Colorado, Part Two: Hoe-and-tel Number 1

When we pulled up to the hotel in Mesquite, NV, we were all SO SO happy to see a nice hotel. I was also kind of excited to see the WalMart Supercenter down the street-I had always heard of this magical place and its discount groceries but never actually visited one. Quick, Bethany, what did you forget???

We checked in our three separate rooms and we all discovered the same thing at the same time:

Toddlers LOVE hotel rooms! They have beds to jump on, there is TV, a fridge just their size and since Mom and Dad are so distracted bringing bags up to the room, they can enter and exit on a whim.

Even if you are Lucy.
Even if both parents are in the room.
Even when the (defective) top lock has been done.

So Lucy got to know the hallway of our hotel really well and we only really lost her once.

It was time to swim. Lets see, we packed swimsuits for ourselves but forgot them for the kids so Lucy got to go in just her swim diaper and Nathan went in the pair of shorts he wore in the car that day. Couple that with the generally rumpled look David and I were sporting and we had a nice cross country redneck family look going.

We had a good swim, knocked the chunks off in the outdoor shower and left the daddies to get the kids cleaned up so the mommies could go get some dinner. The guys planned to hit the buffet across the street for dinner so the rest of us were staying "home" with the kids so we "HAD" to go to Wal-Mart Super Center to get food for ourselves and the kids. It was everything I had imagined and MORE!

(For those of you keeping score at home, you can mark this moment as the moment that we officially stopped kidding ourselves that we could feed our kids healthy food while on a road trip.)

Once the food was purchased and kids fed, the 3 Mommies each tackled putting kids to sleep in a hotel in their own manner. Emmy used the straight on approach of laying Sophia down and then laying down with Alexis until she fell asleep. Kristen used the begging method of "Please, please, please Ben, go to sleep." I went with the tried and true method of hiding out in the bathroom with my laptop playing Spider Solitaire. After about 20 minutes of this, I got a text message from Kristen. Our texting conversation went something like this.

Kristen: I miss Chris

Me: Yeah, I kind of miss David…I just don't like sitting here in the bathroom

Kristen: I think mine is asleep, are yours?

Me: Yeah-mine are out. Hey, meet me in the hallway.

And that is how Kristen and Emmy and I ended up in the hallway of the Falcon Ridge Hotel in Mesquite, Nevada with coloring books and crayons in our pajamas. I would like to state, for the record, that Emmy is an amazing color-er! She used smudging and blending techniques that my Thomas the Tank Engine Coloring Book has never seen before. By the time the guys got back-and got over seeing their wives sitting out in the hallway of a hotel-we were slap happy but ready to sleep. Our bellies full of microwave oven dinners and our hubbies-smelling like smoke from the casino buffet!! Yuck.

Stay tuned for tomorrow installment of "Colorado Part Three" or "This Leg of the Trip Has Been Brought to You by the Curious George Movie!"