The Real Housewife of Santa Monica
utah get-a-way, bloating & 3.2% beer

Archive of ‘Vacation’ category

utah get-a-way, bloating & 3.2% beer

Last weekend G’s company sent us all to Park City which happened to be the last few days of Sundance Film Festival! We took advantage of Jack & Patsy’s stay by making them hostage babysitters.

Our moods were good right from the bar at LAX where we awaited our flight.

We had a great laugh about “No Side Shot” on the receipt. Everything’s funnier when you don’t have kids with you!

We cheered right out loud when we noticed our dear friend’s NYTimes Bestselling Novel, City of Dark Magic in the airport bookstore! Go, Lynchie!!

I was so impressed with this water fountain which was ubiquitous at the Salt Lake City airport!
You can either drink straight from it or fill your water bottle with it. Amazing!

We got up early the next morning to hit the slopes.

Whilst waiting for a cab to take us to Canyons Resort, I noticed some income disparity in our neighborhood.
The house in the foreground had smashed in windows in contrast to the luxury homes behind.

Anyone who knows me knows I will enjoy myself but not before feeling guilty about my good fortune.

This is the back of our townhouse.

Right across the street from us:

Finally we hit the slopes at Canyons.

So happy.

G & I skied all day! After the lifts closed, we stopped by The Umbrella Bar for a beer. A low alcohol beer.

We finally picked ourselves up & got out of there as the sun was going down.

Off to the Brickyard Dinner at one of the houses in town. This house sucked! It only had ONE elevator and the DVD player in the screening room was broken. LAME!

Poor lobster!

Dinner awaited!! We made up about 40 people so we took turns eating!

Nobody took turns drinking though.

Killed by 10PM.

As many of you know, the beer in Utah is 3.2% alcohol (4% alcohol by volume). This means you might tend to drink more beer than you normally would. Not so in my case. For me 3.2% beer = wine. I drank only wine after I noticed the mid-section bloating taking place. Others drank hard liquor.

After dinner we headed out for a drink in town & then back to our house up the hill. Many played foosball and/or went in the hottub but as many tired mama’s know, a vacation bed (i.e. clean sheets & nobody waking you with a shriek at 4AM to pull their covers up for them) looks better than sitting in a cup of hot skin soup (aka an overused hot tub) with a bunch of rowdy blokes.

Next day we slept late. Aggggghh!!! Yes, we slept till 9 o’clock!!! What a treat. Off to a late lunch & then a half day skiing in Park City. We could walk to the slopes from our house.

I skied the slowest I’ve ever skied before. Is middle age catching me?? I couldn’t see any features on the snow and worried about falling and shattering a knee. It was still tons of fun!

That night G grilled about 150 burgers & dogs on the grill. I enjoyed a beautiful & much needed salad prepared by Lisa (did not get a picture of it) as well as some homemade fries. YUM!

Having only 2 full days in Park City, we didn’t make it to any movies (“films” to you film festival aficionados) but we didn’t feel we missed out on anything!

Thank you, Brickyard!! You made my year!

Colorado – Part 1

Before I start I want to announce or rather pre-announce the launch of my new blog page. In 2008 Cox-Fitz Chronicles was started as nothing more than a birth announcement for Maddie’s arrival. G made it at the start of the 3 day labor. He’s amazing! Well, G’s gone & done it again. He’s set the stage for MY new spin-off blog:

Real Housewife of Santa Monica.

Sorry, no link…YET!

It still needs some work – but SOON. Also – Cox Fitz Chronicles isn’t going anywhere – that will be the family blog. After all, I doubt perfect strangers want to watch 6 minutes of a toddler trying to nurse a doll.

Anyway, here’s my latest, non food-related blog posting. We just had a fun & active vakay in CO with our good friends & their good friends who are really cool. 6 adults & 6 kids. Wowza!!!! The casualties were: my favorite old belt (black with heart buckle if anyone finds it), my cheapie Banana Republic glasses, M’s brand new hoody (green with daisies), and my Patagonia jacket. I don’t care about any of it but the belt. Never having had a waist, this was the only belt with the tenacity to hang on to the untenable & keep my jeans from falling down.

Come back to me (belt)!
[- Cold Mountain]

Speaking of mountains, poor Colorado is raging with fire right now. Worrisome. Downright disastrous for wildlife, the 600+ families who’ve lost houses not to mention the exhausted firefighters. Aggh. Well, we didn’t know about the fires when we planned our trip, and we DO feel for everyone involved!

We headed out of LAX at a decent morning hour. G does not avail himself of coffee.

I thought my dad would be pleased to see this sign so I emailed it to him right away since he is “done” with flying and can also get pretty annoyed with the train at times. (He doesn’t like sitting near or talking to people.)

The Denver bathroom had these totally rad cans for trash & recyclables (composting).

Paper towels only!

Then next to it this one:

Trash ONLY!!! No paper towels. (Dummy!)

Am I really posting pix of the airport bathroom? Yes, yes, I am!

We headed right over to our friends’ Mark & Trish’s house in Denver. The girls had a blast playing with their little boys & Trish introduced me to a Moscow Mule. (And no, Chris Lynch, Root Beer is perfectly safe off his leash near this mule.) Very few pix b/c someone had to rescue Bea from the screen door each time she got pinned behind it.

Anyway, here’s a pic of our lovely hostess, Tricia with the Bea-dozer.

They live in a really progressive neighborhood which was built in the old Denver airport when they up & moved it. All the houses have porches and it’s totally walkable with a terrific park for the kids. They even uncovered a creek that had been under the runway of the airport! Amazing. My kids, being unaccustomed to nature, walked straightaway into the boggy mud with socks & shoes on causing me to yell at them a whole bunch which didn’t bother them any.

After a delicious meal, a few MM’s (Moscow mules) and an amazing strawberry rhubarb pie, we put the kids to bed and accidentally conked out ourselves. Nice work! Bed by 8:30PM the first night of vacation. Way to party! Forget “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” with us it’s “I’ll sleep now or I’ll be dead.”

After a stroll around the farmer’s market we bid our friends adieu and headed to Littleton to see my mom’s cousin, Harriet. (I believe Harriet is my first cousin once removed?) I hadn’t seen her in over 10 years and the last time I did it was at my brother’s wedding when my mom was still alive.

It was a wonderful visit. Harriet’s daughter Jennifer & her daughter Kelsey joined us along with Harriet’s husband, Arne. It was 90 degrees in the shade of their porch (which surprisingly didn’t feel very hot). We felt totally welcome there. There’s something about being with family that makes you feel that way. I was so grateful that the girls could visit some family, particularly someone who knew MY mom really well since we have none but my dad on the west coast.

Mark it with a B

I cut myself a sliver of this blueberry pie (don’t women always seem to cut themselves “slivers” of pie?), then Bea started acting up so I handed it to G instructing him to bring it in (I couldn’t carry Bea & open the door.) Thinking I was done with it, he tossed it.

Nutritionally & calorie-wise my body had NO NEED for that pie. But I really wanted it.

Harriet and I talked about my mom a lot and, for some reason, here came the waterworks. My mom died in September 2001 – just 8 days after the Twin Towers fell. You’d think I’d used all the tears I had by now. It must be having little girls that makes me feel strangely protective hearing Harriet talk about my mom’s (at times) lonely childhood. Yet it was equally touching to hear about how much Harriet and her sister Teddy loved & cherished my mom, who was younger.

While you’re growing up, it’s hard to think of your mother as a full person. Only after she died did I start finding out more about her life pre-Me.

Harriet told me that when she was small, she got to crying so much that the only way her parents could calm her down was to put her in the bathtub and run water over her. I guess the shock of the water snapped her out of it. Later, when she was grown, she shared this with my mom adding that she thought this was the reason she avoided confrontation as an adult. My mom told her that her parents had done the same thing to her adding, “It didn’t bother ME a bit!”

Harriet’s point was that two people can share the same parents but come out of childhood very different.

Harriet describes my mom as having been “spirited.” I know she didn’t avoid confrontation. Whew – that’s for sure. I suppose if you’re an only child to two people who are REALLY into each other, it might be hard to know where you fit. Unasked questions…unTHOUGHT of questions…

We left the special luncheon knowing we need to go back and make a little more time to visit properly. When you are hauling along two toddlers you are really conscious about out-staying your welcome so it probably hurt nobody to leave when we did.

The next day we headed to Breckenridge.

Thank gosh for naps.

It was beautiful. G has skied there quite a bit and even spent some time there with his family during the summer. I love the idea of Jack & Patsy strolling around the little town, window shopping & having a glass of wine in the afternoon sun.

We went to the Motherloaded Tavern.

The next day we strolled around the river side.

Then we got back into the car & headed to our final destination: Buena Vista.

Pictures of one's feet are all the rage in the summer.

Stay tuned & pray for photo editing talents to visit me in the night so I can make these posts more concise. I might even slip in a quick cocktail post to break it up a bit.



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