I don't know why I feel the need to explain myself - but I do. Although you probably don't care, I am way behind in my storytelling. Which is actually kinda funny because I had decided to stop blogging all together while I was traveling through France and Italy earlier this year. And speaking of the that European vacation, I still have every intention to finish recounting each day of my trip. It's just gonna take a while, especially because other vacations have come and gone since my return and apparently there are some folks who are also waiting for a post or two about our most recent family trip.

So here goes.

In October, over the long Columbus Day weekend, we drove to Fairfield, California to visit Stephen's grandmother. She lives in a posh retirement community for elite military families, although on this trip we learned that the community must accept civilians in order to maintain its non-profit status - but that's neither here nor there.

Boise to Fairfield is a long drive so we left on Thursday evening and stopped over in Reno.



This might sound silly to some of you, but checking into a hotel with my children made me feel like an adult. I could be wrong but I think this was only the sixth time that Henry and Wyatt had stayed in a hotel. And I think they were about 15 months old the last time they experienced the luxury of hotel sleeping.

So it seemed like a big deal to check into a hotel with children old enough to remember the experience and recognize that we were on a family vacation in a different state - which, by the way, was totally confusing to Henry. He kept asking if people in California (he meant Nevada) spoke English because we weren't in the states anymore. At one point, even Wyatt tried to explain that we hadn't left the country.




We rolled into Reno just in time for dinner and the lovely woman at the Harrah's desk gave us two different food coupons: $10 off a $25 breakfast total at some fancy diner and a two for one adult dinner at the buffet. Although I tried to convince Stephen that we needed to eat dinner at the buffet in order to make the most of our money, he is a major snob when it comes to many many things, buffets being one of those things. So per Stephen's stubborn insistence, we ate mediocre burgers in the fancy diner and paid about three times what we would have paid for the buffet.

Not one to let a sleeping dog lie, I again tried to prove my point about the cheaper meal as we walked past the buffet entrance on our way back to the room. Once in the room, Stephen checked the buffet menu assuming it was crappy and he would be able to quite me. Unfortunately for him, the buffet offered fresh rolled sushi, stone oven pizza, and some other tasty item that escapes me. He was instantly regretful and disappointed, which is the point of this silly story. I won. Again.

Since we hadn't made use of the buffet coupon the night before there was no sense in using the breakfast coupon and we ate breakfast at IHOP the next morning. You might be surprised to learn this, but IHOP does not serve quality food. However, they do have four different varieties of sticky syrup to chose from.



After a quick stop at an outlet mall and a quick argument about the worthlessness of outlet malls and shopping in general, we arrived at Grandma Pat's house around 2 in the afternoon. That evening we dined in the upscale community dinning hall. The dinning hall has a strict dress code and Stephen caused a bit of a ruckus when he showed up in jeans. It was cool, though. Grandma Pat pulls some weight and Stephen likes causing a bit of ruckus now and then.



Stephen also lifted some raspberries from the dinning hall. Waste not want not, you know.



We spent the next day in San Francisco with Stephen's good friend Scrappy and his daughter. It was an exciting day with lots of adventures and deserves its own post - sorry to keep you waiting, Scrappy. You'll have to check back in a day or two.

After returning from San Fran, we lounged around the house for a day and relaxed. Stephen prepared a gourmet dinner, even better than the food serve in the upscale dinning hall. The boys eventually went to bed and we talked with Grandma Pat way into the night. She told stories about the late Grandpa Kenny and gifted to us a few prized possessions.



We left early the next day and drove through four states in one day making it back home to Boise in ten hours. It had been close to four years since I had last seen Grandma Pat or made a trip to Fairfield. Hopefully not as much times between our next visit.