Our Weekend

We ran off for a whole night this weekend. A whole night! Whoopie! We’ve had a gift card to Starved Rock Lodge in Utica, IL burning a hole in our drawer for 2 years. It was a Christmas present from Anastasia’s Mom. We were saving it for when we had enough money to add on to make a long weekend, but we never had the money. Anastasia hadn’t had a day off from her caregiver gig for a whole month and everyone had been on edge since my daughter’s hospitalization. We needed to decompress.

Anastasia gave the executive order, made the reservation and gave the instructions. She told the kids to grab their swimsuits and pack a change of clothes. Before running to the grocery for snacks and sodas she asked me to pick my poison and informed me that I was going to get drunk. (Since Anastasia had never seen me drunk, this would be a double treat.) Well, alrighty then. I’ll get drunk. You don’t have to tell me twice.

Anastasia wanted to take her Monte Carlo because the gas mileage is better than my Pilot, but my back was so bad when I woke up Saturday that there was just no way I wanted to sit that low. Besides, the kids absolutely hate climbing into the back her 2 door car. Even though I woke up with back pain worse than normal, I decided I would drive. I’ll admit, it’s a control thing, and I really do love to drive...and the heated leather seats in my car do make it much more enjoyable.

Anastasia had thought of hiking since the weather was cool. But shortly after we started out, it started to rain. Plan B was swimming.

We got to the lodge a few minutes before check in. After we checked in, we vegged-out in the room before dinner. We had the buffet in the dining room. It was more expensive than we normally pay for dinner, but we were splurging and the prime rib was delicious.

After dinner Anastasia took the kids swimming while I tried to find some comfortable way of sitting or lying. My back pain was horrible. So bad, that I didn’t even want to attempt to go down to the hot tub. I sat in the room, read 2 Sunday papers, watched Sex And The City The Movie and broke open the Bud Light Lime. Possibly an odd choice when I could have picked anything that didn’t require a blender, but I enjoy it. Besides, I find it really hard to shake my frugal ways. I had only gotten ½ way through the movie and they had already come back from swimming. For 2 kids that looked forward to swimming so much, they sure didn’t stay in the pool long. By this point I had downed 5 beers. Not much if you’re a drinker. But for someone who rarely has more than two, five in little more than an hour…well…I was still feeling pain, however I was pretty gosh darn happy. Goofy even. For some reason I started talking in Yoda’s voice. You remember Yoda, don't you?

I ahh, did this for a couple of hours. I was uber silly. I don’t think we ever laughed that much. I’m not sure if Anastasia will ever tell me to get drunk again though. Lol!

We had a really, really good time. It didn't even faze us that there was a Christian conference at the lodge that weekend.
We woke up to snow. The trees covered in snow were gorgeous. Anastasia took lots of photos. And our son took one photo before I got up. I’m NOT posting it here. No, not this one.
It’s was awful. I look…dead. I did not, however, feel dead. I felt fine, except my horrible back pain was still there.

We had brunch in the dining room. Again, rather expensive, but in keeping with the theme here, we splurged! As brunches go, it was quite good. After brunch, Anastasia and the kids went to the gift shop and splurged some more. The ride home was nice. The roads were surprisingly clear, the scenery was snow covered and beautiful. All around, a very nice teeny, weeny, itsby, bitsy, mini vacation.

Lola's Diner
©2008-2009