Monday, December 13, 2010

Great Big Bear Weekend

Soon... hopefully... there will be pictures of the last two CSA boxes... though realistically, that will be after we get our next one Wednesday. I would load them up now... but my camera is downstairs and I don't really want to get it!

I wanted to say that I just enjoyed a fabulous weekend in Big Bear with Blake's family. I truly love my in-laws, and Graeme's girlfriend is so fun and easy to hang out with. Every trip to Big Bear is unique and fun in its own way, but this was an especially good one.

First off, Blake and I both took the day off on Friday so that we didn't have to deal with traffic. This was already a great start. We made it up the mountain in about two hours, and then had the afternoon up there relaxing.

We played some horseshoes, but quickly discovered that neither of us are really that good at it! Apparently, according to the official rules you are supposed to play to 40... after about a half an hour of playing, and we were around 3 points each (though, discovered later that we were harder on ourselves than we were supposed to and both could have moved up about 10 feet), we decided that there was no way we could play to 40 lol! We decided to play till someone got 5 points instead. Blake did eventually beat me, but it was close... and I was rooting for anyone to win at that point (45 minutes of play time or so).

We watched a movie inside, and we played some Wii. When everyone showed up (Graeme and Jami (brother in law and his girlfriend) and Lori and Kris (mother and father in law)) we had a great time just sitting around and catching up.

The next morning was a glorious lazy one where we started being productive around 10 (just drinking coffee/ having breakfast, chatting and dealing with the dogs before then). In this case, being productive meant getting the Dicken's houses that Lori and Kris have been collecting for years out of their boxes and somewhat set up on the table. Every year, part of the kid's weekend is picking out the newest addition to the collection and setting up the new arrangement of the town. As a side note, I love that its not written down and predetermined where everything goes, but instead is a new unique layout of the town every year, including the new one, not just sticking it in anywhere.

Around noon, Lori took us girls out for a surprise excursion, while the boys stayed behind and played horseshoes. The surprise turned out to be a spa day! We started with massages (which I had never had before, and spent about half of the massage wondering why in the world I hadn't!) and manicures for Jami and I, and a pedicure for Lori. The mani/pedis included lots of just fun bonding time (and I am shocked... but my nails are still intact! From Saturday! That never happens!).

We headed back, picked up the boys, and went to town to choose our new Dicken's house (for those curious souls, we ended up choosing a stable this year). We had lunch (dinner? it was about 3) in town, and then headed back to the cabin.

There was another bit of segregation here as the boys focused on the Dicken's village, and the girls focused on getting the Christmas tree lighted. (It is a really awkward shaped tree this year... partially caused by Lori and Kris' tradition (though it doesn't happen every year) to get a live, still in pot tree, that gets planted in the yard after Christmas. This sometimes results in less than picture perfect tree, but is still awesome that it doesn't have to die for the holiday).

Once the boys finished, they came and joined us and helped finish decorating. There was another productive lull here, where Lori and Blake took the dogs for a walk. When they returned, we had another surprise (kinda random though) kazoos!

Lori had bought us each a kazoo, and we spent the next chunk of time trying to play along with the Christmas songs we were listening to as a group. At the time we thought we sounded pretty good... but the recordings tell a different tale lol! I discovered that playing a kazoo is really just humming with something that distorts your sound... but it was still fun, and a lot of our attempt was spent laughing.

We watched Scrooged after that (another tradition to watch a Christmas movie during kid's weekend) and then finished off the night with some Wii games with Jami and Graeme.

Sunday was a bit of a lazy start, but was mainly cleaning up and getting ready to go.

The funny thing is that as I type it, it really doesn't seem like that much stuff... or anything super impressive, or things that people would look at and say, "Wow! You did that!" But it was really a great weekend. I think the biggest thing that drives weekends like this is the dynamic of the group, and this dynamic was perfect. Better for me than the last couple of kid's weekends simply because of the gender mix-up of the group. In the years that Graeme isn't dating anyone, he brings a guy friend. Then there are four guys to two girls, and I feel like they tend to overpower the weekend. Having it even means that we can split up and do things that we each find fun instead of Lori and I just doing what the majority wanted to do.

The other big dynamic thing is that it was small and intimate. We are going up there again for Christmas, and although I love everyone who will be there, somehow just adding a few more people can change the feel of the weekend drastically.

The one and only downside is that taking Friday off and having the weekend in the mountains made me feel really disorganized at work today, and I am very eager for the two week break that begins at the end of this week!

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