Tahoe Family Ski Weekend

This past weekend was my Aunt Karen's big 5-0 and to help her celebrate the big day, the whole family spent the weekend in a Tahoe together.

Friday night, Joe and I packed up the car and headed to the snow. We've started a bit of a tradition on road trips and we were slightly ecstatic for this one. The tradition goes as such... Anytime we want to pull over for a food stop, we have to visit every fast food joint at that exit. This way, Joe can get his McDonalds fries, which are immensely inferior to my Burger King fries, but we still get the Breakfast Jack, and Carl's Jr. Western Bacon Cheeseburger. We're never really able to finish it all, but this way everyone gets what they want. I'm pretty sure this tradition will not hold up once we have kids...

Jack in the Box, KFC, Carl's Jr, Taco Bell

I'm now adding an addendum to our road trip tradition... Tums!

Arriving at the cabin was shocking to say the least. We'd never been to this rental before and didn't know what to expect. Here's the front view when pulling up..

Big Enough Much?

Once we double, triple and quadruple checked the address to make sure we we at the right place, we knocked on the door and were greeted by our wonderful family! Then the tour commenced...  This cabin was like a palace. Three stories, six bedrooms, five baths, outdoor jacuzzi, big screen TV's everywhere, a family room that turned into a laser disco party space, and of course... an in-home move theater with 400+ movies stored in it. We were in heaven. Oh, and it was a ski-in/ski-out cabin, not that anyone would have any problem NEVER leaving the cabin at all.

Ten-Butt Kitchen

View from the main balcony - directly over the ski run

Joe's and my bathroom... Remote controlled shower

Disco laser party room

 Side note... none of us could find the controls to turn off the disco lights, so it stayed on pretty much all day and all night long. No one was complaining because who doesn't like to party?

The Piece de Resistance - In-home theater with X-Box

 We must have stayed up until 2am playing video games until no one could keep their eyes open any longer. But who wants to go to sleep when there's so much awesomeness all around you and a cabin full of family to share it with?!?!

We woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed on saturday and managed to pull ourselves away from the palace/cabin to venture out for some snowboarding! Joe and I haven't gone in years so we were a little nervous to see how we'd do. Well, we were pros! OK, maybe not pros, but we held our own and had a BLAST out there.

Beautiful day Boarding!!

We spent the day on the slopes with the Bernardos and the Garcia boys. By the end of it every muscle in my body was shaking from fatigue, but I never stopped smiling! The pain that tomorrow would bring would be worth every Advil.

That night Tony and Karen ordered a catered dinner to be served for Karen's Birthday celebration and we had the best time. I cannot wait to turn 50 if that's what happens! After dinner, birthday cake, and a couple in-home movies and board games later, we all went to bed to get some rest before Super Bowl Sunday! (This was the weekend that kept on giving!)

Super Bowl Lounging

Thank goodness most of Sunday involved sitting on the couch and watching TV, because I was too sore to do much else. I did however manage to squeeze in some hot tub time...

Rough Life, I know

 Pretty sweet day if I do say so myself. Then, to top it off, Joe and I decided to hit up the casinos for some gambling after dinner.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

We hit the jackpot and now we're filthy rich!!!! No. Not actually. I lost $40 and Joe won $10. Nothing too dramatic but we had a good time playing :-)

What an amazing weekend. And I'm not just talking about the cabin. I've got this amazingly funny, loving and good-hearted family and now husband. Not sure how I lucked out on that, but  I'm pretty blessed to be a part of it all.