A little getaway

I'm not usually so spontaneous, but I decided to book a little vacation to Bear Lake over spring break. My family vacationed there most every summer after my parents bought a boat. I remember spending the week of the 4th of July there and watching the fireworks over the lake. Dh and I both went to USU, which is just on the other side of the canyon, so I spent some time there in college as well. I've never been there this time of year, so I wasn't sure what to expect. We came in from Wyoming to save a little driving time. When we came around the bend and saw the lake, I couldn't believe how blue it was.

It looks nice and sunny - but the weather was COLD! There was a bike trail next to our condo. On our 2nd day there, we took a nice long ride to the end of the lake. The kids were going nuts in the bike trailer. They thought we were at the ocean. LOL! Dallin took off full speed ahead - running as fast as he could to get to the water. I love this little happy dance.

He went right in the freezing water - shoes and all.

Gracie was more hesitant. She was grumpy because she was so cold. (We told her it would be cold, but she insisted on wearing her skirt and bare legs. I thought it was the perfect chance for a little love and logic parenting.) She stuck 1 foot in and rushed back to the bike trailer ASAP where it was warmer.

It was a long, cold, windy ride back to the condo. I was pretty pleased with myself that I made it the whole way without stopping. Dh is a big biker, but I left him in my dust several times. OK - so he was the one pulling the bike trailer, but still he's in way better shape than I am. He quizzed me later why I was pushing it so hard. Just when he thought we were going at a good speed, I would speed up. I decided to fill him in on my secret....all I had to do was picture myself in a swimsuit - that's all the motivation I needed.

Later in the trip he mentioned something about our "little" bike ride. LITTLE? What? He was sure it was only a mile or 2. My burning thighs were convinced he was wrong. I insisted that he clock the route in the car - "just for fun" and it turns out it was over 9 miles.

Anyway, I was so glad our condo had a fireplace. We warmed up with hot chocolate and chicken noodle soup before heading to the pool and hot tub. We couldn't have timed it more perfectly. We had the pool all to ourselves for most of the afternoon.

Here's a picture I snapped just outside our unit. The pool house is up higher on the hill, so it had a great view of the lake.

The little town was pretty much shut down since it's the off-season there. On Friday night we did find a cute little pizza place that was open for dinner. Other than that, I was glad I had packed enough food for our meals.

We decided to go the long way home, so we could stop in Logan. Dallin was born there and DH and I lived there for several years, so we decided to take the kids on the grand tour.

First stop.....First Dam Park to feed the ducks....

...and the seagulls...LOL! Dallin was trying so hard to keep the food away from the seagulls. He was feeling bad that they kept snatching it away from the poor ducks.

Next stop....the USU campus. Followed by a driveby of our first apartment, the Logan Temple, and a trip to the 25 cent carwash.

Then lunch at my favorite restaurant of all times, El Toro Viejo . YUM! They seriously have the BEST enchiladas EVER!!! I sometimes crave them so bad that I'm tempted to drive to Logan just to satisfy the craving. This place was a favorite college hang-out and it was also the first place DH and I ever went to dinner when we were dating.

We knew the kids weren't going to survive the long ride home without burning off some energy first, so our next stop was to the Willow Park Zoo. The kids wanted to play on the playground first.

We finally tore them away from the park and convinced them to go look at the animals. They were pretty impressed by the bobcat, and Dallin was so excited to see a "real turkey" LOL! He told me that he's always wanted to see a turkey...and a bald eagle. Well it turned out to be his lucky day...we saw 2 bald eagles. I don't remember seeing them before.

We had to make 1 final stop on our way out of town....to see our first house. It's where we lived when Dallin was born. The people who bought it from us took great care of it. They added a new fence and some nice trees and flowers. I was so sad to see that they had sold it to someone else since the last time I was there. The new owners have really trashed it already. There was a big trailer parked in front - next to the driveway, but still - right in the front yard. UGH! I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture of it.

The kids have already started begging to go back and do it all over again. We may have just started a new spring break tradition.

Those little white lies......

....we tell our kids. I'm starting to feel a little guilty. I was the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy all in 24-hour period. It's all in good fun of course, but the older Dallin gets, the more I'm starting to feel like a big fat liar!

He was quizzing his dad last week asking, "Do you believe in leprechauns?" "the tooth fairy?" "Santa Claus?" etc. I wondered what had sparked this little interrogation. Was the little guy starting to have doubts? I think I was about his age when I figured out my parents had been "lying" to me. So I was surprised by what happened next. Dad had answered "yes" to all his questions so far - but when he asked about the Easter Bunny, dad the perpetual tease thought he would be funny and say "NO!" Dallin was shocked. "What? Dad! I can't believe you think he isn't real. He always comes EVERY year! How could you think that he isn't real?" So the lies live on a little longer.

So I was a bit unprepared for Easter. I picked up some candy and a couple of little things at Target on Friday. It was so picked over. Most of the shelves were empty, and I couldn't find a single plastic egg in the entire store. Later that night, we took the kids to an egg hunt at our church. I confiscated all the plastic eggs they found so we could leave them out for the Easter Bunny to recycle. (See I'm lying again.) By about 9:00 Saturday night, I was desperate for more eggs, so I headed out to the grocery store. I found a few at the 3rd store I checked and returned around 10:00 to find Gracie waiting for me to put curlers in her hair. I was up late doing hair and being the bunny, so I was tired when the kids woke me up the next morning - after they had already found their baskets. The little turkeys.

I whipped up some bunny shaped pancakes and dad make bacon and eggs. That's how Dallin lost his tooth. I believe it was the first bite of his breakfast that did it. It was his first top tooth to go, and the first one with a lot of bleeding. It made for quite a dramatic morning. We barely made it to church on time. (OK, so we were actually a minute or 2 late.)

Dallin before church

Gracie before church

Eating chocolate bunnies

Even with a missing tooth

The bunny also brought the big bubbler this year. We had a blast with this - even though it was raining. I see many more hours with the bubbler in my future.

After dinner, we finished off the day by watching Testaments.

There's no school this week - it's SPRING BREAK! (And yes, I actually knew there was no school this time.) It feels so good to have a break from our normal routine. I canceled all playdates, meetings, etc. so I could just have fun with the kids.

We did some cleaning and organizing yesterday. We sorted through Dallin's closet and got rid of all the clothes that he's outgrown. He also wanted to clean out all the drawers in his dresser and rearrange his underwear and pajamas. I probably threw away a ream of paper. He had pictures and drawings and hand-drawn puppets stashed everywhere. That little project ended up taking the entire afternoon, but it feels good to get something like that done. Then we went on a family bike ride up to Midway last night.

After the kids were in bed, I did some laundry, baked cookies, and picked out cabinets for our basement bathroom. I'm horrible at decisions like that! If I'm given 3 or 4 choices, I'll easily pick my favorite. But when presented with 2 catalogs, and a case full of wood samples, I panic. What do I like? What matches the best? What fits in with the rest of the house? What's the most timeless? Ugh! I drive myself crazy. The cabinet guy was coming to pick the samples up first thing this morning, so it was d-day...or night...or early morning, as it turned out. By 2:00 in the morning, I had it narrowed down to 2 wood finishes. I finally gave up and went to bed. DH woke me up around 6:00 this morning to get my final decision. I was half asleep, but I think I told him to go with the glazed cherry. I've been thinking about it all day, and I'm sure that I picked the wrong one.

I took the kids and went to meet my friend, Christine, this morning in Kamas. She took us all up to their cabin for the day. It was snowing like crazy in the canyon. I'm thinking to myself the whole time...I can't believe this is Spring Break. LOL! We had a great time though, just hanging out and playing games. She's one of my real life friends that digital scrapbooks, so I took my copy of digital scrapbooking magazine, for her to look at. It's fun to have a friend that understands this crazy hobby.

DH spent the day in Nevada for work. He took a scenic drive around Lake Tahoe and ended up missing his flight home. LOL! There were no other flights coming home tonight, so he bought a ticked to SanFransisco, where he could catch a connecting flight back to SLC. The flight to SanFran got delayed, so he ended up stuck there. Dallin overheard me talking to him on the phone. When he found out dad was in CA, he was concerned that dad might go to Disneyland without the rest of us. LOL!

We're heading to SLC tomorrow to visit Grandma (my mom). Then Thursday we leave for Bear Lake. I did something spontaneous and booked our trip 2 days ago. We leave in about 40 hours. I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't snow while we're there, but I'm packing the hot chocolate just in case.