First Cabin Trip of the Year

Unfortunately...two thumbs down for our first cabin trip of the year! I guess it wasn't that bad, but it definitely could have been better.

We arrived around 8 pm Friday night after an uneventful drive, and had a pretty good time that night letting the kids mess around, eating s'mores, etc. Bryant & Summer were there too with their kids so their was a lot of kid chaos. It must have been around 11 pm by the time we got most kids settled down. Then the adults played Manila (one of our favorite games) until almost 1:00 a.m. Bad idea - although the game was really fun I had no intentions of staying up that late and I am still trying to recover! I slept horribly - maybe got four hours tops - and can I just say how grateful I am for my nice big, comfy bed at home! Being 9 months pregnant is not the right time to be on an old, hard mattress! We were all up by 6:00 a.m. (way too early). I started a fire, started breakfast, and started contractions! Still not the real thing thank goodness, but definitely painful.

I was bummed the water (plumbing) wasn't working - it's never quite the same there when you have to trek out to the outhouse (again...9 months pregnant = lots of potty trips). And with lots of kids to clean up after running water would have been nice. I sound spoiled, I know. I can rough it - I've done tent camping my whole life - but that's one bonus about the cabin is it's not supposed to be roughing it! I was hoping for this to be a nice little get-away before the baby is born. Anyway, it was cold outside so the kids crafted with popsicle sticks all morning, then around 11:00 we headed over to Potter's Ponds to go fishing. The weather looked threatening but we were hoping it would hold out for a few hours. Wrong again! It started sprinkling as we were setting up poles, started really raining for the first cast or two, and then it started hailing! Needless to say we didn't stick it out, and got back to the van with pants and shoes all wet and caked with mud. Yuck. Poor Ammon was so sad - he really wanted to fish and didn't want to give up that fishing pole!

We made it back to the cabin and started lunch, and snow started lightly falling. I've never seen a snow storm at the cabin and it was beautiful - but it also made us nervous. Mark said, "I have a feeling we need to get out of here, now!" So we threw together all our stuff, took our lunch to the car, did a rush clean-up job, and headed out as quick as we could. The snowfall was getting heavier. We made it down the dirt road fine (thank goodness) but the main road was starting to accumulate snow. We drove white-knuckled all along skyline drive with about four inches of snow on the roads and almost a white-out storm. It was so scary. We saw a truck that had rolled & the cab was all smashed in. Luckily the kids seemed to sense what was going on and they were all super quiet and most fell asleep. It seemed like an eternity before we made it low enough that the snow turned to rain and we could breathe easy. It is really scary to travel like that feeling so helpless and with such precious cargo - praying is about all you can do.

Then while continuing home between Fairview and Thistle we noticed they had resurfaced the road. They must have sprayed tar and laid gravel - a crazy idea for a freeway - and thanks to that we got three major rock chips in our windshield. So frustrating. Every time we would pass a car going the opposite direction rocks were flying at us and there was nothing we could do! AND a van covered in tar splatters.

So, the overall feeling after this trip was frustration and exhaustion. We had to come home about six hours earlier than we wanted to, the bad weather spoiled any outdoor fun we might have had (and kept all the kids trapped in the cabin...boo) and left us with a lot of muddy mess & chipped windshield to worry about. Way more work than play. Not a vacation at all. Of course for the kids, being with their cousins was fun, being at the cabin was fun, being in the mud was fun, staying up late was fun, and washing the car when we got home was fun. So I guess from their perspective the trip was a success. I guess that's what's important in the big picture...but Mommy is sure tired!