Spring Break 2022 - Day 2 - Resort Day

Waking up in the resort was so nice.  I love camping, but when the sun is shining on your at 6:30 AM its a little hard to sleep in. We didn't have that problem on this trip. 

I think we were all out of bed around 8:00, but time was a little fuzzy on this trip.  Our phones were giving us time in Pacific Time.  But the clock in our car and Derrick's watch were both still set to Mountain Time.  Derrick LOVES to give updates on what time it is so he was constantly telling me things like, "Mom it's 9:32." And I'd have to convert that to mean "8:32."  Also the clocks in the apartment hadn't been change to Daylight Saving Time so they were an hour behind. I'd read a clock that said 7:32 and have to convert that to 8:32.  So yeah, there were a lot of different times to keep track of. 

Here's Veronica looking out the porch in the morning. 

Brandon went to the store and picked up groceries for our meals for the day. When he came back he made breakfast burritos.  The apartment came with pots and pans and lots of dishes so it was easy to cook everything. 

Our original plan for this day had been to drive back an hour north of Las Vegas to Valley of Fire State Park. But after all the driving we'd done the day before we realized that NO ONE wanted to get back into the car.  Instead I said, "We drove all this way and spent all this money for this resort. We might as well stay here and enjoy it."

So after breakfast we cleaned up we went over to the resorts game room. Brandon taught the kids how to play pool. Charlotte and Lydia showed off their MAD foosball skills that they honed when they were in daycare. 

Derrick and I went for a little walk to see the exercise room.  He'd seen a picture of it when we were looking up pictures of the resort, and so he really wanted to see it in real life.  He had fun trying out the elliptical and a treadmill. 

Then we went back to the game room and hung out on the couch for a little bit. 

Here's Lydia playing pool. 

We went back to our apartment and everyone changed into swimming suits. The kids and I swam in the water, but Brandon said the most relaxing thing for him would be to sit on the side and write on his computer.  So that's what he did.  

After an hour or so I dried off and went to the apartment to get the food for lunch.  I brought it down to the pool and then picked up BBQ tools from the front office.  Lydia helped me get the BBQ grill going and we cooked hot dogs. 

It was so much fun to cook the hot dogs right by the pool. I kept wondering what we'd be doing if we'd stayed in Twin Falls.  Certainly not this. 

I called to everyone to get out of the water so we could have lunch.  Here's everyone enjoying lunch. 

Then it was back into the water for more fun.

There'd been other family's at the pool throughout the morning.  But for a while we were the only ones at the pool.  Brandon and I both got in the water and played with the kids. 

We played Sharks and Minnows, Captain Potato Chip, and Marco Polo. This was one of my favorite parts of the whole vacation. 

I think in total we were at the pool for 3 hours, but it also could have been 4. The kids could have probably spent another 2 hours at the pool, but I wanted us all to have some down time before our adventures that evening.  So we left the pool and went back to the apartment. Brandon went to take a nap in the bedroom.  The kids all started out watching TV in separate rooms. 

Derrick and Veronica couldn't agree on what to watch.  So I suggested they watch Sabrina. Charlotte and Lydia came out too and all four of them watched the last several episodes of Season 1. I took a short nap and then started making dinner. 

Brandon had bought everything for taco salad so I took care of getting that ready.  When he woke up he was so surprised that I'd made dinner.  I was like, "you've been making every meal and picking up the slack for me for weeks while I've been in my awful class. The least I can do is help out with meals on your vacation."

We had dinner on the patio because we could. 

After dinner we headed to the Las Vegas strip. 

Brandon and I took the kids to the strip in December of 2013. We'd driven from Texas to Utah for Christmas and were going to Arizona to visit Brandon's brother before going back to Texas. We stopped in Las Vegas for the night on our trip between Utah and Arizona. 

On that trip we'd taken the kids to the Strip to see the Fountains at the Bellagio and the Mirage Volcano. Veronica had been 3 months old and was strapped to my chest.  Derrick was not even 2 and had been in the umbrella stroller. Charlotte and Lydia were a little over 3 and had held onto both my hands. 

That trip to the strip had felt slightly on the mis-guided side, but had actually worked out really well. So I wasn't worried about taking the kids, now aged 11, 11, almost 10, and 8 onto the strip. Also I'd heard that the card flippers weren't as prevalent as in the past. I'd even talked to another mom at the pool who had taken her kids to Fremont Street and she said it was fine.  That was very surprising to hear so I was kind of curious to see the strip. 

Our resort was about 2 miles west of the Luxor. (That's the casino shaped like a pyramid.)  Brandon said it was really weird to see a Pyramid in his rear view mirror when he drove to buy groceries that morning. Brandon had no interest in driving near or on the strip so we decided to just drive over to the parking lot for the Luxor and walk north from there. 

This set us up for a super long walk on the strip, but walking the strip was basically the only "Vegas" thing we had planned for this trip.  So I was just fine with a long walk.  Plus the kids have been on plenty of long hikes in the past. This would be like a long, flat hike with LOTS of interesting scenery along the way. 

Our goal for the night was to make it to the Mirage for one of the hourly volcano shows. This was over 2.5 miles away. 

The kids started out with lots of enthusiasm.  They were so excited to walk through the Luxor. It's also pyramid shaped inside the casino so that was cool to the kids. 

We left the Luxor and the kids were walking super quick.  We had to keep passing people because the kids had so much energy. 

From the Luxor we walked to the Excalibur.  The first time I went to Vegas was in high school on the trip to Disneyland with the band/orchestra/choir. Our busses had dropped us off at the Excalibur and then we'd basically been turned loose on the strip.  So in my mind the Excalibur is the proper beginning place to explore the strip. 

We had to walk through the casino floor to get from the side entrance to the front door so the kids got to see slot machines for the first time. They were like, "what's all this?"

From Excalibur we walked on a pedestrian bridge to New York New York.  This is when things started to get really busy. Most of the kids were a little overwhelmed.  Charlotte kept saying, "I'm not a big city girl. I'm just from Idaho."  Lydia was observing a lot, but not saying much. Veronica wanted to stay close to me.  And Derrick.  Well Derrick was in one of his chipper, social moods. I think his daily life is so chaotic in his brain anyway that Las Vegas didn't really affect him in any different way.  He LOVED looking at everything.  He said hi to so many people - including the half naked show girls. And he was always excited to see the next cool building. 

We knew we'd be walking down the west side of the strip later in the night so we decided to cross to the east side and work our way up that side first.  So here's us looking directly west at New York New York.  

We went inside M&M world which ended up being kind of disappointing to the kids.  Veronica later told me that she'd expected there to be at least a play ground.  One of the other kids said they'd wished that M&Ms had been shot out of a cannon for everyone to grab. But we did get this picture. 

Here's the famous wall of M&Ms. We didn't buy anything because well there's nothing super special about these M&M's that makes them worth $8 for a little bag. 

There were two memorable things about our visit to M&M world.  

1. The escalator up to the 4th floor stopped working while we were riding  on it.  That wasn't a big deal because we walked up the rest of the way, but while we were getting a penny from the penny presser machine upstairs a guy came to fix the escalator.  He took the cover off the top and then FELL into the big open space.  He landed hard on his leg. He acted like it didn't hurt and hurried to push the reset button that would get the escalator running again.  I was like, "umm did we just witness a safety violation.  Do I need to fill out paperwork?" Brandon later said he was 1 second away from pulling the guy out of the machinery if it started up again. The kids were all like, "What????"  So yeah, no of us will forget that trip to M&M world. 

2. The other memorable thing was the elevator ride down.  These little country kids thought a 4 story glass elevator was so fun. They even rode it twice.

The east side of the strip from M&M world up to the Venician isn't the most fancy part of town.  It's not exactly a rough area, but it wasn't fancy.  It's the only section where we saw card flippers, but they left us alone because we had kids with us. 

I didn't take a lot of pictures because I was busy encouraging the kids who were gradually losing energy.  But here's a random picture I took as the evening got darker.  

We FINALLY made it to the Venetian and went inside so the kids could see the Grande Canal Shops. 

We were all pretty happy when we found a few benches.  We'd walked 2 and half miles and all of us had very sore feet. 

We walked around the canal a little bit and then went to find a bathroom. 

At this point it was 7:46. The Mirage Volcano which was across Las Vegas Boulevard was scheduled to erupt at 8:00. This was one of the main things we'd come to Vegas to see, but we weren't sure where we should view it from.  There was a pretty good spot from a balcony at the Venetian that could work.  But if we hurried we could probably be across the street in time. 

We decided to make a run for it over to the Mirage.  All six of us took off on a quick walk to a sky bridge that would take us across Las Vegas Boulevard.  Then we rode an elevator down to street level.  And finally we rushed the half block back to the front of the Volcano at the Mirage.  We'd MADE it.  

I took a video of the volcano erupting, but there are much better versions on Youtube. Here's one.  

The video doe NOT show you how hot the flames were.  Even though we were standing away from the fence we could feel the heat from the flames. Derrick thought the volcano was amazing and was completely mesmerized. He thought it was a little loud, but he kept watching it.

Charlotte and Lydia thought it was cool too.  They vaguely remembered it from when they were three. 

Veronica was completely scared. She's been telling us that the flames hurt her sunburn. But I think she was really scared of the volcano.  I'm not sure I'd been very clear that this was a fake volcano.   Veronica was crying during the eruption and Brandon had to hold her to keep her calm. 

I love this picture of how happy Brandon is watching the volcano.

Aside from Veronica's freak out most of us were rejuvenated by watching the Volcano eruption.  Also we were excited that now we were on the way back to the car. 

We started the walk down to the Bellagio. We made it there at 8:26 and watched the 8:30 show from the far north section of the pool.  The music was the vocal part of the "Good the Bad and the Ugly" theme. The kids loved it. 

When that show ended we found a little viewing area near the middle and settled in to wait 15 minutes for the next show. 

Here we are waiting.  You can see Veronica was still having a hard time. 

Brandon took this picture of me and the kids while we were waiting. 

The next show started at 8:45. This time it was set to Your Song by Elton John.   We loved watching it. 

Let's pause and talk about how much I love this fountain. The first time I saw it was when I was 15 years old. I had no idea it was in Vegas until my friends and I walked by it on that choir/band/orchestra trip. I was mesmerized by it. The next time I saw it was when I was 24 when Brandon and I went to Vegas on our second anniversary trip. The next time was when I was 28 on that trip with the kids. And this was the 4th time. Because I've seen it so few times it's something of a touchstone for me every time I see it.  Viewing the fountain is a way to remember who I was at each of the ages when I saw it. 

It was special to bring the kids so they could have an experience with the fountain. 

When the show ended we decided we might as well stay for one more show. Veronica was completely exhausted and my feet were super sore so we decided to forget about how dirty it might be and just sit on the ground.  Here's Veronica snuggled up on me. 

This was our view. 

When the 9:00 show started I decided to just enjoy the show and not worry about taking videos or pictures. I'm glad I did that because the show the best yet.  The shows on the hour must be the best. The music was "I'm Proud to be an American."  The show was amazing. I always love the parts where the water gets shot up in the air and you can hear the roar of the water cannons.  Seriously, this fountain is like a religious experience for me.  

When it was over we were all happy that we'd stayed for that show.  Then we started walking back to the car. Veronica was in a better mood and that was a good thing because we still had at least a half hour walk to make it back to the car. 

There were several people dressed up like movie characters walking around taking money for pictures.  Derrick had been saying hi to ever single one of them.  Somebody dressed like the clown from It walked by and said, "Hey There!" to Veronica.  It scared Veronica and for a second I worried that would be the end of Veronica making it through the night, but she just laughed it off. Thank goodness. 

As we walked away from the fountain the song, "Don't Stop Me Now" from Queen was playing on over the speakers.  It was so fun to hear that up beat song playing.

Veronica wasn't super sad anymore, but she was tired.  The whole way back to the car she was complaining about her feet and her legs.  When I pointed out the Cosmopolitan Building next the Bellagio and told the kids, "That's where we parked when we came here when you were babies."  She said, "WHY didn't we park there this time?" 

We stopped for a little bit at this cool water fountain on the North side of New York New York.  Veronica was so tired she didn't even want to walk over to feel it.  

I was counting off the things we had to pass.  I told her.  We just have to walk past New York New York, then Excalibur, then the Luxor, then we have to walk to the parking lot behind the Luxor. You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  

There were a few fun things on the way back.  The Excalibur had a super long moving sidewalk that took us into the building.  The kids loved riding on that. 

When we were crossing the street from the Excalibur to the Luxor I told Veronica, "You're doing great!  You're going to make it! Just keep going!"  A middle aged man in front of me said, "Oh thanks that's what I needed to hear."  His wife and his friends laughed and so did I. 

We made it to the Luxor and we were quite a different group of people than we'd been 3 and a half hours earlier. The kids were walking slow.  Everyone was super tired.  We weren't in awe of the building anymore.  We just wanted to use the bathroom and then walk out to the parking lot. 

When we made it to the car I was so happy that I'd thought to stash a box of nutty bars in there before we left the apartment.  Those nutty bars were just what we needed to perk us up for the drive back.  

We'd parked in the parking lot a little before 6:00 PM. We made it back to the car a little bit before 10:00.  (11:00 mountain time.) The parking lot charged $12 for parking that was under 4 hours.  We'd missed that by about 5 minutes.  So we had to pay $15.  But it was worth it for not having to drive on the strip at all. 

We made it back to the hotel and the kids immediately changed into pajamas and got in bed.  They were so tired.  Here's Charlotte and Lydia in their bed.  They are pretending to be asleep in this picture.  But I went in there a few minutes later to grab something and they were fast asleep.

I made sure to wash everyone clothes (especially mine because I'd been the one sitting on the sidewalk.) It was so nice to have a washer and dryer in our unit. A few months ago, when we were camping in Yellowstone, doing laundry had been a major part of the trip.  This time it was barely an inconvenience. 

Brandon and I took showers and watched a little bit of TV, but we were pretty tired too so we didn't stay up too late. 

Soon we were snuggled up in our bed and sleeping too. 

Spring Break 2022 - Day One - Driving

We've been back from vacation for a week. Normally I would have started writing about our vacation right away, but I had to catch up and work AND try to get through a school course in a week. I did those things, but all week long I've been looking forward to the chance to write about our trip.  

So let's get going. 

Road trips have been a long standing tradition for me and Brandon. Over the years, we've have gone on road trips to Yellowstone, California, Southern Utah, the Texas Coastline, Kentucky and Tennessee, Northern Idaho, and Washington. 

For the past several years I've wanted to take the kids to San Diego, California for Spring Break. I was hoping that we could make that happen this year, but it didn't look like this would be the year we could do that. There were several reasons. 

1. Our car is getting old. Our Honda Pilot recently passed 250,000 miles.  It's a Honda so it's still super reliable, but a 1600+ mile round trip drive didn't feel prudent. 

2. Our kids are getting tall. The Honda has many amazing features, but the 3rd row does not have a lot of leg room.  Poor Derrick can barely fit back there.  He starts getting restless around the 3 hour mark on our drives to Utah. And it's not like I have a smaller child I can rotate back there. Everyone is the same size.  So a 24+ hour round trip drive didn't sound like something we could survive with our sanity intact. 

3. Financially it didn't make sense. Brandon has a new, good paying job, but he only started there at the beginning of February. A trip to San Diego - with all the fun things we'd want to do once we got there - didn't work with our current financial situation. 

4. Gas Prices were pretty high.  Gas prices weren't that high when I started planning the trip, but when they shot up a few weeks before our trip I was VERY happy that I we weren't going all the way to San Diego. 

Even though a road trip to San Diego couldn't happen, we could still go on a road trip for Spring Break - just someplace closer.  Brandon and I talked about places we wanted to go. We had several ideas. Places like Arches National Park, Zion National Park, or Mesa Verde. But none of those felt right.

At some point one of us tossed out the idea of going to Nevada.  The Nevada border is less than 50 miles south of our house, but we've never crossed that border as a family. We decided it was finally time to do that. 

This opened up all sorts of possibilities. I ordered a Travel Brochure from the State of Nevada and started pouring over it.  

Brandon and I decided to go all the way to Las Vegas. I wanted to be warm on this trip and Vegas was definitely a place we could be warm. To get to Vegas from Twin Falls, we would drive down Highway 93. I decided to keep our trip confined to the area around Highway 93. So we wouldn't go over to the Reno area.  We would go to Ely because  it's on highway 93 and I've had a couple things in the Ely area on my bucket list for years.

As the trip was still taking shape in my mind, I found out that the opening day of Lagoon would be the last Saturday of our Spring Break.  We'd bough season passes to Lagoon as a Christmas gift this year so it made sense to add Lagoon to the end of our road trip. 

With all this in mind I started making plans for where we would stay each night.  I went into this assuming we would camp most nights.  Most of our road trips are also camping trips. We love camping and we love how inexpensive camping is. 

But I ran into a few problems with this plan. 

1. There was nowhere to tent camp in Las Vegas.  There was a KOA near Vegas, but there weren't any tent spots.  (I guess it's just too hot in the summer so they don't make in an option the rest of the year.)

2. There was no where to tent camp in Ely. There was a KOA with tent spots, but the restrooms were being remodeled so visitors needed to have their own bathroom farcicalities. That's not a problem for people with RV's, but it was obviously a deal breaker for those of us with tents. 

3. The state parks didn't have camping reservations.   There were a few state parks that I wanted to visit that had campgrounds. But they only had first-come-first-serve spots. My travel anxiety can't handle that kind of uncertainty.  I needed a campground where knew I'd have a spot.

The lack of camping options pushed me to make a decision that I've never made before:

We would stay in a hotel every night on our vacation.

We've never done this before. We've stayed in a hotel once or twice on a road trip, but never the whole trip.  

The only time that came close was when we moved back from Alabama to Utah. We stayed in hotels that whole trip.  But we were travelling with a moving van so it was hardly a care free vacation. 

Deciding to stay in hotels would make our trip cost more, but in a way it made the trip cost less.  Because we didn't have to bring any camping gear we didn't have to put the "hat" on the top of the car.  This would save us on gas money. (Which was a better and better deal the more gas prices rose.)

Also, because we didn't need to bring all that gear we could pack lighter in general. This gave everyone a little more room in the car.  Every time I felt like our vacation was more expensive than usual I told myself, "It's cheaper than a new car." 

The best thing about staying in hotels was how much free time it gave Brandon. We work together on these trips, but Brandon takes care of the most physically taxing work.  He's the one who climbs the car to put the hat on. He shoves the heavy camping gear up there. Even the "lighter" things take up a lot of his time. He cooks all the meals - which is tricky when everything is outdoors.

He usually doesn't mind these things, but when he realized that this trip didn't involve cooking outdoors or packing the hat he said, "This feels like the first trip we take that will actually be a vacation."

Giving Brandon a real vacation seemed worth any cost. 

Okay I think that's enough back story for now.  Let's actually talk about this trip. 

We left on the trip on Monday, March 21st. We all got up around 7:00 AM and started packing the car.  Brandon had taken care of getting all the food packed and I'd taken care of getting all the clothes packed. But even these things hadn't been as much work as usual.  Since we'd be staying in cities during this whole trip we didn't have to pack ALL the food we'd need. We basically had a bunch of snack options with us. Also, every place we were staying had laundry facilities.  So everyone just packed three outfits and some pajamas for our 6 day trip. 

We had everything ready and so we locked up the house, said a prayer, and then started driving.  Our first stop was to drop off Marcia at the dog kennel.  Any time away from Marcia is a vacation for me. 

I took this picture in the parking lot of the kennel.  It was 8:30 and we were on our way. 

We got on Highway 93 and started driving south.  Normally when we go on long car rides the kids watch movies on the built in TV/DVD player.  We don't turn the movies on until we get to the "fast road" AKA the Interstate.  We'd bought the complete series of Sabrina the Teenage Witch for this trip and the kids were excited to start watching it. They asked, "when do we get to the fast road."  And I said, "Well this is actually the fastest road we'll be on for most of the day.  They couldn't believe that we'd be driving on a two lane road for most of the trip. But they were relieved when I told them we'd still watch Sabrina even though we weren't on the real fast road.  

We crossed the border into Nevada. The last time the kids were in Nevada was December of 2013 when Veronica was a baby. So none of them remember it. 

This trip wasn't very memorable at this point either.  The scenery was interesting, but a lot like Idaho.

The northern part of Nevada was also very cold. Look at all the snow on those mountains. 

We stopped for a little bit at a Pony Express monument.  But it was windy and cold so we didn't stay long. 

Brandon liked this sign. 

Our destination for the day was Las Vegas which was 8 hours away.  I figured it was best to get our long day of driving out of the way on the first day when we were all still excited.  I was also glad I'd made that plan when we stopped in Ely for lunch.  It was only about 50 degrees outside. The weather was windy.  And we'd only brought jackets on this trip.  I was glad we weren't staying overnight in Ely this day. 

Even though it was cold the kids were still excited to play on the playground at the park. They liked all these little toys.  And check out that fire engine toy in the back ground.  It's exactly like one the kids played on at their elementary school in Pocatello.  They thought that was fun. 

Here's what lunch looked like. 

We got back into the car and started driving. We had two options for how to go south.  One was to continue on Highway 93, the other was to go on highway 6 for a few miles and then south on State road 318. Since we'd come back up this way we decided to go on the 318 route today and the 93 route later in the week. 

Here's what Highway 6 looked like before we turned off it. 

This is what the inside of the car looked like. One of the nice things about the Honda is that each kid gets a window seat and space between each other. 

Here's me. 

Highway 318 was pretty long and boring. 

Here's Brandon driving.  He did such a good job. 

We went through a little canyon with some interesting rocks. 

And for a while these airplane contrails were the most interesting thing going on outside the car.

We rejoined Highway 93 and soon passed a reservoir or something. By this time the air was warmer and we were starting to pull our jackets off. 

We'd been on highways for over 8 hours so when Highway 93 met up with I-15 for the last 30 or so miles into Las Vegas it felt a little weird. 

But we all cheered when we went around a curve and could suddenly see Las Vegas. 

Things got a little dicey when one of the kids announced they needed to use the bathroom.  We were still about 25 minutes away from the place we were staying so it seemed like a good idea to get off the Interstate and find a bathroom. 

But in reality it wasn't a good idea.

The exit we chose had a construction detour - with no gas stations on the detour. So then we had to loop back around.  By the time we found a bathroom I was threatening that child with loss of water bottle privileges for every future trip in the car ever. 

Then we had to get back onto the freeway and then crawl through stop and go traffic at the city center. 

Finally we were off the Interstate and heading to the place we were staying. 

So far I've been saying we were staying in hotels on this trip. But that's not exactly the case for while we were in Vegas. 

In years past we've been able to squish our whole family into one hotel room. But we are passed those days. So when I was booking the trip I was looking for two hotel rooms that were hopefully adjoining. But two hotel rooms in Vegas was ridiculously expensive - even off the strip.  I turned my attention to finding something like an air bnb.  For some reason I decided to use the vrbo website instead of the airbnb website.  I found a cute place that throughout the planning process and most of the trip we referred to as "The Vrbo."  But in all reality it was a resort. 

A beautiful resort. 

We stayed at the Desert Paradise Resort by Diamond Resorts. It was about 2 miles away from the strip, and it was perfect. 

Here's the main building where I checked in. 

The buildings were all little condo type buildings. We were upstairs in building 15. 

As soon as we opened the door we were all in awe.  I tried to take pictures, but they do NOT capture how amazing this place was. Here's the kitchen.

The living room.

The laundry room.

This is the master bedroom with a king size bed and it's own bathroom. Charlotte and Lydia shared the other room with a queen size bed. 

Here's the master bathroom.  There was a slightly smaller bathroom off the living room.

The kitchen and living room were connected with a window and a bar. 

Here's the dinning room area.  We were all hungry for a snack so we had pudding and strawberries. 

Then the kids and I put on our swimming suits and went to find the pool.  We had to walk through this cute walkway between buildings. 

And here's the pool. (I took this picture on another day in the morning before the pool opened. It usually had people in it.)

And the hot tub. 

The kids swam for a long time. I got in with them and the water was pleasantly warm - even though it was after 5:00 and the sun was behind the buildings. I spent most of my time either in the hot tub or just sitting on a chair. 

Here's Lydia in the hot tub. 

Brandon just wanted a chance to do nothing and listen to the quiet after 8 hours of driving/listening to Sabrina. So he stayed in the hotel and rested.  After about an hour he went to Burger King and picked up dinner.  Knowing Brandon was back with food was the ONLY thing that got the kids out of the pool.  We had them change into pajamas and then we had dinner. 

After dinner we used the DVD player that was hooked up to the TV to watch our DVD copy of Oceans 11.  Brandon and I love that movie and since it is set in Las Vegas we figured this was a good time to show the kids. 

I had to explain A LOT of the movie to the kids - including the fact that this movie kind of had us rooting for the "bad guys." And the beginning was a little boring for the kids.  But by the end they all liked it.  Here they all are on the couch.  About 2 minutes after we took this picture we pulled out the couch bed and all the kids laid on it. 

The movie ended around 9:45 and everyone was very happy to go to bed.  Derrick and Veronica shared the couch bed.  Charlotte and Lydia were in the room with the queen size bed.  And Brandon and I were in the master bedroom. 

At some point that night I told Brandon.  "If this is the type of vacation we can afford without student loans or a car payment, then maybe well never buy a bigger car."