!!  For an original painting!  Totally amazing, especially for Chicago.  So of course I bought it (and then lugged it around the rest of the night).

Then my mom, my painting, and I walked over through the edge of the theater district and decided to have dinner at XOCO (a Rick Bayless restaurant, if you follow him).  It was really delicious, especially the Mexico City hot chocolate that was basically like drinking melted mousse with a hint of chile.  Mmm.  And I got my avocado fix in again.  :-)

After that we caught the bus again to do the city lights night tour, which was breathtaking.  I love Chicago at night--I always have.  One of my very favorite Chicago memories is running the 10 miles along the beach with Neil at midnight and seeing all the lights sparkle out over the water.  It's indescribably beautiful.

And, of course, we wandered over to the Bean (where my mom's iPhone wasn't sure what to focus on!).

 ...and then we sat by the Buckingham fountain and watched the sound and light show (every hour on the top of the hour, btw.  It's really beautiful and worth waiting for).

 The next morning we got up and walked down a couple of blocks to have breakfast at the Corner Bakery, which is seriously the cutest little place and the food is absolutely delicious.  I don't think it's possible to have a bad meal in Chicago.

And then we walked back over to the Chicago Cultural Center because I wanted to look at the Tiffany dome...

 ...and then we went over to Chinatown and I bought some treatsies for the children.

 And then we went through Little Italy (which sadly was kind of boring), and on to Greektown, where we spent a long time browsing around a candle shop (like the really cool kind that sells incense and candles and herbs to ward off bad luck or invite good fortune or whatnot...we pretended to be looking for things while secretly we listened to the saleswomen advise people on what were the best candles to burn to invite prosperity for a new shop opening and which saints they should pray to as they burned the candles.  Fascinating.  I bought some frankincense and myrrh for Christmas purposes).  And we did a quick whirl through the lobby of the Hellenic museum (family legend has it that we come from Greece, although apparently the census says Italy. Whatever--I'm claiming Greece).

 Then we went to Artopolis, which is one of my favorite places on this earth, because there you can eat this (which I may have to get for Abigail when we hit the museum this weekend, because it represents Her Ideal Meal):

 and this:

 ...and then we hiked back up the Magnificent Mile and I thought about how much my children would love me if I came home wearing this:

(I did buy them some Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans.  Poor Jules--the first two that she tried were vomit and snot.  She was almost in tears.)

I kind of lost track of how many times we walked up and down the Mag Mile that day.  It was a lot.  A lot a lot a lot.  Fortunately there were cool street performers and the end of a Puerto Rican parade to watch, AND the best free food giveaway ever--Stacy's Pita Chips and Sabra hummus!  Oh Chicago, I love you.

At one point we paused and watched the tour boats sailing on the river.

 And also at some point in there I bought an extremely heavy set of bowls to replace the ones that Abigail broke last year (the C&B Parker House set; I use them multiple times a day and I was SO glad to see that they are carrying them again!!).  They were seriously insanely heavy but I really wanted them, so we stopped there at the very end.  And then we went to Trader Joe's and I filled up the loose places in my heavy bag.

 And then right before we went home we stopped at Fox & Obel and I ate this, which was honestly the best sandwich I have ever had in my entire life.  If you know me, you know I am a (mostly) vegetarian for health reasons, and not because I don't like meat, because I LOVE MEAT, and I love roast beef the very very most of all.  And so when I saw this on the menu...I ate it.  And I have no regrets.  The rarest, most tender, perfectly juicy roast beef, plus a thick slab of blue Brie, plus a perfectly crusty/chewy baguette, plus caramelized onions.

 Heaven.

 It was seriously the most delightful and lovely weekend.  My batteries and wells have been pretty drained lately, and this was the perfect recharge.  I'm so thankful to my darling parents for their thoughtfulness and generosity!  They are absolutely wonderful.  I never worried about my children because I knew they were having the time of their lives with my dad, and I had the time of my life exploring and eating and talking nonstop with my mom.  It was wonderful.

(Oh, and the weekend's only casualty...my sad little fake ficus tree, which I have been hauling around since my freshman year at BYU.  Juliet and Isaac decided to "spin some clothes" out of the leaves and this is how I found it when I got home...)

of updates...

I can't believe we're already into the fourth week of summer break!  Time, as always, is flying by.  I realized the other day that I've spent four consecutive Friday nights sleeping somewhere other than my own bed.  Lots of exciting traveling!  Here are some snippets from the last few weeks, in no particular order:

• Abigail, Juliet, and Isaac all did a two-week session of swimming lessons.  Isaac hated the whole thing and refused to progress beyond sitting on the side of the pool (he called his teachers "my kids" and would say things like,"my kids dey tell me get in dah wahder, but I just tell my kids I fink I will sit on dee side."  Of course, when we went to the pool last night for family home evening he LOVED it and spent two hours jumping in, paddling around, and "sticking my head unner wahder!"  Go figure.  Abigail and Jules are like little fishies; Abigail is dog-paddling quite well and Juliet is endlessly anxious to practice her head-bobs and "alligator snaps" (precursors to the standard crawl stroke).
• A couple of weeks ago I took the kids up to spend the weekend with my parents.  While we were there, I met with my mom's magical personal trainer, who released my IT bands and diagnosed what was going on with my knee.  After a horrible and painful and miserable six months, I am FINALLY running comfortably again!  I can't even express to you how wonderful and miraculous this is for me--I've spent so many weeks in emotional and physical agony over this (at the end I would start to choke up whenever I even thought about how awful running was).  I went running the night I met with her and I was running the hills and trails around my parents' house (narrowly avoiding 3 bounding deer in the process) and I felt so grateful to be able to actually call myself a runner again.  I still have a long way to go to get back to where I was, but I've made a lot of progress.  My last two 5-milers have felt fabulous, which is really saying something!
• Last week we did learning day on Egypt, and for our craft later in the week we built a funerary tomb out of a shoebox.  We decorated the walls with heiroglyphics and burial drawings (which I freehanded while looking at a bunch of actual tomb photographs) and the kids made a whole set of figures out of modeling clay, which included some watchful god statues, a mummy, a grave robber, a table bearing funerary offerings, and snakes which were about to devour the grave robber.  I love those kids.  This week we are talking about precious gems in preparation for a trip later in the week to the Field Museum.
• We bought a trampoline!!  We've been debating this for a couple of years and we finally decided that it could be a really good thing for some of our kids to work out extra physical energy (read: Abigail). We've had it for one measly week but already I am such a fan of it.  This morning, for instance, we had some real crankiness and fighting going on, so I sent the culprits outside while I made breakfast, and voila!--everyone was beautifully behaved after a vigorous 10 minutes of furious jumping.  
• I am taking a watercolor class in a couple of weeks!  Super excited!!

...and I was going to write a lot more, but my cute sister Elise just called, so now I'm done.  :-)

Dollywood

Please forgive my weird smile.  The ducks were all making this horribly loud jangling "music," the ride operator was singing, I was dizzy from the spinning ducks,  and I honestly felt like I was in a horror movie--you know when everything is spinning around right before the screen goes black because the character couldn't take it anymore?

 So.  Betcha didn't know Dolly Parton has her own theme park.  But she does!  And it's actually really fun.  As I mentioned in a previous post, we went there for my ninth birthday, and I loved it.  So it's only fitting that we return the month prior to my twenty-ninth birthday, right?

Actually, we weren't planning to go to Dollywood.  We were driving past on our way to go hiking again, and I just decided that yes I really really did want to go, hang the cost and the weather and whatnot.  So we called my parents and did some quick debating and we ended up going.  And I (and hopefully everyone else!) had such an awesome time!  Thanks, everyone, for indulging me.  It was truly delightful.  And especially fun to be there with Mary Beth, as we had the same memories of going on the same rides over and over and over again, and it was so fun to ride them again together!

When we first got there, my parents took the boys on some of the kiddie rides (and the train, which made Isaac's entire life worth living, because he didn't talk about anything else for the next week) while Neil, Mary Beth, and I took Abigail and Jules on some of the more adventurous rides.  Abigail could ride all of the roller coasters except for one, which was crazy to me!  My little baby!!  Riding roller coasters!  Loving it!  Convincing me to ride the insanely bumpy goes-upside-down-too-much roller coaster yet again, much to my neck's regret!

 I'm not sure how many times Isaac rode this carousel, but I can't get enough of this darling happy face.  I took Luke on it later and he wrapped his chubby feet around the horse's neck and held on to the pole with his hands and laughed with the most extreme rapture you have ever seen from a child his size.  He clearly knew exactly what he was expected to do, and he took great joy in being a "big boy" and doing it!

 Okay, so there are some really awesome things at Dollywood.  There's this cool new roller coaster where you're suspended from your back, so that your feet and head are both flying free (it's billed as America's first "wing coaster," and I'm doing a terrible job of explaining it, but basically it's like the Raptor at Cedar Point but without the overhead support system).  And there's this awesome thing called Adventure Mountain where you're wearing a pseudo-climbing harness and you're roped in and you can clamber all over cliffs and ropewalks suspended above geysers, and Neil got totally blasted by a geyser and Abigail and Juliet thought that was the funniest thing they had ever seen.  ||

But.

My favorite ride was this thing called River Battle.  Partially because all nine of us could go on it together, and partially because it was so cool--you are on this raft thing and every person has a water cannon, and you shoot your water cannon at the other boats, who are shooting back, AND at the bystanders, whose cannons have a much greater range!  It was SO awesome and we got completely soaked.

 And then of course we spent a good long time at the side shooting at the people on the boats.  Especially when we recognized someone who had totally soaked us.  My mom commented once on how quickly society breaks down and we all become these crazed savages lusting for revenge.  (Can you see that glee on my dad's face as he totally nails one of the boats?!)

 We seriously had to drag everyone away from these.  Even Isaac was cranking the water cannon as fast as he could go!

 At the end of the day, we started to wind down (and then Abigail dragged me on two more roller coasters and I realized that my joints are getting older).  Dad and I spent awhile with the boys on these little kiddie rides while  everyone else was doing bumper cars.  (Sidenote:  my dad was on two conference calls while we were trekking around Dollywood.  I'm not sure why I found this so amusing--he probably didn't--but I did.  Great multi-tasking, Dad!  Maybe it was just how he was so serious with the background of the carnival games and the Ferris Wheel.)

But seriously--are these two not so adorable?  Luke was so excited to go on these rides with Isaac!

 And then the girls appeared and the four of them packed themselves into a buzzing bee.  Bzzz.  Bzzz.

It seriously was the most perfect day.  Perfect weather, no lines, everyone was so cheerful (despite the fact that we hadn't planned to spend the day at the park and we had no sunscreen or lunches--just granola bars, oranges, and string cheese!)--and thankfully I didn't realize my camera was gone until the next day, so the Dollywood trip remained unspoiled.  It was absolutely lovely and the highlight of the trip, in my mind.

hiking in the Smokies

Okay, friends.  This is the point where I started to feel really sick to my stomach again about the missing camera.  I took SO MANY awesome photos.  And they are gone.  Don't get me wrong, I am so glad that my parents were snapping some too, but...they aren't as crazily obsessed with teetering on mossy rocks to capture every single nondescript moment as I am (plus we had THE MOST PERFECT family photo--like Christmas card quality, if I did that sort of thing--out on some rocks in the middle of the river.  And it's gone. Gone, gone, gone.

(And I still haven't worked myself up to replacing it yet.)

                 

In any case, the first full day we were there, we got up bright and early (like 5:30 bright and early, which I was SO not planning on, but hey, turns out that when there are 4 kids in unfamiliar beds and it's the first day of vacation...you get to get an early start.  Which is good, because we trusted to the GPS and it ended up taking us a full 2 hours to do a 25-minute drive.  I count myself lucky that only one kid threw up on that twisty odyssey.  It was seriously one for the books--like almost nightmarish!  At one point I honestly wondered if we were going to make it down the mountain before our car used up a full tank of gas, because our cabin--while very lovely (as pictured below from their website)--was also quite isolated, and the roads were tiny and winding and deceptive and beautiful.  (Let's just say that my daydream of sunrise runs through the mountains around our cabin were abruptly scotched when I realized that the hairpin curves, 70-degree inclines, and pervasive mist would result in squashed runner).  But the cabin itself was gorgeous and absolutely everything I was hoping for!

two seconds after this picture was taken, Juliet's head hit me in the face and left me with an awesome shiner for the rest of the week.

Anyway, when we finally finally finally got to the park, we did a couple of hikes.  To be honest with you, I was kind of disappointed in the hiking.  I should have had different expectations, given that it's the most-visited national park in the country, but I was sort of expected little winding trails, rather than asphalt.  But I digress.  We did drive up to Clingman's Dome on our way out and it was breathtaking--absolutely breathtaking.  Google it!


We walked along an old railroad bed near a river. It was beautiful.

And then we hiked (and this was an actual hike--a good 3 miles with a very steep incline) to a gorgeous waterfall, of which I took about fifty pictures with my kids clambering around in the foreground, and which I really wish I could share with you.  Fortunately my mom got one of the falls themselves.

But I do have lots of photos of my kiddies!  Aren't they cute with their little fanny packs?

 So my dad seriously took about 15 shots of our family here, and he finally said, "I thought if I just kept taking them I would get a good one...but I guess we're done!"  Yikes.  This was post-hike and the kids all were hot and itchy and bug-bitten, and I sort of look like I got hit by a two-by-four (my black eye is starting to take shape, but you can see that part of my face is sort of distorted-looking...from the side I had a bump on my profile!)

But Jules, as ever, is darling.

go-karts

Until the summer I turned nine, my family lived in northeastern Ohio waaaayy out in the woods on a lonely gravel road (after that we moved closer to town, but we still had an extremely long gravel driveway, down which I once crawled after jamming my bike pedal through the side of my foot).  It was seriously paradise for little kids (we had 18 acres or so, which included pasture for our horse Pancake, our you-know-where they're headed pigs [with names like Sir Francis Bacon and Olivia de Roast], rabbits, cats, and a garden that--in my memory--was bigger than the horse pasture.  I loved loved loved it (I was young enough that minor inconveniences like the lack of air conditioning or the half-hour drive to the nearest grocery store never really registered).  But since we were in the eastern half of the US, we alternated our trips out west to see family with trips to the southeast.  We spent a lot of time on the Carolina coast, and made several trips to the Smokies.  Since my birthday is in July, most of my birthdays were spent on vacation (which was usually really awesome, like the time we went to Dollywood for my 9th birthday and my mom made me a cake which was slanted by the weird angle of the mountaintop cabin's oven--but was sometimes a let-down, like the year I turned 16 and our Maine whale-watching trip got canceled due to lousy weather.  But I got over it in the process of roasting lobster over a campfire).  (Have you had enough parenthetical asides yet?  Maybe I should just write a memoir already.)

Anyway.  I remember the Smokies with great fondness, and in re-reading my journal, I thought it would be fun to take a trip there with our little family, and we were thrilled to have my parents and my sister Mary Beth join us.  And one of my most vivid memories is driving go-karts through the misty twilight of Pigeon Forge (I even remember that I was wearing my favorite blue Patagonia fleece jacket).

So go-karting we went.  And I have to say--I think my kids are going to remember it with just as much joy as I do (all pictures courtesy of my parents' iPhones).

So notice how Abigail is riding with Neil, and Juliet is riding with my sister Mary Beth, and Isaac is riding with my dad, and I am alone?  Guess who nobody wanted to ride with.  (That's also how I had my own room in middle school and high school.  Poor lonely me.  But my go-kart went faster than everyone else's!)

someday i will post a real post

So I haven't posted for awhile because we spent last week on vacation in the Smoky Mountains--YAY!  And whereas normally I would be so excited to blog about vacation, our camera--with literally hundreds of awesome vacation photos--disappeared while we were at an amusement park (I am about 85% sure it was stolen.  More than that, actually, but I feel like I should leave that 15% margin of doubt and some trust in human nature).  And honestly, I have been so bummed about that and I haven't really wanted to blog about it all.  At some point I'll download the photos my family took (the photo at the top of this post--which is the view from our cabin's back porch--is from my dad's phone) and get a real post up.

But I'm online tonight because I just ran for the first time in a week (technically I am not supposed to be running at all right now, but...it is seriously killing me to not have my daily shot of endorphins and my family would tell you that I am evil and cranky and horrible right now, and that is not an exaggeration at all).  So right now I'm feeling GREAT because I ran, and slightly guilty because I ran, and crossing-my-fingers that I didn't mess my knee up more (I'm driving out of state this weekend to meet with a specific personal trainer.  Getting desperate to fix this?  Absolutely.  Six months of this, my friends.  And running is like...my life that is me and only mine and doesn't belong to anyone else in my family.  I am kind of dying inside over this, and I wish that was an exaggeration.)

This post sounds like a total downer!  But really, I've been enjoying our little taste of summer so far.  We celebrated the last day of school with a festive trip to a heavenly local ice cream parlor (what?  you want to see pictures? OH WAIT MY CAMERA WAS STOLEN).  Then we spent a week in the Smoky Mountains with my parents and one of my sisters--a vacation which I booked in January and I was so excited to finally go!  We went hiking in the Smokies and visited Dollywood (which was a total blast, except for the camera part, and it was so fun to take Abigail on actual roller coasters (turns out that I am getting old and I can't keep up with a seven-year-old's desire to go upside down again and again and again)), and we went go-karting and made delicious food and hung out in the hot tub and got lost about five thousand times in those gorgeous misty mountains.  It was a lovely week.  And I promise...I will blog about it sometime.  Sometime soon.  One of these days.