Family Business Trip

We are starting school back up again soon.  Very soon....like, Monday soon.

But we got to take one last little trip with Jas before starting.  And this business trip?  Families were actually, factually, specifically invited to attend.

Our four oldest kiddos had a ball with the kiddos of the other attendees.  In fact, we all had a ball.  It was so nice and relaxing.  Of course, how could it not be nice and relaxing, staying at....

This was the view from our 6th floor balcony, where I spent much time reading:

(I finished reading one book, started another...and also spent much time on the internet, reading about all the recent horrible loss of life (Alton, Philando,  5 Dallas police officers), and interacting with others on FB.  I am still processing, and have a big ole post floating around in my head, that I need about 2 days to sit down and write out.  2 whole days.  Which isn't going to happen.  So, I hope that I do get the post out of my head...it will help me process.  And I totally intend (and have been needing to do this for forever) to use the post to store links to info/graphs/articles/stats that I have read the past few years, and want to have easy access to going forward.)




Back to the happy post about "Our" business trip!


(I can't tell you how many times in the past week I've had to wrench myself away from thoughts about the racial-divide in our ountry, back to being fully present with my six precious kiddos...)





The first night of the conference there was a Family BBQ.  Great food...with so many wonderful options that were legal for us.  Thankfully the dinner was held inside the hotel in a huge banquet room.  One of the organizers sat by Jas and I and shared with us that they had just made the call a few hours earlier to move the event inside...because the heat index was going to be over 100.  We told him....ummm, Thankyouverymuch!

As we finished up our scrumptious meals, we began hearing beautiful music wafting in.  We were definitely curious, but with G with us, there was no way we were NOT going to investigate.



Much to our delight, it turned out to be a husband/wife team playing steel drums!

They were so kind and spoke with us some, shared how they got started, etc.  They even offered to let G and A play some...which they thoroughly enjoyed, obviously.

The Ritz is apparently too posh of a place to have 2, 200-ft slides and a 90-ft vertical (death!) slide (like our last business trip)...but it still had several beautiful (indoor and outdoor) pools and hot tubs.  And a kiddy splash area that G and A relished:

And the huge games that were set out on the lawn by the pool?  Super cool.

The hotel was right on the beach, so we checked that out one night.  (If we hadn't just gotten back from our annual beach trip, we likely would have spent more time down there.)  

Elisabeth had a hold of my phone/camera while we were at the beach, so these are the pictures I ended up with:  

We are not yet to the point where we have to get two hotel rooms.  Many people would think we are crazy for thinking this way, but we have made it work.  (And ummmm, we can't do $500/night...so our business trip adventures will come to a screeching halt when we hit that point.)

We made sure we were going to have two queen beds...and then we didn't get that.  BUT...it actually worked out better, and we would like to ask for this kind of set up in the future:  Jas and I slept on the one bed, a queen (with A in between us), Elisabeth slept on the pull out bed/sofa.  Someone else could have fit on there with her, but the other 4 prefer to sleep on the floor (makes me hurt just to think about it).  We all just take turns changing in the separate "water closet" and/or vanity area.  No problem!  Especially with the additional square feet of the balcony, we had plenty of space in the room.  (But, of course, the idea of coming on these trips is that we are out and about, not holed up in a room anyway.)

The kiddos that sleep on the floor like to hole up in any kind of hidey-hole they can find.  Noah picked a little cove area by one of the windows this time (we were in a corner room).   As soon as we walked in, Lily Kay immediately called dibs on the area under the desk:

G and A showing off LK's sleeping area.  

We were gone for two nights, and three days.  We had a great time, and then after we got home, we collectively said, "I'm so glad to be home!"

It would be so sad if we didn't feel that way!