Tahoe

Ever since I was a very tiny person I have spent time during the summer at Lake Tahoe.  I was incredibly lucky as a child to get to spend many weeks each summer enjoying the beach and mountains and basically being away from home.  Since Joe covers baseball, our summer getaway time is limited, but we have gone up for the All Star Break nearly every year for the past decade (we skipped last year, as my pregnancy made the altitude a less than appealing option).  

This year, the All Star Break happened to coincide with the beginning of construction on the bathroom downstairs, so we took the opportunity to get out of town while the demolition portion was taking place.  Normally, we pack up the car with a couple of suitcases, a bag of toiletry type items, and some snacks.  This year we had to take two cars, filling them with a total of nine bags, two playpens (should've brought three), three high chairs, two strollers, and a beach tent.  Oh, and three babies.  

We hit the road in the mid-morning and met up in Vacaville for lunch.  We chose a place called Country Waffles and we quickly became the center of attention.  This seemed to be a favorite among locals, as nearly everybody called out, "see you tomorrow" as they were leaving.  The waitress made sure everyone else in the restaurant, staff and customers alike, came by to visit with the babies and we got royal treatment as we schlepped them all out to the car.  Then it was back on the road.

The Salvateenies are good travellers - especially at highway speeds.  They fell asleep to the sounds of David Tennant reading one of the How to Train Your Dragon books (so adorable) and were happily snoring for most of the trip.  Except for Caroline.  She is teething to a painful degree.  Already the proud owner of two lower and one upper tooth, the second front tooth on top is pushing its way out.  It is looming so hugely beneath her gum that at one point I was worried she had a little baby abscess!  As we climbed the mountain, all the babies woke up.  I noticed Daniel and Max were up because they started smacking their tongues and lips, a new talent they've been practicing.  I noticed Caroline was awake because she started screeching at the top of her lungs and she didn't stop for the last twenty miles of the ride.  I even pulled over at one point to pull her out and check to see if it was a dirty diaper or something else obvious.  Because she seemed to stop once we got levelled out at Tahoe, I suspect that her ears were popping all the way up (and that, perhaps, her brothers had figured out that their lip smacking was keeping it from happening to them!)  Poor baby!

After a stop at the local 7-eleven for free slurpees, we arrived at the cabin and began the long process of unpacking, feeding the babies, setting up the play pens, and procuring something to eat.  That night, Max and Daniel slept fine in their playpens, but Caroline, who had spent the first five months of her life sharing a crib with Daniel, could not settle down to sleep in the same playpen with her brother.  So she came to sleep with us, waking wailing a few times and needing a combo of ibuprofen and orajel to get her to calm down enough to get a few hours of sleep.

On to Tuesday!  We lazed around in the morning, letting the babies take turns "napping" in the bedroom, since nobody seemed to want to coordinate their naptime.  Then we loaded up to head out to the beach.  When we parked, we noticed that there has been some sprucing up done - the parking lot is all nicely paved and the bathrooms have been fixed up.  Near where we parked there was a really nice paved path from the parking lot to the restroom at the edge of the beach (before you had to pick your way through pine-needly underbrush to get out to the beach area).  The beach is a lot smaller this year, thanks to a heavy winter snowfall that is still melting off.  So I went out first and staked out a spot to set up our brand new beach tent (which apparently isn't as brand new as I thought, since it already had a rip or two in the back where the tent poles go - but it still worked, and that's what's important).  

Then we dragged the babies out, without their car seats so we wouldn't get them covered in sand.  This is not easy as it involves one of us carrying two babies.  And the babies are around twenty pounds each now.  And they wriggle.  But eventually we all made it, unloaded, and started to soak up our surroundings.  Everyone was terrified of the water (which was NOT cold, I would like to point out, but seems to have been scary nonetheless) and yanked their feet up as soon as I touched them to the surface. I guess we really hadn't needed to buy everyone bathing suits and swim diapers! Oh well....

Highlights included the boys playing with sand and checking out the girls in bikinis, seeing a flock of Canadian geese, and making it through nearly two hours before someone said, "Boy, you've got your hands full" (though, in truth, I did have my hands full of tent and bags at that point).

After the beach, we stopped in to visit with our friends Paulette and Denny, who were up vacationing with their grandchildren.  On the way home we ordered a pizza and then settled in at the cabin to watch the end of the All Star Game.  Though she did wake up at 12:30 and need to come to bed with us, Caroline did sleep quite well Tuesday night.

Wednesday was another beautiful day.  We let babies nap through the morning, then set out for the Visitors' Center and took them in their strollers to the Rainbow Trail, which includes the very cool "stream profile chamber", an underground room that gives you a window on the stream so you can see the fish as they swim by.

The rest of the trails are not paved, and we weren't quite up to testing the strollers' "off road" capability, so we packed everyone back into the car and headed over to Camp Richardson to stop in at the stables.  The babies cannot actually ride the horses until they are 6 (though we may fudge a little if we're up there in August of 2016 when they're 5 years 11 months...), but we were invited to bring them around the side of the paddock to see the horses.  They were fine with the very calm horse we stood by, but when she moved her head, Daniel freaked out a little.  Luckily, there was a pretty teenage girl standing nearby and flirting with her seemed to calm his nerves.

Then it was a quick ride out to Stateline so that we could tell the babies they'd been out of state before they turned one, and back to the other side of town for dinner at Passaretti's Italian Restaurant, where we were given a table in our own little room and where the babies made themselves quite comfortable.

And then it was back down the mountain on Thursday without too many meltdowns!  All in all (and despite Caroline's fitful sleeping, constant crying, and curious lack of appetite), it was a good trip.  Next year we can do all sorts of other fun things!