Mystery Trip 2013

I hope your Advent and Christmas was awesome!  I'm sorry I've been off the grid for a bit - I took a lot of time over Christmas to spend time with our kids and family!  I'm back at it and one of my new year's promises is to be more regular at posting.  For the past year, I've had time on my days off to put a few posts together and time them out to post, but we've been so busy at work lately that I haven't had days off to do that!  So sorry!  A few of you have asked where I've been --- I'm right here!  :)

Our Christmas was fantastic -- like I said, we spent lots of time with the kids and each other just being.  I LOVED IT!!!! 

This past weekend was our annual Mystery Trip.  Friday after school, I told the kids they had 30 minutes to pack their suitcases and we were leaving for lands unknown!!!  All they knew was they needed a swimming suit (truthfully we couldn't do a mystery trip without a hotel with a pool -- it might just be the most important part of the weekend!)  They also needed a couple changes of clothes, jammies, and some warm clothes. 

So off we went!  We left the house by about 4:30 (pretty good considering!) -- to only a few moans of plans that had to be changed.  I had arranged to get the girls off of work (with only one minor snafu when Becca unknowingly offered to work for someone Friday night since she was off! -- Crisis was averted -- thank goodness for small town stores who are very understanding!)

Technically, this mystery trip was a repeat -- of last year's.  But they really loved it, so we wanted to do it again.  We added one more night away -- hoping to squeeze in a movie on Friday night and switch it up a bit.....but we got distracted when my adorable, handsome little great nephew (he's 1 1/2) wanted to come swim in the pool with us).  So we ate dinner and checked into the hotel.  Made a quick switch into swimming suits (and a quick run to Meijer for the swimming suit that didn't quite make it into the luggage) for a fun night in the pool with my nephew, Greg, and his son.  (Sorry, I forgot to take pictures!).

The next morning, we got up, raided the hotel's breakfast bar (free breakfast is a necessity for this family!) and got ready for the day's adventures.  Got our winter coats and hats and boots on and headed out.  Will chose the lunch place, which was Culver's ..... fun time.  We drove about 45 minutes north of Fort Wayne to Pokagon State Park -- and saw this:

If you look through the trees -- at the very end, you see the "top" of the hill -- that's where you start.  I'm standing on a bridge almost at the end.

If you want the experience, here are a couple of videos I shot:

We spent several hours there riding on the toboggans.  The track is a quarter mile or so long and is refrigerated, so you can toboggan on sunny days!  :)  Here's information in case you would be interested in trying it out yourself:  http://www.in.gov/dnr/parklake/4699.htm  It's a pretty reasonable trip, as you only rent the toboggan in two hour blocks -- and four people can fit on one toboggan!

We spent the balance of the weekend eating, playing, swimming, and we did eventually get to see a movie:  Parental Guidance.  Loved it!  It was truly a movie the entire family could see.  I still haven't seen Les Miserables, but hope to sneak it in this weekend. 

As we sat at breakfast Sunday morning, watching the kids sit around the table and laugh and enjoy each other -- Jim and were discussing the ever-changing dynamics of our family.  Here we are with another child ready to graduate from high school in May -- heading to parts unknown at this moment in time.....each time we do a mystery trip I wonder if it will be our last with the "entire" family.....I'm so tickled for our kids to grow up and cannot wait to see who and what they become.....but the mom side of me still likes all of us to be together in our own little world......(*insert Krybaby Kaiser tears here*)........

I guess I never thought of vacations or trips like this as team building, but truly it is -- we take our kids out of their normal environment of work and school and friends and parties and whatnot -- and put them in a bubble for a weekend or a week or whatever.....forced family fun.....but it brings us all closer together (especially when I'm cheap and don't get a big enough hotel room -- it sounded good on the phone though!)......I will never forget the laughter I heard this weekend.....and the good times shared by all.

Hug your kids -- and plan some family fun time for this weekend! 

Mystery Trip

Every year, we try really hard to take our kids on a Mystery Trip.  We plan the trip, and they don't know when it is going to happen, or where they are going -- until we hop in the car (sometimes they have a hint when I have to have them help me find their bathing suits!) -- and throw them a map to guess where we are going!  Unfortunately for them, typically they will not be able to figure out where we are going.

Our first mystery trip (as many firsts in life) -- will probably always go down in infamy.  We loaded the kids up (they didn't even know I had packed suitcases for them!), and stopped at my brother's house.  When we left, we turned the "wrong way" out of his driveway to go back home.  So, we threw some maps in the backseat and had them figure out (eventually) that we were going to Columbus.  I had found some folks to meet up with over the course of the weekend -- cousins of theirs, and friends of theirs from when we lived in Columbus.  My favorite memory was when we got to the hotel, we "couldn't find the car".  I told the kids that I would ask the person at the front desk if they would give us a key to a room so that we could look out the window and find our car (all the while Jim had disappeared to drive it around to the hotel) -- they obviously didn't catch the exchange of money -- and when they saw Jim pull around, they were excited that we found the car!  LOL  After that, I told them maybe we should just spend the night in the hotel after our long day at the mall (we had gone to Easton).  THEN they worried that they didn't have jammies, and, much worse, their swimming suits to swim in the pool.  DADDY to the rescue!  He brought up their suitcases with everything included -- even the toothbrushes that they were NOT worried about!  :)  It was a super fantastic weekend that we have tried to recreate over the years.  We went to Indianapolis another time and spent the day at the Children's Museum -- which is awesome.

This year, I couldn't be quite as sneaky -- I had Sarah's college schedule to contend with.  So, when my niece, Beth, asked if we would like to go tobogganning with her husband, Greg, for his birthday, Jim and I said, "Yes!"  We planned it as a mystery trip -- although they had to pack, we just gave them clues on what to pack -- gloves, hats, warm clothes, change of clothes, and, of course, swimming suits!

We set out last Saturday morning for Angola, Indiana.  When we left, we threw the maps in the backseat, but they quickly came back.  They didn't care -- they were excited to be going somewhere!  The chatter in the car was wonderful.  They soon figured out that we were going to meet up with Greg and Beth in Fort Wayne, which is where they live.  Great, we said!  Of course, they were only half right.  So, we drove through Fort Wayne and headed north.  When we got close, Becca could stand it no more.  She finally took my phone from me and used the internet search feature to figure out what was close to where we were!  Tobogganing, she asked?  I'm not sure they all even knew what tobogganing was, even when she said it -- it's nothing we own, so, I don't know if they knew what a toboggan was!

After a quick lunch at Applebees to fill everyone up before we went, we met Greg and Beth at the Toboggan place.  It's called Pokegon State Park in Angola, Indiana.  The track is refrigerated, so weather really does not matter.  The hill is big and steep, and at the end, there is a mph tracker -- rumor has it that many of our toboggans were going 35 mph.  Yikes!

This is the beginning of the run.  After they come out of the gate, they would speed down past us.  I took lots of shots of random people, because we couldn't tell who they were until they were right by us!  I'm going to post all of the pictures on my Facebook site, but here are a couple of more.  I love the looks on their faces!  :)

My sister, Nancy, and her husband, Carl, met us there, too.  Carl wanted to toboggan with the kids, so he did.  We watched for a while, then Nancy, Beth, Fritz, and I headed inside to do some puzzles.  I, of course, had brought along my camera, so I went outside and took a couple of shots of the lake with my camera.  I love how the shots came out, so thought I would share my favorite:

I love my new little camera!  :)

We spent the evening with Greg and Beth at their home, eating pizza and having cake and ice cream for Greg's birthday.  Then we returned to the hotel for the mandatory swimming time!  :)

Imagine my surprise in the morning when I was walking down the hall to breakfast and heard someone yell, "Pam Kaiser!  What are you doing here?"  My friend, Amy, and her husband, Tom, had spent the night in the same hotel with a work party for Tom.  That was so fun!

We went to mass with Greg and Beth, and Nancy and Carl in the morning (although we sat in a MUCH different location -- we were a little late, so we sat, as the usher called it, "ringside" -- which meant we were front row with no kneelers!  LOL).  After that, we went our own ways.  I couldn't possibly be that close to a Target without stopping, so we spent a few hours there, then went to lunch at Fazoli's before heading home.

So, sadly, our Mystery Trip is over for this year (unless we have a surprise Mystery Trip!  LOL).  Time to start thinking about our next one!  However, it was a GREAT weekend, with many memories made!

I hope your week was just as fun!