Friday

I don't know why Sweet Pea has started not wanting to have her picture taken - I didn't think that sort of behavior kicked in until teenagerhood. Bummer. We had stopped to get gas and I just thought she looked so cute with a book on her lap, a drink handy, and Rainbow stuffed into her car seat next to her.

The Brookdale lodge has a long and glorious history: It was built in the 1890s and famous folk such as Herbert Hoover and various movie stars used to stay there. Most of the glory has faded, let me tell you. Really, really faded. But it was clean enough (only just), and in a beautiful area off Highway 9 (just outside of Ben Lomond). Pretty much every area off Highway 9 is pretty.

This was the room we stayed in. Slipshod's mom reserved the suite for us so we'd have enough bed space, and also because Slipshod and his sister and brother-in-law and niece and her boyfriend were planning to play Wii games in our lounge area. Slipshod's mom thought the living room/lounge area would be a separate room. As it turned out, it was all just one big room, and since the girls had to go to bed right after dinner and even doing that we kept them up an hour later than usual, they had to play their games in Slipshod's sister's room. It turned out alright, and the big room was nice - gave the girls lots of room to play - but I felt kind of bad having the big room but not being able to let the others use it for the intended purpose. Oh well - we did have family gatherings in the morning, since we had a kitchenette. That meant we had coffee in our room.

This is the dining room, where we ate dinner Friday night. The brook runs right through the restaurant! Pretty cool. We had a long table on the balcony in the middle - where the woman in the white shirt is standing. It was good that we were off by ourselves with a dance floor for the kids to run/craw around on, because service was wildly slow. Took two hours for us to get in and out, and I had to go ask if they remembered that we ordered dessert. Yeesh!

Keep reading - the next two posts are about the weekend as well - mostly pictures.