Family Vacation... 2013!!

 

'Round about July/August every year we usually go spend a couple of weeks at Karl's parents' house (where ever they might be living at the time), but this year, due to his parents being out here a bunch for weddings, a lack of funds, and various other impediments, we aren't going to be able to do that :(

Things have been pretty stressful lately (trying to figure out finances, Karl's job kind of requires him to be on-call a lot of the time, things falling through, life events/changes happening... etc.) and our summer visit is usually our break to kind of reset before the crazy stress of the school year sets in, so I finally just decided that we just needed to get away somewhere, even if it was just for a couple days.

Extremely fortunately for us, we managed to get Karl's 18-hour Friday shift covered/traded so we could get away for the weekend (seriously... this was a miracle)!!

So, I made some quick plans (yup... even my spontaneity is planned), booked a hotel, found something fun to do, and we were set! We didn't actually end up going far, but it was nice, and I really enjoyed getting some family time in with out work and junk interfering.

The day of our vacation came along and we were super excited... but, by the time we visited 5 different stores looking for an essential water floaty, being accosted by a mean/sweet old lady trying to get us to get a Babies-R-Us member card, forcing a cranky Evie back into her seat for the 5th time, and then getting on our way, we were all pretty hungry and grumpy. Thankfully, it was only about a 30 minute drive to... Sandy, Utah!

I know, that doesn't sound super exciting, but for us, it was pretty perfect!

Cranky Baby. Not happy to be in her seat...

We got to the hotel and went to put our things in our room, Evie saw the king size bed and was immediately in the best mood ever; she was so excited to be in that hotel room! She got up on the giant bed and jumped precariously on the edge, ran around the room, climbed on the sofa, looked in the bathroom... I think she was happy for a change of scenery ;)

Karl and I were not quite as impressed by the new surroundings, and still pretty hungry, so we had to gather up our little bouncing ball of energy and stick her in the car once more. While I was trying to get Evie in her seat (not an easy task) Karl offered to get the navigation on my phone started to get us to our dinner destination. It was right about when I looked up and realized he was getting back on the freeway that we both realized something was wrong... The phone was directing us to a restaurant that was 20 minutes away, rather than the one just down the street. But it was too late to not get on the freeway, it was rush hour at this point, and it ended up taking us about 15 minutes to get on and then off again and get to the restaurant... So more grumpiness... I was getting kind of nervous about the success of this trip when we finally arrived at our destination: Crown Burgers!

If you've never eaten at Crown Burgers, you really should... Maybe I was just starving to death, but seriously, FANTASTIC burger and some of the best fry sauce I've ever had. I was a little worried about getting a "crown burger" because my stomach has been a little sensitive lately and that burger is packed with pastrami, but I am so glad I didn't wimp out... It was amazing! We all really enjoyed our food and were honestly just soooo much happier after being fed, haha!

Also, we realized that the last time we were at a Crown Burgers restaurant was almost 7 years ago on one of our very first dates as an "official" couple! So, in honor of that, we had to take a picture ;) I don't think the two super young, naive college kids in that first picture could have possibly comprehended where we would end up 7 years down the road, but I don't think I could have imagined anything better!

October 2006
 (oh yeah, we're so cool)

July 2013
(Happy family!!)

Finally full and in a much happier mood, we headed back to the hotel and got ready to go swimming in the pool! Evie is a little fishy baby; she LOVES water. Last week for our family reunion she stood in the little sprinkler thing until her lips turned blue and still refused to get out. So I figured getting a hotel with a pool would be a good bonus ;)

 

 

It took quite a bit of convincing, but we eventually got her out of the pool by telling her we could go watch "Nemo" in the hotel room. We took a quick bath and then all snuggled up in the big bed to watch our movie on Karl's laptop!

Karl eventually fell asleep and half way through the movie, Evie remembered the swimming pool. She jumped off the bed, grabbed her floaty, and ran around the room saying "water! suit! again! go! again! WATER!". I managed to distract her by letting her play with the hotel phone (which I unplugged), she LOVED that... lol. Never thought an old land-line phone would be so impressive, haha. She kept calling her daddy on it, it was cute ;)

The only downside to the whole hotel experience was the fact that Evie REFUSED to sleep. It was seriously after 11pm before she finally gave up and passed out. We didn't have the most comfortable night ever, even with the awesome big bed, but we kind of expected that. Evie's not the best sleeper, even at home. Evie was okay with it though, she thought the whole thing was just the best ever. When we were down at the desk asking for a crib, they had a plate of warm cookies out, which Evie sampled, lol, and when we passed the desk after breakfast, the guy gave her candy! So basically, awesome. hahaha.

The next portion of our adventure was... The aquarium!!!

Finding Nemo was Evie's very first favorite movie, and she still loves it! She loves fish and sharks and water, so we thought this would be an excellent adventure for her!

It was pretty awesome. Evie kept calling it the "ocean", haha! We saw a lot of cool fishies, and Evie even got to have sharks and a giant sea turtle swim right by her face!

 We also got to see penguins!

 

Evie really liked the HUGE amazonian fish (totally brought me back to my "Amazon Trail" days, lol!), but there was one giant catfish that kept "chasing" her, she was so scared that it kept swimming after her that she ran away! I'm sorry, I may be a bad mom, but I thought it was funny ;)

The mean catfish

Running for her life...

Luckily, Daddy saved her!

Evie had such a good time! I don't think she wanted to leave, but mommy and daddy were tired, and Evie needed a nap after a morning filled with so much excitement! We stopped for lunch quickly, and then it was off to Grandma Janice and Grandpa Jack's house (which is also Uncle Christer and Auntie Myrna's house, for the time being, so we got a two for one deal!!)

We had a lot of fun playing at Grandma and Grandpa's, especially since Roxy dog was there!

Aaaand, playing with Christer and Myrna was pretty fun too... Once we warmed up to them a little ;) She wasn't in the greatest mood, since she was in a new place and hadn't been sleeping the last couple nights, but eventually we had some fun!

All in all, it was a pretty good trip, and the day we left, we realized she had sprouted TWO new teeth! That explains some of her grumpiness that week, I'm just glad she was still able to enjoy our fishy trip (which was all planned in her honor)!

I'm so happy we had a chance to get away from the everyday grind and spend a little family time, and even see some of our extended family! I love them so much!