Back from vacation

Gosh, it's so hard to get back into the groove after you've been away for so long. Especially from blogging. I think it would be so much easier if I just wrote a little something every day, rather than just wait for a week (or more) and then wait for something inspiring to hit my brain.

I've noticed several people lately chronicling their vacations over the course of several days, and I really like that idea. So I think that's what I'll do this week. Tell you about our vacation in little snippets.

For approximately six or seven years the kids and I have been taking short trips to Idaho and Oregon to visit our relatives. Each trip we have always drove the distance in one day, despite the length. Over the years, the distance feels like it gets longer and longer, although I know it is the same mileage. Perhaps it is the years that have creeped up on me and now that distance feels twice as long.

This vacation we decided that we would make the drive time in two days instead of one. From our home in California to my grandparents home in Idaho it is about 11 hours, or approximately 675 miles. A long day, and a long drive no matter how you look at it. Since we were going on vacation to the town of McCall, which is about 2.5 hours north of my grandparents home, we decided to break our drive time into two days of traveling.

The first day we drove to Winne*mucca, Nevada. As we were driving over Donner Summit, which is near the California and Nevada border there was quite a bit of snow piled up at a rest area we like to stop at. It was so exciting for the kids to see snow. They really haven't been exposed to much snow during their life, certainly not any to speak of during the past several years, which is really all that they can remember anyway. I figure there was about 4-6 inches of snow on the ground.


While I made us some tuna fish sandwiches inside the nice warm truck, Dave and the kids were outside having a snowball fight. Silly me forgot to pack hats and gloves, so they were all out there packing up snowballs and freezing their hands. But they had the time of their lives! It was so fun to watch them running around in the shimmering, white snow, their eyes bedazzled with each new large patch of snow they encountered. They played until they could no longer feel their fingers, and their tummies were screaming for lunch.

It was a short drive to Winnemucca, relatively speaking I guess. Only about 7 hours on Saturday (Oct 6). We stayed the night at a small hotel. We were able to acquire a Family Suite, which means two rooms connected by a door and a single bathroom. In one room there was a king sz bed, and the other room had two queen size beds. Perfect for our family. So often when we've traveled the kids have had to share a bed, and the room usually only has two queen size beds in one room. The room and beds were relatively comfortable enough to sleep, so we reserved the same room for the trip home the following weekend.

The next morning we had breakfast in the room; I had brought some bagels, bananas and yogurt to munch on. I figured with a fairly good size town they should have a Star*bucks in town. Much to our dismay, they did not, but they did have one small coffee place that made a great White Chocolate Mocha (half caff, nonfat, no whipped cream thank you). And bonus - they had a computer where you could check your email! We got back on the road after establishing that Winne*mucca was not such a one-horse town after all, and headed for Idaho to pick up my Gramie.

Gram was going to be riding with us from her home up to McCall for the week. My aunt would follow later in the week, as she unfortunately had to serve Jury duty that week. Gram served us the yummiest sweet corn soup (I think she got it from Cost*co) for lunch, before we headed out. Gram and my Aunt just moved into a new house the week before we got there, so it was really cool to take a tour of the house and see it finished. I hadn't seen it since the first of the summer, when it wasn't quite done being built yet.

This vacation up to McCall was my dad's doing. He reserved several rooms at a time-share condo he owns, so that we could have a bit of a family reunion. It was my family (4 of us), Gram and Aunt, sister Jen and her family (4 of them), sister R, and then my dad and step-mom. Here's a picture of all of us in front of the condo.
At first I was a bit leery going up to McCall in October. I knew the weather was going to be a lot colder than I was used to here at home, and I didn't know how conducive the weather was going to be to doing outdoor things. Because, keeping it real here folks, McCall is an outdoors persons paradise. It's all about fishing, hiking, hunting, boating, skiing, biking, and any other outdoor activity you can think of to do in the mountains. The one thing I was counting on though, was the fall foilage. The leaves have barely started to turn here in this part of CA, but up there, everything was in full color. I don't think we could have picked a better time to go.

We arrived at the resort in the early evening, and met my sister R and her boyfriend there. Since my other sister and her family, and my dad and step mom were still on the road and not due in for a while we decided to go and get some dinner. We went to a local Mexican food restaurant, and had a nice visit with R and her boyfriend.

...to be continued




This morning I had an appointment with my orthodontist and I am thrilled to report than on Halloween I will be getting my braces off. To make a long story short, we are going to try to switch to another insurance carrier, one that may or may not be able to cover this jaw surgery the orthodontist wants me to have. In the meantime, we are still trying to sell the house, so whenever it does sell, and we move, I will get established with another ortho. in Portland, and figure out the continuation of my mouth treatment plan up there. But... I'm just so excited that my braces are coming off for a while. They will be making a retainer for me to wear at night, but that's okay, I don't mind that at all. Just to have these wires and brackets out of my mouth will be a welcome relief.

Au revoir, until tomorrow.

-dawn