Time Off

Parents don't get a whole lot of "time off". There's no big revelation there. There are a few oh-so-lucky couples who have family willing to take the kids...or even clamoring to keep the kids so the parents can go out of town for a weekend...or even a week in some cases. We're not one of those couples.

But my mother did offer, about three years ago, to take the kids for the weekend for our 10th anniversary. We took her up on that without hesitation and had a wonderful time in Carmel. I'm not honestly sure anything will ever rival that trip in a lot of ways. It was such a huge relief to leave both kids at home with trusted caregivers after seven years of occasional babysitters.

We managed to get away for a single night last year. It was nice, but really didn't cut it.

This year, Daddy got a special offer from the same hotel we'd stayed at for our 10th, begged my mother for mercy and booked us for another weekend.Truth be told, this place is gorgeous, but not altogether my kind of deal. I'm uncomfortable with valets who open the car door for me, having my napkin placed in my lap for me, putting things on "my tab". Nonetheless, it not hard to appreciate getting the heck out of Dodge and away from children and obligations for just a little bit.

Soon after we arrived, we drove to Carmel Valley and had dinner at a cute little place called Café Rustica. It's a warm, snug little place with some super tasty Italian food. I enjoyed my dinner a lot, including the first wine I'd had in months.

Having had several discussions lately about just what is my thing, Daddy and I used Saturday to go for a hike above the ocean. We arrived at Garrapata State Park...one of the 70 slated for closure...to find that the trail I'd hoped to take was closed, but we decided to go for a walk up the canyon anyway.It was a good choice. On a not-so-warm, overcast day, the canyon was beautiful and green. There were some little waterfalls...and lots of ferns.We walked and walked until the trail started going significantly uphill. We'd passed a blank sign that had almost certainly said "Trail Closed", but since it no longer said anything, we hiked right past. Before we knew it, we were out of the canyon and on the steep trail that had been closed, for obvious reasons, like it was really washed out in spots.I was secretly kind of thrilled that we got to go that way anyway, with a viable excuse. We reached the top and had a snack overlooking the ocean. It was cold and windy up there, especially after getting all damp and sweaty on the way up, but the views were still pretty impressive.We took the steep and sandy route down. The trail really took it out on my knees, but we made it to the bottom with time to spare and took a little walk around the shoreline before heading back to the hotel and showering for dinner.

This hotel has a very nice restaurant ($$$) where we had our official anniversary dinner. I had some tasty things I'd never tried before, including a butternut squash tart with arugula. And naturally, we had some decadent desserts, including this carrot cake with cream cheese mousse on top and blood orange sorbet on the side.I'm sure it was all too pricey and I'm glad I never looked at the bill. It all just went on "the tab" anyway, right?The hotel hosts a lot of weddings. Saturday was no exception, even though there was a storm blowing in. I'd forgotten that our room (which was the same one we'd had a year earlier) is way too close to wherever they load up the delivery trucks with wedding supplies at 1:30am after the festivities are over. Between that and the wind, rain and hail, we didn't sleep terribly well. So when it was raining the next morning, we went for breakfast, then went back to our room for a nap. Later, we headed into Carmel to pick up some trinkets for the kids and their babysitters.

We took a windy little walk along the tidepools at Asilomar and headed home with that same feeling kids get when a particularly fun playdate is over. Coming home was way more of a bummer than it should have been. At least the kids were happy to see us!

Camping Right Along

Last week was another week of camps. This time, Smunch was at baseball camp from 9 to 3:30 every day. And it was HOT. And there wasn't a lot of shade. After the first day, I took to sending him with three water bottles. That seemed to do it. As you can see, he was a little guy at camp. This camp was for 7 to 12-year-olds, so he was on the young side and he's always been on the small side for his age. He wasn't the smallest kid there, but he was certainly a shrimp.

It didn't seem to make a big difference. The second day, he wore his Chicago White Sox jersey that his great Uncle Quentin sent him. It has his last name on the back with the number 20 (random number as far as I know). From that day on, you could hear all the other kids talking about Ryder doing this or that. It was cute and it was clear that he'd be accepted, even though he didn't know any of the other boys before the start of camp. Smunch was also named "camper of the day" on Tuesday. He was so thrilled! And I was thrilled for him. Unfortunately, things kind of went downhill from there.

By the end of the week, he wasn't so sure that he liked baseball camp after all. He hated all the warm-up running they had to do each morning. I tried to tell him that running is part of the life of a baseball player. He still says he's going to be a major league baseball player when he grows up. Guess he's going to have to learn to run.

Mam, on the other hand, had a completely different kind of week with an animal-themed camp at her former preschool. She was gone from 9 to 11:30 every day, knew several kids in her class and came home with all kinds of art projects and stories. She got to see a walking stick, a hedgehog and a parrot show. Beyond that, I know very little about what happened. There were no pictures, but hopefully for her, there were lots of great memories.

For me, I spent what little free time I had between getting home from dropping Smunch off and picking up Mam by trying to think about our next big trip and what we needed. Either I'm overthinking things because camping trips are so much work (and we've done a lot of that lately) or I've failed entirely to get it together for this trip. At least we'll be in cities and hotels this time around, so we may be able to make up for all my packing failures. I guess we'll find out!

The Rest of Vacation

What "rest" of vacation? What exactly does vacation have to do with rest anyway? Those of you with children already know that vacation no longer means rest. That doesn't mean it isn't a whole lot of fun or that I don't look forward to it. But it doesn't mean rest. Not ever. In fact, at our house, things are likely going very poorly if the kids are on vacation and I'm resting. That means they're bored. They're fighting. They're dying for something more entertaining to do.

So, while camping filled part of our Spring Break, it lasted only until Wednesday. I'd scheduled a whole bunch of appointments for the kids on Thursday, so we had to get back. I hate rescheduling, especially since some of these appointments are rather difficult to come by. So, we had a busy Thursday at the dentist (both kids), the speech therapist (Mam) and the physical therapist (Smunch). But then came Friday...

And by Friday morning, I was resting with my coffee and my newspaper after succeeding in packing away most of the evidence of our camping trip. The kids were outside, fighting and getting on each other's nerves. As far as I'm concerned, THIS is exactly what letterboxing was invented for.

So, I looked up some of the more recent boxes planted around here, packed the kids in the car and headed for the coast. The coast is always a good bet because it means beach. Of course, letterboxes aren't generally planted on the beach since shifting sands aren't particularly friendly to unburied treasure. So, I use the beach as a bribe to get the hiking done instead.

The town we were looking for was so small that I blew right by it the first time past, but we finally found it and the park we were looking for. It was a little creepy. Not particularly well cared for, but beautiful nonetheless.Nice spring flowers and towering eucalyptus trees. Lots of vines (kudzu, maybe?) growing over everything.

Our destination was an overlook with this lovely view...and a lovely letterbox. We were first finders of this one, so that made it a bit more fun for the kids too.We headed back down. As we neared the bottom of the hill, the kids were walking hand in hand (cute!) singing "We Will Rock You" as loud as they could (not particularly cute, but kinda funny).I'd packed a lunch for the beach, so we headed down and found a place to park. By that time, the beach was windy and not all that comfortable, even though it looked great. Still, the kids had a great time getting sandy and wet, as I'd carefully instructed them not to.There's no real doubt that they're the best of friends. We didn't stay long, but they didn't complain. And on our way home, we dropped by a tiny little scrapbook store that was going out of business. I got some great deals...and logged another letterbox...and best of all, the kids were happy...and tired!

That was more than a week ago already. The past week went by in a whirlwind of meetings and baseball. The weekend was all about sifting compost and getting the garden ready to plant. I can't wait to get my veggies in. In the meantime, all the planning for the summer is starting to really take shape and plans are getting firmed up. I don't think there's going to be a lot of time for boredom and fighting!

Breakfast Nostalgia

As you might've guessed, I grew up in a family that wasn't big on snow or winter sports. By the time I tried to learn to ski at the age of 21, it was far too late. Perhaps it was always too late and I've always had a good portion of stodgy, thrill-averse old lady in me.

My parents took my sister and me up to the snow only once during our entire childhood (although we later moved to England where it snowed with some regularity and we did plenty of sledding around the house). I suppose they wanted to make sure we knew what snow was, at least.

That doesn't mean my family didn't like Tahoe though. As one of the premier vacation destinations from the San Francisco Bay Area, we did make a yearly trip up there. We always went during the summer when we could swim in the very cold lake, fish for crawdads, rent jet skis and hang out by the pool, playing bingo with the other vacationing kids.

I have a lot of fond memories of the little traditions our family had on our Tahoe vacations...bringing bacon fat as crayfish bait, getting ice cream at the pool snack shop, my dad's morning trip to the 7-11, when he never failed to bring back donuts. But one of my fondest memories is of the place in the picture above.

This is the Old Post Office Coffee Shop in Carnelian Bay. As the name suggests, it was once a post office. But by the time my family was spending a week each summer in Carnelian Bay, it was already a cute little breakfast spot and we went there at least once each trip.

During our last Tahoe trip, I learned that this place was indeed still open, but we didn't have the chance to go. I was way more disappointed than I should have been. It's not really a secret that this trip was, in part, just because I had to eat there again. It's not that the food is so amazing, although it was yummy. I also felt an inexplicable, urgent need to share that part of my childhood with my own kids.We went on our first morning out and I'm happy to say that it didn't disappoint. It was just as I remembered, right down to the cute little dining room with the old-fashioned postage stamp wallpaper.That's the waitress there with the red hair and the black "Go Postal" T-shirt. All the staff had these shirts. It's funny to think that slogan would have been totally meaningless when I first went there.

The kids devoured their pancakes and I savored my blueberry pancakes...something I discovered for the very first time at the Old Post Office and have loved ever since.

Although our summer is already full of vacation plans, I'm already plotting a summer trip back to Tahoe. I'll drag my sister and SPENCER! with us too. This nostalgia was too good not to share!

Tahoe Take Two

It seems like it's been an eternity since we were really able to go on vacation. When I say "vacation", I don't mean the kind where we spend our days trying to placate whiney kids or doing kid-friendly activities that we really aren't excited about. Those seem like necessary excursions, but I'm really talking about the kind where we get to unwind, at least a little, and spend some time doing things we really enjoy.

So, during "ski week" this year, we decided to go back to Tahoe...no family obligations, no one to coordinate meals with, no one with expectations that our kids must learn to ski. No free cabin either, but we found a great cabin that was everything we needed and we were smart and lucky enough to leave on Tuesday and come back on Friday. No blizzards. No traffic...although we did have to use chains over the summit to the lake.

The kids really wanted to see snow falling and fall it did. Except there was a lot of snow falling as we approached the lake and virtually none after we got to the cabin. But I was proud of myself for having Daddy open the windows in back so the kids could have snow fall on them...and for pointing out to Smunch when there was a dainty little snowflake in all its crystalline glory sitting on his sleeve as Daddy removed the snow cables from the car. He was amazed that snowflakes really look like...well, snowflakes. Next time. I'm bringing the magnifying glass.

By Wednesday morning, the neighborhood around the cabin was a true winter wonderland. The trees were all still coated and the road around the cabin still covered. I took some time to take some scenic photos after we trekked down to get breakfast (worthy of its own blog post) and came away with some shots that show just how pretty everything was when the clouds parted...There were a lot of impressive and beautiful icicles to be seen hanging from the local cabins, but these ones caught my eye. Must be windy down there by the lake!It was the perfect way to start our little mini-vacation in the snow...already promising to be beautiful and serene. And what do you know? I read a BOOK while we were there! I still can't quite get over how amazing I think that is!

Vacating

No sooner had school ended than our little family high-tailed it out of town. It wasn't exactly planned to work out this way, but we were headed to Illinois and we figured the earlier in the summer we got there, the better. Of course, we weren't counting on the massive rain storms and flooding they were having...mostly in Iowa, but that's the direction we were headed. We arrived at O'Hare an hour behind schedule after being re-routed around some thunderstorms. Daddy's uncle Quentin had driven almost three hours to the airport to pick us up.

We stopped for dinner at a TGI Fridays near the airport where Mam suddenly went into hysterics over the nearly 20 bites I'd found on her back that morning. I'd applied hydrocortisone liberally and they hadn't bothered her all day...until dinner. Immediately after dinner, Daddy used his oh-so-handy iPhone to locate a Walgreens where we picked up some Benadryl.

It rained on our way to the countryside. And it didn't rain a little. It was that sort of rain that makes you wonder what windshield wipers are for because they don't seem to be doing any good. Smunch was tense and I could tell he was scared. I assured him that Uncle Quentin has lots of experience with this sort of driving. Of course, it was 11 o'clock at night and probably way past Uncle Quentin's bedtime. When the lightning flashed...and it often did...at least we could see the roadway. Aunt Susan called while we were on the road. There was a tornado watch for their area. Daddy carefully spelled this information out to me...literally. "T-O-R-N-A-D-O watch" so as not to freak the children out. Naturally, this information was met by a concerned, "What tornado?" from Smunch. That quality education sure comes in handy... The Benadryl had already worked its magic on Mam.

We made it to Woodbine a little before 1 am, delayed again because Uncle Quentin does know how to drive in crazy stormy weather, even after bedtime. Thank goodness. And no tornados either. Maybe our arrival was a good sign for the weather...