Travels, Part II

I did a little research before leaving and discovered that very near the resort is a large park with an extremely cool playground:
My intention was to spend the greater part of every day there. Alas, thanks to the rain, that was not possible. But we did sneak over to play when the rain let up a little.













Lots of slides. The white-ish slide was fast. Cora didn't like it so much. Ruby, on the other hand, likes every slide she ever meets, but is not so fond of swings. I think Cora could swing all day.










I took lots of other pictures of different things in the playground, but I don't think I'll overload you with them all. The girls loved it. If the weather hadn't been so rotten, we would have spent a lot more time there.

Travels, Part I

The first week of May we took a trip to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Ray had a Dam Safety Conference to attend for work. The girls and I went along for fun (since a nine hour drive with two toddlers is LOADS of fun). On the way home we took a slight detour to visit my grandparents. Since I took lots of pictures, I'm going to split it up into several posts over the next several days.

To start with, here are our accomodations:












The Coeur d'Alene Golf and Spa Resort, situated right on Lake Coeur d'Alene. The room was by far the best room I have ever stayed in. As you can see, there was a sitting area with a fireplace which was slightly lower than the sleeping area. The bathroom was huge and had a phone by the toilet, how random is that? Every room in the resort had a doorbell. Every light had a dimmer switch, including the bathroom (am I the only one who finds that odd?). There was also a balcony:














Here is the view from the big picture window:
Beautiful, yes?

Here is a photo of the resort:
If you look closely (or click on the picture to make it bigger) you can see a red dot about half-way up. That was our room.

I was a little worried about having two toddlers in such a nice place. It seemed inevitable that they would destroy something expensive. They didn't. The resort was actually quite family friendly. While I would never stay there on my own dime (since it was a work trip for Ray, the company paid for the room), it was an amazing place to stay. Every evening someone would stop by to ask if we would like "turn-down service." I'm not really sure what turn-down service is (can you tell I don't normally stay in places this nice?) and I assumed it might cost extra so I always said no.

Having such a large room was awesome. It gave the girls a bit more space to play in than a normal hotel room. Which, as it turned out, was great since we spent a lot of our time inside while it rained. (That was a bummer.)

Thigh Boots

Mommy's Hat

Why would ANYONE think I have BOYS?

When you're married to a dam* engineer:

He just can't help himself.


*Don't worry, it's spelled correctly. Having heard this joke so many times from the engineer himself, it's starting to rub off on me.

One hour...

in an extremely crowded, excessively loud, ridiculously hot room, with the crowd consisting mostly of children under five, all for this:
That's it, that's all I got. As you can see, Ruby was not too thrilled about sitting on Clifford's lap, so the photo op was extra short. Good thing Clifford was holding on tight because she was fighting to get away.




Luckily, a friend of mine was there and snapped a couple of photos of my girls so you can see that Ruby was fine meeting Clifford. Both girls gave him five and petted him.
But once they were on his lap it all went downhill for Ruby. Here she is contemplating the situation, realizing that Mommy is NOT the one holding on to her any longer:
You can also see my arm trying to snap a picture before it went downhill. My camera just isn't fast enough. Cora was fine with it all. I was annoyed that they skipped the story, it was Story Time, after all. (They skipped it because there were so many kids there, but how long does a kid's story really take?)

I feel sorry for Clifford. If I was hot in that room, he must have been roasting!