Wednesday, May 13, 2009

My Weekend Escape (part 1)

Every spring for the last 12 years my sisters and I have gone away together for a night. We started the year before our mother died, and after she died decided that it was a tradition that we needed to continue. As our brothers have married we have included our sisters in law, and it has given us a chance to get to know them better.

We have occasionally strayed from our original venue of the Best Western in Park City; once to Provo (when 3 sisters and 2 sisters in law all had new babies), once to Salt Lake, and once to Kentucky so we could include our fabulous sister in law, Jeannie.

I missed Girl's Nite Out the year I had three 8 month old babies, and I think one other time. I didn't expect to be able to go this year because of my last minute February trip to see my niece and my friends.

Happily for me, Russ got an unexpected bonus at work. His treat was to be able to eat out once or twice a week. Mine was to be able to go back to Utah for Girl's Nite. (Not intended in any way to make any of the people I spent time with feel like the equivalent of a Subway Sandwich, I assure you!)

I started my lovely weekend get-a-way by spending the afternoon with my friend Janet. We sat in the chilly sun and watched her son run in a big invitational track meet, which was almost as much fun as watching the Kentucky Derby.

In the evening my sister Andra picked me up and we were off to Park City, where we were joined by sister Laila and sisters in law Emily and Jenny. Friday sister in law Amber came up for a couple of hours.

On Friday afternoon Andra, Laila, and I went to the airport to pick up our 4th sister, Margaret. Laila had the creative idea of making a poster to hold to welcome Margaret. She sketched it out and we colored it in as we waited for our lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. (Meal review: food ok, cheesecake taken back to the hotel and eaten at 10pm, fabulous!)

Andra held the poster for a while in the airport.(As you can see, Laila decided to change "Girls Nite" to "Sisters Nite" because the acronym looked better. )

As Andra held the poster in the airport, she would catch the eye of passing travelers and move the poster towards them as if in invitation. Most of them ran the other way. One curious man did ask us exactly what "SNO" was. We explained that it was Sister's Nite, that we 4 sisters and 3 out of our 6 sisters in law would be there, and then invited him to join us.

He declined.

After Andra's arms got tired of holding the poster I agreed to hold it for a while--but I held it in front of my face. She then stood a couple of feet away from me and looked at me as if I was crazy, so that the people passing us would think there was something wrong with me. I think that Andra had entirely too much fun in the airport!

When we finally saw Margaret coming through the security gates we started jumping up and down like teenagers and shrieking our excitement. She was embarrassed and I'm sure thought for a minute about walking by as if she didn't know us--but of course we wouldn't let her.

When we got back to the hotel we took pictures with our poster,

from left to right: Jenny, Amber, Andra, Margaret, Laila, Emily,and yours truly.
and then put it in the window of our room.

Our favorite thing about the hotel besides sitting around and talking

is always the hot tub and pool.

Laila, Andra, & Jenny model their great pool hair.
Laila & Jenny do pool tricks.



On Saturday we hit the outlet mall and shopped till Emily dropped. Then we drove to my brother's house in Pleasant Grove where we had a chilly cookout with the rest of the family. (Chilly as in the wind was blowing, not as in we ate Chili but I don't know how to spell it!) I meant to take more pictures there, but it was so cold there wasn't much sitting around. Fortunately I left my camera in my brother Ben's car for a while, and so when it was returned it had adorable pictures of Ben's kids Cali and Cole and a picture of Ben as well.



I also got a picture of my brother Sam and his cute dog Buddy,

and we got a picture of all of us girls with our matching shirts courtesy of the clearance rack at the Tommy Hillfiger store.
kind of psychedelic, aren't we?!?

It was all such fun, and I count myself blessed to have so many sisters and such a wonderful family!

8 comments:

  1. Yay! Such Fun! I am happy you took pics.

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  2. I LOVE SNO!!! I also love these pictures! I am so glad someone thought to take them. Your brain must have been the working one this year!

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  3. How fun! I wish we had such a fun tradition!! Bryan's siblings used to have family dinners one Sunday a month when 4 of the 5 lived in UT. I love, love, love the coordinating shirts!! :D

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  4. Wow- I can't imagine having that many sisters! It looks like fun:).

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  5. Fun! I'd love to start something like this up with my crazy family...I know we'd have a good time. Definitely not quite as many participants as yours, though - what a great thing to have so many sisters!

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  6. Lindsay, I always worried that I would never manage to get Cindy Lynn a sister--which was why the triplet combo I got was EXACTLY what I would have wished for. It was possibly the first "happy about having triplets" moment I experienced--to know that Cindy Lynn was going to have 2 sisters after all!

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  7. Thanks for helping me relive the weekend! It sure was fun! I think my favorite was the hair in the hottub. I loved it how those strangers were trying not to look at our wiggy doo!

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  8. I love that you do this! Kind of reminds me my green party but with sisters! I'm impressed that you guys have kept it up for so many years! Looks like you gals had a blast!

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