V-Day Family Getaway

It's been a crazy and bumpy week, but everything seems to be a lot better now. TJ, with the help of his dad and his cousin Stuart, started work on tiling the downstairs bathroom this weekend. It looks so easy on HGTV, but it turns out that it's quite a pain to do, even though it's a small enough room. We've learned that if we're ever to do this again, it's worth the money to hire someone. He's over halfway done, and tonight he will finish laying the tile so we can grout tomorrow. Once that is done, we just have to put the toilet back in and attach our new pedestal sink (we got a complete sink-in-a-box!) Then we'll have our second bathroom back, except it will need a door before we can call it completely functional. Here it is before they started and after they stopped for the night:

And we know our tile layout is a little different, but the edge with the shorter pieces will be hidden by the toilet and the sink. It will be nice and neutral when it's done, and a perfect compliment to the new carpet downstairs (and much nicer than the linoleum that was originally down before the flood.)

But back to the title of this post. We have decided that we need to get away for a mini vacation this weekend in honor of Valentine's Day. We needed a day trip that we could take as a family and our first thought was to take Topher to the Omaha zoo. Unfortunately, the weather was going to be in the 20's and snowy/rainy. Next we considered KC, but that's not really a getaway since we go there all the time to visit my family, plus the weather is again going to be too terrible to go to the zoo or do anything outdoors. So where could we go that was within driving distance and where we could stay indoors the whole time but still have fun? We decided on the Mall of America in Minneapolis! It's about 3 hours away, we can be indoors the whole time and still be entertained, and it's a new adventure for us since we've never been there together.

TJ hopped on hotels.com (our favorite hotel booking site) and found us a very fancy hotel for very cheap. We're staying at a Hyatt, and the pictures of the hotel remind us of our very fancy honeymoon suite we had in San Diego. Plus it has an indoor pool, and we thought that would be the perfect opportunity to take Topher swimming for the first time. He loves his baths so much now, we have no doubt that he will take to the water like a fish to...well, water. So we ordered him a little baby float and we'll buy him some of those swimming diapers and we can't wait to videotape his reaction to the pool. We're leaving early Saturday morning (V-day) and coming home sometime Sunday afternoon. Sassy will be staying on the farm with TJ's parents. Here's a picture of the hotel's lobby and one of the rooms:

And I think this is more than a little vacation on a whim. This is our family's first getaway, and something that we really need right now. TJ had a fortune cookie on Friday that said something like Forget the stock market, invest in your family and I think this vacation really is an investment in our family. I think that both TJ and I have recently realized just how lucky we are to have each other, and to have our little boy, and we can't wait to make so many fun memories together. Just 5 days to go until our very happy Valentine's Day!

--KC