Thursday, February 14, 2013

Snow Trip 2013

Last weekend we took our first real family vacation and went up to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend. Claire did great on the drive. We stopped once in Sacramento to let her run around at Grandma's for a bit and then grabbed some lunch in Placerville. She would have been fine with only one break, but we needed food anyways so we thought we'd let her have another stop. The grown ups got to enjoy The Game of Thrones audio book and Claire got to enjoy lots of peaceful nap time.


We stayed in a one bedroom at the Tahoe Beach and Ski Club which is located right on the beach in South Lake Tahoe. The room was pretty nice and the resort had a fun rec room downstairs. One thing that was great about the rec room was that it had an area for little kids to play with lots of bins of toys. I'm not sure how much that stuff gets cleaned, but Claire had fun exploring her area while we got in a few games of pool. The resort also had a hot tub that sits right on the edge of the beach, but Claire is a bit young for hot tubs so we didn't get a chance to check that out. This would be a great place for us to come back to in the summer when she can splash in the lake. We did make it down for a rather chilly walk along the lake where Claire was excited to meet some of the friendliest ducks I've ever seen.





Although Claire was teething and had a cold during our trip she did her best to be a trooper. None of us got much sleep at night thanks to that tooth, but its not like we had huge plans that required lots of energy for this trip, and she did pretty well at all the restaurants we took her to. We did a lake cruise that took off from the resort area next to ours, and while we ate some amazing bowls of clam chowder and enjoyed the views, Baby Claire enjoyed snoozing to the white noise of the boat engines.






The final day we went up to the snow, and although Claire's cold was getting much better, she was totally unimpressed. We thought she'd like sledding, but she just tolerated it. It was like she knew we wanted this to be a cool moment and she didn't want to ruin it by being grumpy. We only stayed at Adventure Mountain (which I would highly recommend if you have kids or just like sledding) for about an hour before we decided to give it up and head back down the mountain. I must say though that we succeeded in keeping her dry and warm during her snow experience so at least that's something. We spent the rest of the day in South Lake Tahoe and wandered around the Heavenly resort area which looks a lot like The Grand Californian.




Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Claire's First Year Video

I just realized I forgot to post this on here for any of the folks who weren't able to make it Claire's party, or who just need a little cuteness pick me up during their day. The first song is actually a David Bowie cover of his song Kooks. I don't know that I've ever loved a Bowie song outside of his little drummer boy duet with Bing Crosby, but the line "but if you stay with us you're gonna be pretty kooky too" just made it the perfect fit. Poor Claire,you are doomed to being a bit of a kook with parents like us, but don't worry, it's more fun to be a kook.