We’re back after a long weekend away in Tahoe with our framily (friends that are like family)! We’ve been planning this getaway for a few weeks but I didn’t think to tell our kids about it until a few days before we left. Let me tell y’all … I was shocked by how excited little man D was. I mean, he was acting like I told him we were going to spend a week at Disneyworld or something. It was to the point that I told Hubby that if we ever go away with friends again I’m not telling our kids until the morning of because D’s excitement was borderline annoying (sorry for the scrooge attitude but it’s true).

I’ll be honest, Hubby & I aren’t huge “Tahoe people” … we’re actually just really lazy and love being at home. When we do travel with our kids, they’re either really big trips, like to Mexico, or just to see family in other parts of the state. I think a part of it is that I can’t function without sleep and traveling with newborn/toddlers is essentially not a vacation and the effort hasn’t seemed worth it in the past. But now that our two older kids are pretty much self-sufficient and even A is able to hang in and muscle it out with the big kids, we feel ready to take on more road trips and family trips.

It also helped that we went with family friends who have been to Tahoe multiple times each. They really put together the packing list and mapped out what our itinerary/excursions would look like so it made it simple for our family to just pitch in our part of money and join in.

We drove up on Saturday morning and the car ride was up surprisingly smooth. Of course there were pockets of traffic here and there but overall, it wasn’t anything more that what we’d expect on a holiday weekend. I think Hubby was a little worried about not making it to our AirBnb in time because we were responsible for cooking dinner for the group the first night but we coincidentally ran into one of our friends on the way up and ended up caravanning together almost the whole drive.

The kids did great and spent a lot of time watching movies on their iPads (the drive up was about 4 hours total). Hubby and I are still scarred from the one time that A was around 1.5 years old and we drove up about an hour away to cut down our Christmas tree like we have done every year prior, except this time A screamed the ENTIRE car ride up AND back down. It was misery and we swore off long car rides with her for a good while after that but of course now she’s much older and had no problem in the car. She even managed to stay awake for almost the entire ride … she only fell asleep during the last 5 minutes hah.

Our first day there was really just about everyone arriving and settling in … we grilled KBBQ for dinner and it was sooooo good. The kids ran around and had fun creating chaos all over. There were some other friends that we know that coincidentally were also in Tahoe this weekend so we they came over to join us for dinner too. It was one kid’s birthday so the kids had cake and ran around like monkeys on a sugar rush. After dinner, we eventually managed to wrangle everyone to bed. The kids all got to share rooms with one another (there were enough bedrooms to do this) and one of the moms snuck in to take pictures of the kids sleeping after lights out. It was pretty cute 🙂 I did have A sleep in our room with us, though. As much as I know she’d love to sleep with all the big kids in their room, I couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t wake up to pee in the night or cry and freak everyone else in her room out so she slept on a floor mattress in our room. She did great, too!

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Sunday was the only full day that we had in Tahoe and the only true plan we had was to spend some time at the beach. We’re actually so thankful to have been out of town on this weekend because the temps back at home hit the triple digits and nearby fires decreased air quality near our house significantly to the point that it was safer to stay inside. The air up near Tahoe wasn’t perfect either but it was way better and everyone had so much fun splashing around at the beach.

There was even a short little walk/hike to get the beach that was beautiful and felt adventurous!

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After the beach, we spent most of the rest of the day back at the house we rented. A of course knocked out in the car ride (10 mins?) back to the AirBnb so Hubby waited in the car with her for more than an hour!

The moms did get to escape for a little iced coffee run and the dads took the kids to a nearby park to run around but other than that, it was just a day of relaxing and snacking. A random memory I think I’ll never forget is that the AirBnb, while beautiful and clean, had almost nothing that worked at full capacity. The AC never really cooled down the house, the gas stove took 40 minutes to boil a pot of soup, the water pressure in the showers was so weak … it was an interesting experience.

I’m an ultra light sleeper so I knew going into this weekend that I was going to be tired but I don’t think I was prepared for how exhausted I was going to feel. The first night I basically didn’t sleep at all – just a lot of tossing and turning. The second night I slept but it was in weird fits; I’d fall asleep then wake up then fall asleep then wake up. By Monday, I was SO drained I felt like I couldn’t even see straight. Thankfully there was nothing to do on Monday but clean up and head back home! Just like on the ride up, on the way home A managed to stay awake for alllllmost the whole time and then fell asleep when we got within walking distance of our house. Sigh, it’s okay. We did a transfer to the couch (I didn’t want to put her in her bed because she was FILTHY) and she snoozed a bit in the living room while we all unpacked and did laundry.

Actually the first order of business when we got home was long, hot showers for everyone. I kind of felt like we were living off retreat-style showers while we were in Tahoe and I couldn’t wait to scrub myself clean. I even put on a face mask for some extra self-care after my shower!

We put all the kids down super early to bed, partly because they also didn’t sleep that much over the weekend, and partly because they had school bright and early the next day. I ended MY day with a bowl of ramen (YUM) and also hit the sack early. I woke up today feeling like a truck hit my body and I was puffy all over from the sodium but it’s okay – it was all worth it!