i look at other families and wonder how they seem to have it all together?  i feel that we are always, somehow, out of sync as a family.  we chose a to take a brief vacation while having our long awaited back splash installed in our kitchen and carpeting in our basement.   the place we decided on was my idea.  it was an inn + winery in eastern washington.  i heard friends rave about this place and remembered they had yurts so thought i’d check into it.  the location, the heat, the pool, and location seemed ideal for a brief family get-a-way.  i proposed the idea and SOLD, we made the plan to go.

it seemed like the best of all worlds; great activities for the family and a little wine tasting and relaxation for my hubby and me.  what i didn’t realize was the inn was in the middle of nowhere.  now with 2 young kids it is important to have plenty of snacks and activities for them to enjoy.  i assumed if we needed we could just run to the grocery store and pick up what we needed.  i had no idea that the nearest town was almost a 30 minute drive away and the grocery stores were not quite what we were used to.  oh no!  the inn had a restaurant but it was fine dining.  not the place to take kids and relax.  ooops!  we didn’t do our research well.

extra activities outside of the hotel were not quite what we imagined but we had fun anyhow.  we explored a petrified forest, played in the awesome hotel pool, saw some dinosaurs, more play in the hotel pool, found a quirky little town on the columbia river that had a nice sand bar for the kids to play, make sand castles and to just have fun and more play in the hotel pool.  when the trip ended the kids were sad.  aaah, success.  funny, the kids had no idea of the challenges we had.