A Little 'Dacation' From it All

As luck would have it, my favorite aunt decided not to use her timeshare condo in the Shenandoah Mountains this weekend so we snatched it up for a one-night getaway. Woo hoo, thanks! All our kids knew was that we were going on vacation (or as Anna says 'dacation') to the mountains. We had no expectations and no plans other than to just do whatever and relax.

I wasn't sure how possible that would be with an almost-four and two-year old. But I think both husband and I were pleasantly surprised. To start off, I should tell you the weather yesterday was horrible--cold and rainy. But the condo, complete with a loft seemed to amuse the kids for most of the time. Between hide and seek, hanging from the steps, playing "bedtime" in one of the three beds, and flying paper airplanes from the loft, we were able to occupy almost an entire day inside. If that's not cool enough, we were able to actually read while they did this!

Then when the fun ran out on this, we let them . . . watch TV. And as you know, we don't have TV in our house (only a DVD player) for many reasons. Mainly, because of the crap on TV and my inability to harbor any self control. Seriously, I would be a total couch potato, as my children witnessed this weekend, if we had TV/cable hook up in our house. So they enjoyed the luxury of channel surfing with mom, yet quite confused why we couldn't "skip to the good part." How sad when I had to explain that we had to watch the commercials.

Then on the way home, we stopped at the Skyline Caverns. I wasn't sure how the kids would enjoy this--I think we were more impressed than they were--but they were troopers to walk through the hour-long tour of stalactites and stalagmites with mom and dad oohing and aahing. Alex and Anna just looked for bats and made spooking scary cave noises.

All in all, we discovered a little time away from the phone, computer, chores and errands was good for all four of us. We were equally pleased to discover our kids are now a little better about traveling, since Anna is sans crib and diapers.