We arrived at about 10 p.m. Friday night and it was another two hours before we got the kids to bed. We brought the pack n' play for Emmie hoping she would sleep in it like a crib. Ha! She spent at least a half hour showing us that she could climb in and out of the pack n' play like it was a jungle gym. At midnight we got all of them to sleep - me and Emmie in one bed, Jeff and Logan in one bed, Conor and Joey in one bed, and Tom got his own bed.
Saturday we loaded up all the kids and the snow gear and went in search of snow. Typically this time of year finding snow in the mountains would not be an issue, but this year winter seems to be on a vacation. We did find snow about 30 mins from our hotel at Spooner Summit and Emmie got to play in it for the first time. Little Miss "I Do It" had trouble walking in it but still refused to be carried and stumbled her way through the snow for hours. We built a snowman, had a snowball fight, went sledding, and built snow forts.
Next we headed back to the hotel for lunch and a break. After a couple of hours we headed back out and went to historic Virginia City. Jeff has fond memories of visiting Virginia City as a young boy and was looking forward to taking our boys to the Bucket of Blood Saloon for a sarsaparilla- I on the other hand was not exactly thrilled with that idea. But, like many other activities I do in life, I figured this was part of having boys... visiting places called "bucket of blood."
Unfortunately we didn't quite make it to Bucket of Blood Saloon. Emmie can be quite a handful when she wants to be. At this point in the day our little princess was running on 6 hours of sleep from the night before (typically she gets 10) and no nap, which means she was a complete mess. She wanted to run in the street, take home one of everything in every store, cry for no apparent reason, walk in the opposite direction of wherever we were headed, etc. Logan was not much better than Emmie and between the two of them it was not the meandering tour through the streets that Jeff had envisioned. We still did get those sarsaparillas at a saloon complete with real life miners at the bar and real dead deer heads on the wall - oh joy.
We ended Saturday with dinner at Applebees, which is only worth mentioning because it was Jeff's first time at an Applebees. We always tip our waiter/waitress well when we bring the whole crew to a restaurant. Not because our kids are terrors, they are very well behaved and polite in restaurants, but because there are seven of us at a table and we leave that table a mess. Plus we have toddlers so if you are fast with their food, bring us extra napkins, and happily take care of random requests like, "can you heat up this milk please?" or "do you happen to have chocolate chips you can put in those pancakes?" we will love you forever. In fact, I am not above writing you a glowing thank you note on our receipt if you can help keep our restaurant experience from being Hell on Earth.
Sunday we headed to the North Shore of Tahoe and found a great sledding hill that in the summer is a driving range. The kids had a blast sledding for hours and I loved that there weren't any trees they could crash into. After they wore themselves out we started the trek home.
All in all I would say this was a pretty successful trip. Only minor injuries when Logan crashed into a bush sledding with Tommy on Saturday and scraped up his face. And only needed one item that we didn't pack, Cortisone for a mosquito bite (I almost thought of everything!).
In the end, the kids had a great time and that is really the most important part for a trip like this.
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