Vacation in Park CIty

We decided back in January that it was high time we took our first family vacation. We'd never gone anywhere with the kids except to visit family. We thought about going to Georgia to stay with my brother and his family, but tickets were just too much. Then we thought about San Diego but decided that we weren't brave enough to drive that far with two little ones. We figured Park City might be a good option because it was close by but still up in the mountains and away from home. We looked up deals at Marriott's MountainSide where Dan and I had stayed for our five year anniversary. We've always wanted to go back with the kids because we knew they'd love it. Luckily enough, they were having a killer deal so we were able to get an amazing 2 bedroom villa and even talked my oldest sister into coming along to play and help out!

Monday morning, the day we were scheduled to leave, Matty woke up with a fever. I was foolish enough to think the night before, "Wow! Our trip's tomorrow and somehow we've managed to keep everyone healthy for over a month now!" How stupid of me to jinx us like that! His only other symptom was a terrible headache, so we just kept giving him Motrin and hoped he'd be okay. His fever came off and on over the days we were there, but was always the worst in the middle of the night. We still managed to have some fun, though, even with a kid slightly more crabby than usual.

When we first arrived, Matty really didn't understand why we were there. Like I said, he'd never been on a vacation just for vacations sake, so he didn't really get it. He just wanted to go home. By the time we were ready to leave a few days later though, he kept asking to stay longer. :)

We took Matty on the Alpine Slide, which he LOVED! We also enjoyed swimming, ping pong, playing pool, life size chess, craft time, barbecuing by the pool, watching movies, eating candy apples, and just relaxing. Having the kids with us DEFINITELY made it a little harder to really relax, but we're still glad we got to have them there. (However, it will be awhile before we do that again.)

My sister has some pictures of us from the slide that I haven't gotten from her yet, but here are a few highlights of the rest of our trip:

View of our hotel pool as we
passed by on the chair lift

Sexy!

Gorgeous trees on the way up to the slide
View from the lift
(Our hotel is the one closest in the foreground.
Great location!)
Some serious ping pong

Aunt Dawn tried to teach him the rules.

A little grub by the pool

Goofing around

"Why play in the pool when there's
a perfectly good puddle right here!?"

Soon after getting in the pool in the above picture, we were told they needed to shut it down and clean it. The problem seemed to be in the kiddie end. We got out quickly of course. :)

We decided to move the party up to our room in
our giant tub and enjoyed a little family swim there.
Why waste all that effort of getting everyone in their swimsuits?

On one of our nightly strolls to get the best candy apples

A few other things went wrong that definitely put a damper on the trip, but we still had fun.

I'm sure we'll go to MountainSide again someday. We really love it there!