Park City Staycation

My parents always have a difficult time coming up with a good Christmas present for our family, because we have more toys than we know what to do with and the kids are clothed from closets that are over flowing.  In a family of seven people, clutter is the last thing we need.  This year they came up with the perfect gift- a certificate (in the form of a check and a cute gift card that my dad made) for us to spend a weekend somewhere doing something fun.  We LOVE staycations so this was the ideal gift!!

Last year for our anniversary Cody and I got away for two nights and stayed at Hotel Park City.  That place is unbelievable and they don't skimp at all when it comes to luxury.  They pull out all of the stops!!  When I started hunting around for a fun place for our family to stay in June, I looked into Hotel Park City but for all of us, it was going to be out of our budget.  I called the reservation office and talked to them to see what kind of deal they could cut us.  I guess I called at the perfect time when they were trying to get rooms filled, because they gave us an incredible deal on one of the cottage units.

On the kids' last day of school on June 28th, they came home at 1:30 and we immediately loaded up and drove the 45 minutes up to Park City.  As much as I miss Texas and will never claim to be a Utahn, I can't deny that there are beautiful parts of this state and many of them are only an hour drive from us.  Park City is definitely one of those places! 

After we got checked in an moved into our "cottage", the first thing the kids wanted to do was jump in the huge hot tub sitting on our private deck.  Our view and all the amenities were absolutely amazing!!  After the kids played and played, I ran to the market to load up on groceries for the weekend.  Our unit had a full kitchen so we took total advantage of that.  We didn't have to eat a single meal out.

The next morning we all slept in until about 9:00, which was possible thanks to the black out curtains covering all of the GIANT windows.  We love that our kids are late sleepers.  Luckily we have never had a kid that is up at the crack of dawn if they are not sick or being awakened by someone else.

After yummy breakfast burritos, we headed out to the pool.  This was the first time I'd swam in a salt water pool and it was interesting.  It took some getting used to, that's for sure.  Devin worked on his swimming sans life jacket and did pretty well for a while, but then got tired and wanted to wear it again. 

 

We played and played until it was time to head back to our cottage for lunch at about 2:00.  Then we came back out to the pool and swam the rest of the afternoon.  I taught the kids how to play "categories" which was one of our favorite games to play at our neighborhood pool growing up.  I realized that day that one of the best ways to get a kid to be a strong swimmer is through swimming games.  Marco Polo, Sharks and Minos...etc.  It really is a good way to get them independent in the water.  Lots of other families were at the pool and before the end of the day, we had about 20 other kids playing games with us.  Most of them had never played pool games before and they thought it was a novelty!

When the kids were finally water logged from the pool, we headed back to the cottage.....so they could do MORE swimming in the hot tub.  Geeze, you' think these kids had gills!!  They had fun exploring the beautiful duck ponds around the hotel while I made spaghetti inside. 

Everyone was finally tired and we turned on the TV to find "Apollo 13" showing.  We watched it while I finished up dinner and like always, I cried my eyes out during the movie.  It's one of my all time favorites. 

A vacation wouldn't be complete without a dunk in the jetted tub!!

Uh oh, a bad Mommy forgot to reapply sunscreen after lunch!!

Sunday morning we had donuts for breakfast.  The last day of vacation is always a bummer, but everyone was really sun beaten from the day before.  After breakfast we got all packed up and cleaned the place a little and headed out to explore the hotel property.  The grounds and scenery are pretty breath taking.  Cody and I love it so much that we decided we want to have some sort of 20th wedding anniversary celebration there with our family in a few years.