One Year Older

Chloe celebrated another birthday this April, her tenth one.



She loves hotels. Not so much traveling, but just staying in hotels. The pool, staying up late watching TV, sleeping in the same room with mom and dad. In fact she has a "favorite" hotel, not more than a few miles from our home. It's the hotel we stayed in when we came for Jason & Shalee's wedding shortly before we moved to Utah. Who knew back then that we'd be living so close to it one day? So, the fact that we drive by it so frequently I'm sure is one reason she is so attached to it. Since we're not buying gifts this year I tried to think of a way to make her day special for her. I thought of staying in this hotel for a night, but when I checked the rates they had skyrocketed over what we paid 5 years ago. Then last minute, late Sunday night I got on Priceline and put in a low bid and actually got it! For less than I paid 5 years ago.

Now the trick was deciding how to tell her we were going. I grabbed swimming suits and pajamas and threw them in a bag (but like Brandon said, if we forgot anything we could just drive home and get it!) After Brandon got home from work I threw everything in his trunk, then asked him to back his car out of the garage so I could get the recycling bin taken out to the curb. This is pretty routine, so she had no clue anything was going on. And of course the girls like to go for a ride in the car, all the way out into the driveway, so that wasn't hard to get them in the car. So while I was dragging the bin out to the curb Brandon rolls down the window and asks if I want to go for a drive. That got the girls really excited! There's just something about driving around with no destination (if only it didn't waste gas and ruin the environment!) Chloe commented on how she loves to go for drives, only she wished it was dark. Sorry, I didn't make that part come true. So, we head down to the hotel. You have to cross this pretty busy street (4 lanes) to get to it -- unless you take the interstate. As we were trying to cross the street a car going way too fast came out of nowhere and almost hit us. It was pretty scary, but we made it across the street and now pulling into the hotel parking lot didn't seem so strange. It was just the quickest place to go to get out of the traffic. We were a little shaken up, and one of us asked, "Where should we go now?" Of course, Chloe didn't let us down -- "The hotel!" So we said, "ok" and parked the car. Well, that freaked both girls out. I don't think they actually expected us to go in. As we were walking in Sophie's telling me, "You better pay for this. It's not my fault!" I guess she was worried we would charge them for their suggestion. It was fun watching them, not sure if they should take us seriously. And then Chloe heard me tell the guy at the desk that I had reservations and she figured it all out. Now she knew it was planned.

We had a great time at the hotel. We enjoyed the pool. And the hot tub. Had warm showers before bed. The girls fell asleep watching TV. In the morning we ate breakfast at the hotel, then went swimming again. Then we headed home and it didn't take us forever to unpack, nor did I feel exhausted from a long vacation. It was a perfect get-away!

Brandon had taken Tuesday off work for Chloe's birthday, so he was able to hang out with us all day. We spent the afternoon making Chloe's cake (double layer carrot cake). She really wanted it to look like one in a book she has, but it came nowhere close. We had a lot of issues with it, but she had a cake! For dinner she chose to go to California Pizza Kitchen...



Where she ordered mac and cheese!



Then after dinner we went bowling. That had been her request for her birthday, before she knew anything about the hotel. We were fortunate that her birthday fell on $2 Tuesday!



After bowling we came home and had cake and root beer floats. All that sugar made us all sick! I don't drink root beer floats (never liked them), and the cake was so sweet I only had about 2 bites. It was nice to hear Chloe say she could feel how it doesn't make her feel good. Now if we could just remember that!