Rebecca's Birthday Fun...The Hotel

For Rebecca's birthday she wanted to go to a hotel so my brother booked us a room at our favorite hotel, the Holiday Inn Express in Heber. This is the absolute best place you could ever go for some "time away", honestly, try it if you ever can. Anyway, our adventure started with fitting us all into our new Durango and heading up the mountain. Thank goodness for a big car so that we only had to take one, with my brother booking the hotel he came and of course you can't have a family outing to Heber without my parents because they love the hotel also. We had a great time in the pool and hot tub. The pool was the perfect temperature and Rebecca finally figured out that her float/lifejacket would really hold her up. She had a real sense of "I can do it myself", which, if you know her, it is very rare that she doesn't feel that way already. In the past the only time she want help from anyone is in the pool and when she is in a "scary" situation like being at a family party for the first 5 min we are there. The breakfast was so good. Holiday Inn Expresses offer a free breakfast with any stay, and now they have hot food to go along with the ceral, such a great place to stay. Anyway, after more pool & hot tub, we set out for the fish hatchery up the mountain from Kamas, which is very close to Heber so you might as well.

Here we are ready to start the tour. A long time ago, you could just go see the fish whenever you got to the hatchery, but now, due to the whirling disease that is in the stream right next to the hatchery, they are very protective of who and how and when people come in to see the fish. The tour guide really catered the tour to Rebecca since she was the only child on the tour (we were really the only people there and we are all older).

Here he is. It was so funny because you could tell he was not so much a people person and he just wanted to go through his script, but if you remember, he was trying to cater it to Rebecca, and again if you know her, she doesn't always follow someone else's script. He would ask questions, and she didn't want to answer those questions, she wanted to ask different questions and it threw him off a few times. She also thought that she should hold his hand while we walked place to place. He didn't think it was appropriate so he tried to resist, but who can resist a cute little blode hair, blue eyed girl? I have not seen it happen yet. Anyway, along the same note, as we went into where the fish were, the guide grabbed a handful of food for the fish and of course Rebecca wanted to know what it was for. He said, "this is how we allow you to see all the fish do a fun dance". Of course she asked if she could feed the fish and he said no, only official workers could feed the fish. Well there were a lot of holding areas for the fish because there were a lot of different fish, and each time she would ask, very nicely of course, "can I feed the fish", as if she had never asked before and especially had never been told no before. By the end he gave in and Rebecca got to throw in a small handful of food. We are in trouble when she is a little older.

On the way home from seeing the fish, we decided to stop in Kamas for a shake, but the place we typically stop was way to crowded so we decided to go to the local drug store for their big cones. My parents stayed at the car while the rest of us went to order, leaving them sitting next to a yard sale for about 20 min. Well my dad thought we would just go look, since they didn't know how long we would be, and low and behold, he found a "treasure". Well, what we each call a treasure is very realitive. I would not have called this a treasure, and with gas prices at an all time high, it was not worth trying to come back for it, so I thought we could try to get it in the already full car (being that we had 6 people that are not small, except for Dave and Rebecca, and all of our stuff for an overnight adventure). The treasure, a picture frame with a useless picture in it. For those of you who don't know, my dad took up painting again now that he is retired. He is a very great artist, but that doesn't help him to know a tacky frame when he sees it. Anyway, it was so big, and I was affraid to put it on top of the car because I hear about stuff falling off of cars all the time and it can be deadly for those hit by the flying objects. Anyway, on the outside of the car was not an option, so we tried for inside. It would not fit in front of the back passanger legs so we had to think of another option. Now, my dad did say that he could just come up the following Monday, but remember that gas was well over $4 a gallon, so I was trying to save him the money if at all possible. Here was my idea, it worked out pretty well, don't you think?

I love that Dave just keeps eating his ice cream. If you look hard on the left, you will see Rebecca's little face peaking through. Yes, the back hatch did shut, by no, I didn't make them ride home this way. We decided that this was probably just as dangerous since the picture could go flying if we stopped quickly, so out came the picture, but we all had a very good laugh in the mean time. When we got home that evening, we went to IHOP for dinner (another of Rebecca's requests for her birthday) and then you would think, "hey, that has been a very full day, I but you all went home to bed", but no, the Declaration of Independance was at the capitol building so what were we to do but go stand in line to see it. Now, when we first got there, they said the wait was approximately 3 hours. We thought there was no way because the line didn't seem that long. Well, 3 1/2 hours later, after we each took our turn walking Rebecca around the building several times, and after Rebecca and my mom spent a lot of money at the clearance table, we finally were able to step up to the glass case, have our pictures taken, look at it for about 1 min and go home. I am really glad I was able to see it, but was it worth 3 1/2 hours in line??? I don't think so. The problem was that once we were about 2 hours into the wait, we felt like we had waited that long we couldn't give up. There was one bright spot to the wait. I found a friend that I had not seen in a couple of years and she gives tours of the capitol, so I get to re-connect with a friend we are going to be able to go back and have a personal tour. That was the end of that birthday weekend, but this is Rebecca so this is not the end of her birthday fun (this trip was still 2 weeks away in the timeline) so stay tuned for more birthday fun!!