Category: Vacation

Week Activities

Last week was pretty busy around here. I thought I would just recap how it went, if I can remember.

Monday

Nothing spectacular happened today, but the moon was so amazing this morning while driving my boy to school. Check out this photo.

Moon in the sky

You can see the moon just above the sign. It doesn’t do it justice, but it was an amazing sight! Never mind the cracked windshield. It has been the last thing I want to get fixed, since it isn’t a requirement and I can still see through the windshield. Cops…Please weigh in below. 🙂

Tuesday

My boys school is always running fund raisers at certain restaurants around the valley and we try and support them when we can. Tuesday, it was at Zupas. I have big problems with this place. Zupas is always busy and you pay an insane amount of money for a salad. Am I the only one that looks for quantity over quality? Maybe that is why I’m overweight? The place was packed with parents and kids, and it took us 40 minutes to get food.

THAI STEAK With Thai Basil Vinaigrette Salad. It was super yummy. Where’s the beef? Good question.

Wednesday

I don’t get out of the house much, so it’s fun when I can get a night out with some friends. Mike, Richard, and I went out to dinner and to play some pool. We had a lot of fun catching up and driving Richard’s VW Bus. The BAD is he took out his heat exchange to improve the performance, which means there is no heat in the bus. Driving 75 on the freeway with no heat in 37 degree weather can make anyone wish they had worn a bigger coat. It was super cold, but we had a blast!

Thursday

We experienced something new today that as very interesting. Our boy doesn’t get sick much, which is a blessing! He woke up in the morning and had a bad case of diarrhea, which was heart breaking. We had to keep him home from school, which tore him up. He stayed home terrorizing the wife, Jen, and plugging the toilet, because he hasn’t learned how to use toilet paper yet. We are learning a new skill around here when it comes to TP and stuff. It’s a never ending battle. I’m not going to include any photos, but he recovered on Friday and was able to go back to school! Yahoo!

Friday

Valentines day! It’s a fun day, and it’s nice to spoil the ones you love. Going out to dinner is a joke on this night, so we have started a little tradition around here. We get the Heart Shaped Pizza from Papa Murphy’s and have a candle light dinner while we eat. Jacob loves it! We had a great night and grandma brought over a ton of candy for Jacob, so he was jacked up on sugar as usual.

The unfortunate thing is, Jen is diabetic and was having issues with her blood sugar. She was getting sick later that night, so it pretty much ended the fun. She ended up being sick into Saturday, which sucked. I think she had Diabetic ketoacidosis. It’s pretty scary and she just wants to sleep, so it’s hard to help her.

Saturday – Sunday – Monday

Jen slept all day and Jacob and I relaxed on Saturday. We had plans to go to dinner with Friends and start a little stay-cation. We couldn’t make any plans during the week, due to the illness that was going on. Jen woke up at 5pm and was feeling better, so we decided to execute the first part of the stay-cation, which was go to dinner with the friends. We had a blast at our favorite spot, Charlie Chows, and stayed there until they closed. They need a new website and If my design skills were good, I’d offer them up.

Sunday we stayed up in SLC at a hotel with a swimming pool and water slide that was pretty fun to play in. The boys had a blast swimming and hanging out for a couple days. We had a blast!

We drove home today after we finished swimming and just tried to recover! Tomorrow, Tuesday, we have to get back to reality. Jacob’s school wanted to make up a snow day today. I think it is ridiculous that you try and make up a snow day on a Holiday that families plan mini vacations around. I’m assuming it wasn’t well attended today. So sad.

Thanksgiving Weekend

One shot I took at Temple Square. The snow made it look epic!

Thanksgiving weekend is coming to a close. It is Sunday night and in 12 hours, I have to be back to work! I’m not super excited to go back. Another vacation day could come my way, and I wouldn’t care. 🙂 We had a great time. Here is how it was spent….

Wednesday, 11/27/2019, I took a vacation day to spend the day with my boy at home. We hung out in the morning and then about 1pm, he headed upstairs to play. I ended up watching a movie or two and checked on him. He would yell “Go downstairs”, so I obliged. So much for hanging out with him. Later that day, he ha a friend over and they had a bit of a tiff. We went out for desert to intervene (@ Purple Turtle) — All in all it was a great night.

Thursday, 11/28/2019, Thanksgiving was pretty crazy. We met up with Carla, Mother-in-law, and Jessica (Sister-in-law) at The Big Bear Diner. We had a great meal! They ha a modified menu, so it was pretty small. Due to my Menieres disease, I had to avoid the turkey. A big fat burger was what I had (see image). The others had the Turkey dinner. After dinner, we went to see Frozen II, which was SO good! We loved it. My boy even sat through the movie and he was super quiet! Amazing! When the movie was over, I went Black Friday shopping with a friend. We had a great time battling the crowds! It was awesome spending time with the in-laws and with my friend Bill. I even met Glen Stucki at Walmart while shopping. He is a cool guy, you should check him out! Celebrity!

Black Bear Diner Thanksgiving Dinner – Burger – It had a little problem with the meat.
Black Bear Diner Thanksgiving Dinner – Turkey

Friday, 11/29/2019, was a little unplanned. Our friends talked us into driving up to SLC to have a little stay-cation with them! We packed clothes for 1 day if we decided to stay over night. Unfortunately, when we decided to head up, a storm was moving through, so the drive up was a bit crazy! I hate driving in snow, so I was freaking out a bit! We made it though and went to a place called Dave and Busters for some food and games. We checked into a hotel and then took Trax up to Temple Square to view the lights. If you haven’t been, I’d suggest going to view the lights if you do it during Christmas. It’s a beautiful place all year around, but the lights during Christmas are pretty epic!

Saturday, 11/30/2019, We slept in until 9:30a and then decided to go swimming before we checked out of the hotel. About 11:05am, I got a text that said “KSL NEWSRADIO: NB Lanes of I-15 blocked at Lehi. First responders may need to close SB lanes as well for hazmat response. ….“. My friend had also sent an image and another warning (see image). It was insane. So 9 hours late they would re-open the freeway, but it was super crazy! We decided to just have fun instead of going back home, so we went swimming for about 5 hours. For dinner, we ate at our favorite place, Charlie Chow’s, and then went Ice Skating (our boy did, not us). We had a great time, but it was a bit of a crazy day!

Sunday, 12/1/2019, We cleaned up the basement and setup the tree and decorations. It was a pretty relaxing day! The boys schedule was all jacked up from the stay-cation. It wasn’t your typical relaxing day, because of all the cleaning we did. We had fun though. As we brought out the ornaments we were telling stories about how they came to be. When my wife showed Jacob the ornament we bought when we found out we were going to be his parents, he came over an gave us both hugs! It was pretty precious! There were many hugs after that. I’m a grinch, but that warmed my heart! It was pretty cool!

I hope you all had a great weekend! I only touched the surface of what we did. We have some great friends we spent the last 3 days with. It was awesome! I’m thankful for friends and family!

Where are you from?

Image by GardeningWOW from Pixabay

We are owners of a timeshare. Yes, I was a sucker once, or I still am, but I bought into the dream of owning points into a timeshare where I could vacation all I wanted. I could “even sell the points to family and friends to make back my dues”. It’s a bunch of crap they tried to feed us so we would buy into their property. Now it is 19 years later, and they are still trying to find ways to make you spend more money. Timeshares are a bunch of crap, but there are some cool benefits from using them and going on vacation.

Strangers are one of them. There are many opportunities in life where you can talk to complete strangers, but there is nothing better than sitting in the hot tub with complete strangers and striking up a conversation. It seems like no one is phased by you asking “so where are you from?” It is a pretty simple question. We’ve spent the last 5 days here and have met some pretty awesome people in the hot tub. We all come from completely different backgrounds. We’ve met people from all walks of life: A Plumber, A Oil Field Worker, A Single Mom with 4 kids, and Even a Marine just getting out of boot camp. It’s been pretty awesome. Some of these people you would never imagine meeting.

It’s pretty fun playing the getting to know you games with complete strangers. We usually sit in the hot tub until the security guard comes and kicks us out at 10pm. We usually say our good byes “It was nice meeting you”, “Have a great trip”. Some of them we have talked to a couple of times. We never share Facebook links or Instagram names. We may never see them again. It would be fun to keep in touch. With Facebook, you can at least see their feed and be like “Hey, I know these guys from Tuscan, Arizona.”, or “There is that crazy guy from California that likes to grow stuff in his back yard.” The 30+ minutes you spent connecting with a complete stranger was well worth it and it has meaning, to me at least. I enjoy those times.

It reminds me of a time over the summer, where we were staying in Park City, Utah. I went for a walk to check out the homes up there. Some other random stranger was taking a walk, he was a resident up there, and we crossed paths. He ended up inviting me to go for a walk with him. He had a daily route he took, so I walked it with him. He told me about his failed marriage and his crazy ex-wife. He talked about his kids and his plans to sell his house in Park City and move to some ski town in Idaho. It was pretty interesting. Real cool guy. I’ll never see him again, but it was an awesome experience.

I say take time to talk to random strangers. Get to know those around you. Everyone has a story to tell. It doesn’t take much to sit back and listen and ask questions.