Our First Family Vacation, part 1

We haven’t really gone on a trip anywhere since Sophie was born (other than to see Sophie’s grand parents who live about 3 hours drive away, which we try to do every other month or so.) Since we lack in overnight baby sitting relatives near by, we decided to pack the little demon child and head to to the mountain, After all we live only an hour away from one, so we have been told.

So, we call our friends Rob and Molly with their two kids Brandon (4) and Anna (15mon) to go with us. Merry Christmas, you are invited to the "Non-weekend" with the Satans! Somehow, they seem to enjoy our company, and they don’t put up much of a fight.

Making reservations for winter resorts, however is not as easy as it seems. Every place we can think to stay is booked until mid January. If you want a weekend, wait till February. This is quite puzzling since pre-hellion, Satans always went for terrorizing tropical adventures (jumping off water falls, canoeing to the wildlife/historical sanctuary or disappearing island, swimming at the green sand beach where you have to hike for an hour and 45min to get there, then you have to walk back, or using public transportations in Mexico) vacations. Why would anyone want to spend not just a day but evening and more day in the freezing cold? Apparently, there were more masochists who would prefer freezing in the wilderness than we’d imagined, and they roll down the snowy mountainside lugging pricey equipment for fun.

We finally find a B&B that is willing to accept children and isn’t run by a crazy lonely cat lady. Indeed, this one received a "4 kisses" rating from "The Best Places to Kiss" guide book. (This is where Momster finds all her hook-ups. It is a bible one should not leave home without.) We plan to return without our hellion one of these days, but that is another story.

Skip forward to the trip. At least the day of. Packing for a winter trip is a chore. A major one. Everything you need to pack takes up the whole bag. So you end up taking all the bags you own on top of the stuff you need. Then you have to pack for the hellion, which takes up even more space, so you unpack half of your stuff to make room. Several unpackings and re-packings and packing some more in plastic bags (because you are out of normal bags) we cram everything into the official Satan-mobile, do the last sweep of the house and find our hot water heater is spewing, what a surprise, hot water all over the utility closet. It’s holiday, everything is closed. So we tun off the water, mop up the spew, bury the casualties of war (wet TP and moldy air filter anyone?) and go our merry way to our first family vacation. Thank God for cell phones and WiFi, we can summon Home Depot from wherever we are.

Our friends are waiting at the Golden Arches by our house. Logical place with kids in the tow, un-glamorously dressed (in things that are thin enough to wear under the ski gear but you don’t have the puffy stuff on yet). On the way there, (that’s few hundred yards out the door) we realize we never finished our "last sweep" courtesy of the water heater leak and forgot things like Sophie’s snow bunny suit. So we go to meet our friends anyway, order and wolf down McBreakfasts, send Daddy to finish "the last sweep" while the rest of us take turns visiting McBathrooms and watch the kids run around in the play place hoping that they will sleep in the car.

Daddy returns and finally we are on the way. We burned through all the slop time we accounted for and are right on schedule. Not bad for losing a water heater. Who said it only takes an hour to get to the mountain?