"A vacation from my PROBLEMS! You bet I will!"

Last week it occurred to Nate that we were in desperate need of some kind of vacation. With limited opportunities to get time off at work he made some arrangements for us to spend the weekend away. He told me we were going, but not where, so for a couple of days before I started getting the kids excited for our "vacation". It was funny that after a couple of days of saying how excited he was to go on vacation Brad asked me, "Mom? What's a vacation?" HA! Forgot how long it'd been. He didn't even know what it was :)..... Course the last few times we've been away it was "camping" so we haven't used the term vacation in a while. Anyway. We loaded up and went to Eden, Utah to begin the Maynes Family Retreat! We stopped in Ogden to have dinner. The weather was really crappy. The pool wasn't even open the whole time we were there because of the clouds, but we didn't let that stop us from having a good time!!! Sure fishing was out, but we with a new wii, the kids were fine with hanging out in the condo the whole time! I love Trendwest places because they have the whole fully loaded kitchen, so we can just take our own food and save money that way. Plus it was a real treat for me to have a whole kitchen to cook in. Ours here is somewhat small and limited in space (we're very grateful for a kitchen though, this is not to be mistaken with complaining.... just glad to have the opportunity to use the big one for a few days). So we had really good meals. We spent some time talking about our family and what our goals are right now and how we want to do more to make it stronger. We came up with our Family Laws, and hopefully that will help a little. The kids seemed excited about them, so we will see. We all enjoyed sitting around, and being able to play to our hearts content. We had a movie night with "Up" Friday night.

here's Erika on our trip :)

Then Saturday morning we went over to the clubhouse and made parachute bracelets. It was more for the older ones, but they all LOVED their bracelets once they were all finished. We decided that they were our family friendship bracelets.

After that we went to Ogden for the Treehouse Museum! This was my first time there and I loved it! We went to a really low budget puppet show which the kids loved, then just ran around the place testing everything out for a few hours. The kids love that they can just play with whatever at these kinds of places. They made puppets, put on puppet shows, played giant chess.... we all had a good time.

Lukey loves Tic Tac Toe... I would love to make one of these for his wall....

Kelly took Noah around a lot of the time, showing him things she knows he likes. Like the babies upstairs! She was so thrilled to show him.

he's cracking the eggs :) LOL

After the Treehouse Museum we went out for ice cream then headed back to the condo. We played a little more wii, had some yummy dinner and s'mores brownies, and then another movie night "Journey to the center of the earth". The kids were SO TIRED!! After a really late night the day before and then a full day they all crashed pretty quickly! It's funny when they're so tired they can hardly stay away. Makes me laugh. We did baths that night too and it was SO fun for the kids to have a BATH! in a BATH TUB!!! It's funny how long it's been since these guys had a bath. I had to take some pictures. We do look forward to teh day when we have our own bathtub again too.... someday.....

We all got up early and got ready for church, loaded up the car and headed home.

It was such an awesome break. It's funny how much of a recharge it was.... just a few days. I'm so glad to have a husband who can see the need for something like this and pull it all together. He's really amazing that way. Hopefully we can do this again real soon.... and more often.