Vacation

from the mom

Thanks to my brother Mark, we enjoyed a short family vacation to Sunriver Resort in Central Oregon. He gave us this time in a vacation rental for Christmas, and he flew up and my parents and our friend Joe drove over.

We were supposed to leave about 10:30 on Friday morning. At 9:15am, Hertz called to say they didn't have any cars in town, though we had one reserved for 10am. It was noon before they were able to get us a vehicle down from SeaTac airport and we were able to upgrade from a midsize to a SUV due to this timing.

The kids did great on the trip down (about 5 1/2 hours) and Ben was thrilled to be in a new place. Even better was when he woke up the next morning to find his grandparents and Uncle Mark.

M went skiing with the guys on Saturday. The first run of the day he fell and hurt (perhaps broke) a rib or two. But he kept skiing and they had a great time. He is still in a lot of pain though.

My mom and I went to the Outlet Malls. We were walking past a store when Ben spotted a remote control car with a dog on top. We lost him. The clerk taught him to operate it in a matter of minutes and he zipped all over the store with that car. So I broke down and bought one. Being the typical boy that he is, he figured out it was fun to have it fly off furniture and crash into things. He has more eye-hand coordination than I have ever dreamed of having.

It started snowing on Tuesday morning and we drove back over the pass (Mt. Hood) in a winter wonderland. We had to buy chains on the other side of the mountain because it was required that we carry them. We were pretty grateful that we were driving the Equinox.

Ben went home with his grandparents for a few days so Kyrie and I are experiencing an unusual calm. M and I also took advantage of this and went out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary (4 years last week).

Sadly, we took no photos on this trip. Getting out the camera just seemed like too much work. I can completely see why the second child has less pictures. Everyone is too tired.