What a weekend!

So here we are on Sunday night after a crazy and eventful weekend. The short version is this....we had dinner on Thursday night with Auntie E and Uncle R before their planned departure for Utah on Friday when we decided, very spontaneously to pack up and follow them south on Friday for a sleepover in Idaho together. It took some initial coordinating, but by 3pm on Friday afternoon, we were on the road headed south. They experienced some drama at the US border with their visas but eventually got approved and we all met up in Idaho around 9pm. The kids travelled great, despite having spent the day at daycare. We had lots of snacks and there were no rules at the hotel when we first arrived. I brought the computer along and some movies so that they could watch a movie when we arrived. We had a pizza party in our room when Auntie E and the gang finally arrived about an hour after us and we all went to bed around 11pm. Saturday was a long and exhausting, but fun day. We all spent the day in town. We wandered through downtown, enjoying the local farmer's market and watching the kids run around in the mini-spray park. We picked up some lunch and headed to a local playground where we enjoyed our last picnic together for this summer. The kids ran around together and the dads played frisbee for a while before we all packed up and made the move to head our separate ways. Saying good-bye in the Super 8 parking lot was much easier than it would have been to watch them drive away from our house. There were lots of hugs and smooches. They headed towards Utah and we headed further south on the highway to the Silverwood Amusement Park for the rest of the day.

What an adventure. Despite an already full morning of running around, both kids had a great amount of energy. It was sweltering hot and we managed to move from ride to ride to keep ourselves shaded where we could. The kids loved going on the kid rides - the airplanes where it took them a couple of tries to figure out how to make the plane go up and down, the mini train rollercoaster that went around and around, the helicopters. We cooled off with a spin on the bumper boats where Schmoo and Papa managed to completely soak Bean and I with their water spray. One of the highlights was Schmoo's request to go on the big rollercoaster. After many, many requests for her reassurance, she went on the Timber Terror Rollercoaster with Papa. Bean and I were on our own adventure back at the kids rollercoaster so didn't get to see them, but Papa said she did great. No screaming, just silence and when she got off she was so excited about what she had just done.

We made our way over to the connecting water park for the last hour, where Schmoo spent the entire time in the water. She just kept running up the stairs and going down the slides for about 40 minutes straight. She couldn't get enough. Poor Beanie had a tumble on the way to the waterpark, skinning both his knees, so he was pretty upset and wanted to just sit on the lounge chair and eat his pizza supper. We packed them up at 7pm, went for a last ride on the carousel, picked up some cotton candy to share and headed for home. They were both flying high in their car seats for the first hour, but eventually settled down to sleep around 9pm. I pulled into our driveway around 11pm with two sleeping kids and two VERY tired parents.

Today has been a recovery day. It was super hot here again today so we laid pretty low. Papa was up early to watch soccer and entertain the children, letting me sleep in until almost 10am...what a treat! He took them up the valley to get the dogs around lunchtime and I headed into town to go to the gym and then pick up some groceries. We all managed to have some kind of snooze in the afternoon and a quiet dinner. Papa and I enjoyed a scrumptious crab and steak dinner, with fresh organic zucchini from Auntie E's garden out on the front deck. We came in the house to find an email waiting from the travellers, confirming their safe arrival in Utah. Now we can go to bed settled, knowing they are safely in their new home.