the great escape

I know you were dying to know why we ditched our kids at Grandma’s for a few days.  Well, Patrick and I decided to take a quick trip up to Vail for some one-on-one time.  The last time we did that was 4 1/2 years ago when we went to Montreal after Patrick graduated from business school.  So, yeah. . . it was long overdue.  But going to Vail in the winter when I hate the cold and don’t even like skiing?  That shows you just how much I wanted to get away—I didn’t even care where we went!

Here was what the drive up looked like:

We checked in to our ENORMOUS condo and then went to find something to do.  We knew there were some movie theatres nearby and so we thought we’d go see the new Harry Potter.  Little did we know how much this night was going to set us back. . .

The movie started at 7:00 and since we didn’t know our way around the town, we thought we’d better leave ourselves plenty of time to find something to eat so we wouldn’t be late to the show.  First, we had to find a place to park.  After driving around for awhile, we realized there was NOWHERE to park other than parking garages.  The cost of the parking garage?  $22

We wandered around in the frozen tundra of Vail Village trying to find a place that looked good and wasn’t going to charge us an arm and a leg.  Unsuccessful.  We finally found a place that looked good and was only going to charge us an arm.  Neither of us was very hungry at this point, but we knew we’d be starving if we waited till after the 2 1/2 hour movie to eat, so we decided to order one appetizer and one entrée and split them both.  The cost of dinner?  $50

Then we arrived at the movie.  It was a theatre with assigned seats and the only two seats that were close together were two seats that had a large space in between them so that a wheelchair could fit there.  It was the best option, so we took ‘em.  If we both stuck our arms out, we could barely grab fingers.  The movie was great and action-packed, but Patrick was exhausted from all the late nights at work and kept dozing off and snoring.  Normally when he does that during a movie, I can just give him a good nudge to wake him up, but since we were sitting so far apart, I decided the most subtle choice would be to snap really loud.  It was usually effective after a few good snaps!  The cost of the movie?  $30

That’s right.  We spent OVER ONE HUNDRED SMACKEROOS for a very light dinner and a movie.  And we thought it would be less expensive than our usual date nights since we didn’t have to pay a babysitter!  Vail ain’t cheap, folks.

The next day, we did a little shopping for Thanksgiving’s bingo prizes at a snazzy Walmart nestled in the Rockies and then found a yummy local pizza joint for lunch.

And after the budget-busting night we’d just had, we decided to get a Redbox movie and order take-out the next night!

We woke up to a little snowstorm on Wednesday morning when we had to drive home:

This was the drive back (the storm makes it look like nighttime, but it’s actually 10:30 am):

But thankfully I had a great driver to get us safely back to our girls and our house so we could host Thanksgiving the next day!

In spite of the cold and snow, it was a fabulous little getaway.  I really loved being able to sleep in, relax in front of the fireplace, go out whenever we wanted to, go to the gym together (something we’ve had to do separately for years), not feel like we had any sort of schedule to keep, and have Patrick mostly to myself (he did have a few conference calls he had to get on)!  We also got to try a new gadget that was in the condo’s bathroom—a toilet seat with a built-in bidet and dryer!  I was a little nervous to check it out, but since I wasn’t sure when this opportunity would present itself again, I took the plunge.  My opinion?  Sounds weird, but don’t knock it till you try it!

And speaking of bathrooms—we got home just in time to watch the glass being installed in our new shower!  The girls didn’t want to stop playing in it. . . okay—neither did I!

Sorry, you’ll have to wait till it’s done to REALLY see what it looks like!