Two days off

I slept in today. Steve handled all the morning madness. Maggie got off to school without me. At least I hope she did. 

                       

I don't know for sure because it's 830 am and I am 200 miles away. My mom, my sister Joan and I stole away to beautiful Lake Tahoe for two glorious days. 

The weather is cool and crisp and the wind is blowing. It feels great. We are staying at my friends house which is located right next door to to the house my parents owned for 30 years.  They sold it in about 1999 before my friends bought the place next door so it's quite a coincidence.

 Of course we had to check out the changes to the place that my mother designed. Here's what it looked like in about 1995. Maggie, the boys and I are in this picture along with my mom, my brother Pat and his family. That area of the deck is completely gone now and so is the tree that was growing through the deck just behind all of us. 

There's no one there, so we couldn't ask to go inside (and you know we would have). The house is spruced up and they changed the amazing giant deck in the back into two smaller decks. My mom did the inspecting.

                                

There are great great memories in that house. My mom would move up here for the summer with however many kids could go with her and my dad and the rest  of the kids would come up on weekends. My dad's "weekends"often went Thursday to Tuesday in the summers. 

Joan reminded us that she and my brother Pat, the two youngest siblings were up  the longest and even went to summer school a couple of summers. She wanted us to know that time wasn't wasted. She learned to make this in Tahoe-ology. He is our mascot for these 48 hours. 

I spent a lot of time up here too but not enough to have benefitted from Tahoe ology like Joan did. By the third year of high school I always had a summer job but I came as often as I could. (Two summers I worked in my dad's office so three day weekends were a breeze)

 We came a lot when the boys are little too. We didn't come up here much after Maggie was born because she couldn't handle the altitude. My parents sold the house when Maggie was about 5.

Great memories. Great getaway. I really needed this break. I will not be returning to reality until tomorrow.