The Young and the Restless

A quick trip

We took a quick trip up to the condo over Veteran's weekend to get the last minute details ready for our first Airbnb guests. Setting up cable tv, printing off pages for the welcome book, purchasing portable heaters, picking up take-out menus for guests and getting it all cozied up for the holidays with a Christmas tree. Best Goodwill find to date, $10 and all the lights still work. 

Jason had work and Jayden had basketball so they came up a day later and Kylie stayed home with friends to go to a birthday party, which meant that I had a full day to explore with the little guys. We discovered charming little corners of this town, bought a red glass cardinal and deer antler for souvenirs, and of course somehow found ourselves at the dollar store.

When Jason came up we decided to take a little trip to Hawley lake. Jayden opted to stay home and binge watch Netflix, I picked my battle. The boys were fighting before we had even turned onto the main road out of town, but we distracted them with a game of "I'm going on a picnic..." and it still makes me laugh when I think of Ryder who chose to bring "cankles" for the letter C. The lake was beautiful, Jason taught them the art of skipping rocks, tears were shed when they couldn't get more than 2 skips, but there was enough exploring to keep them busy and distracted from their lack of rock skipping skills.

We drove past an old playground on the way up and promised we would stop on our way back, secretly hoping they would forget. They did not. The rusty playgrounds with the outdated equipment are always the most fun, even if they need a tetanus shot afterwards. These pictures make me smile. The plan was to go out to eat as a family that night. but after dragging them all over running errands- tears over not getting a toy at Ross, breaking up fights over tic-tacs at Walmart, putting a stop to races in Home Depot, begging for candy while looking for extension cords at Big Lots and exhausting my one trick pony "see see oh playmate" to keep them entertained in the car while Jason made copies of keys- we made an authoritative decision to pick up pizza (splurging on crazy bread AND soda) for the kids and leave them at home while Jason and I enjoyed a quiet dinner together. Best. Decision. EVER. Enjoying tomato and avocado on sourdough (for me, all carnivore for Jason) at a charming cafe in peace and quiet was just what we needed to regain our energy for a late night round of Ticket to Ride with a side of Oreos and licorice. I love these boys, but holy moly they wear me out!