It's wild to think that this is our SIXTH Summer Regional with Edward Jones. This year we stayed at the Westin Kierland something something in Scottsdale. We stayed there for year 2 as well.
We checked in late Thursday afternoon and went straight for the TV...
We went to the two hour welcome meeting and then to dinner.
Dinner was GREAT! It was Mexican food with a really great mariachi band, yard games, and all the soda, cookies, and AH-MAZING brownies we could handle. But I didn't get a single picture.
The next morning was the spouses meeting. I'm getting more and more anti-social these days but our table did win a contest so we voted another table's spouses to get their faces painted that night at dinner (with the kids) So that was cool :)
I didn't want the kids to just watch TV after my meeting so I made them watch from the balcony above as they fed the resort snake it's mouse.
I also made them go on a little exploratory walk. We didn't have time to swim because the whole family had a lunch appointment with one of the sales reps so we only had about an hour to kill. We found ourselves at the OK Corral :)
It was a little outdoor section designated to kids with foosball and ping pong, basketball hoops and crafts/games/lifesize chess... and it just so happened that they started taking out these animals that you could stuff with outfits to choose from (like a mini build-a-bear workshop).
Breckie wanted to do one so I let her. She chose a tiny little horse.
THEN, we are walking back to our room and Everett admits that he wanted to make the monkey. 😖. (I had asked him twice if he wanted to make one while we were there!) So we go back (because this was the activity for that day and time, not to be repeated for a whole week) and he makes a monkey. We were SO hot and sweaty #110degrees.
Then we went to lunch 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
Let me set the stage for you:
1. It's 12:30. Past Roxy's nap.
2. I was dumb and didn't just let my kids "rest and relax" before lunch
a.k.a play on a screen in the hotel room
3. The restaurant was across the street in an outdoor mall. So we walked. It was much faster but toasty warm.
4. The restaurant was SO COOL. But (SO VERY) not family friendly. It very hip and healthy. Stacks of wine bottles everywhere.
5. Our table was upstairs. So the stroller with all of our "Roxy items" in it got left downstairs.
6. We waited 40 minutes for another couple to show up... that never showed up.
So basically we were set up for failure.
Everett blew air out of his straw into Breckie's ear and there was yelling and screaming. Hitting even.
There was the squirming of the baby and the climbing all over everything.
There was the super wet diaper that leaked onto Jake's lap 😅
There was so much complaining I almost died of my kids complaining.
There was awkward conversation.
They were well traveled, from the East coast, no kids, two major careers....
We were a hot mess.
Breckie ordered the "turkey and provolone mix and match" off the kids menu.
I though it would be like a build-your-sandwich kind of thing. The menu offered no descriptions.
Her plate came out with a wad of turkey meat and some provolone cheese slices. That's it. Well, it came with chips and grapes too but no bread.
There was no paper, no crayons... just restless kids out of there element.
I can't blame them too much, because they are really great kids, but they were downright embarrassing us. They kept fighting and Breckie kept yelling at Everett and Roxy was crying and climbing out of the high chair onto the table, on my lap, on Jakes lab, on the back of the bench seat, and you get the point. Like I was literally talking to the other woman (TRYING) to have a conversation and Everett would just "Mom! Mom! Mom!" me right in the middle of talking and I wanted to sell my children right then and there, find a career and travel. They have NEVER acted so poorly in public before and it was frustrating and disappointing.
I can't even explain how heartless they were being. They were all at their worst!
But my food was AMAZING. That's what saved it all for me.
When we got back to our room we told the kids how we felt and how embarrassed we were at how they acted and gave them 45 minutes of 'timeout'. Roxy and Jake fell asleep during timeout so I took the other two swimming. And then Breckie told me she was hungry. 😠
By the time they woke up and came to the pool, it was almost time to get ready for dinner.
There was face painting and Italian food, delicious vegetarian lasagna (seriously, it was really good!) and Roxy ate a whole plate of noodles 🙌🙌🙌, and of course, we ate like 400 cookies and brownies and even smuggled some brownies back to our room (and stored them in a Starbucks to-go cup! We are so clever 😂)
That night they had a magician for the kids/family entertainment. He was really good and we were all mesmerized.
Breakfast is always good. Always the same weird eggs though. I feel like they can't even be real eggs... so every year I usually eat all the lovely carbs that I love so much. Fruit and lots of grains with a little bacon grease on the side 😅
Roxy was so funny one morning and found herself a booster seat and put it in the stroller.
This day we had ALLLLLLLL morning to kill. So we checked out the fish/turtles.
I got this bright idea and ran back inside and snagged a little box of Cheerios as they were putting breakfast away.
We fed the fish Cheerios. A few of Roxy's didn't make it too far and she was desperate to get it over the edge... see her little had pushing off the Cheerios??!
She also found a dog to love on.
We were so hot (and the kids were whiny) so I decided we'd just go back and watch TV until our brains rotted out (because they wanted to wait for Jake to be done but I should have just made them swim because the whole afternoon was a disaster...)
so we get back to our room and they happen to be cleaning it so we ended up finding a "story time" in the lobby and heard about the scavenger hunt (all while chasing Roxy around after she wiggles out of my arms for the 10,000th time) and listening to Breckie whine.
By the time it was all said and done, we had an hour left. When Jake was done, he ate Breckie's leftover lunch from the day before and we headed to the pool (knowing Roxy was on her last leg...)
The kids wanted smoothies and I agreed but told them we had to swim a little first (you know, to spread out the fun and excitement) but within 20 minutes I was totally done with all the whining (from the kids and Jake) and Roxy needed to nap. So I went back to the room (very 'huffy puffy' and all mad-mom like while MANY of the other mom sat on the pool lounge chairs chit chatting and sipping drinks while their kids played and swam in the water 😡) so I sat in the bathtub on stacks of towels while Roxy slept. And I pouted.
I was so mad.
I didn't stop being mad until we dropped the kids off at the babysitting for the leadership toast before cocktail hour.
Jake and I had our own toast-after-the-toast with our leftover Martinellis. Kid-free for 4 hours 🙌
A whole day of whining kids on Summer vacation was a little too much for me. And really, it's not too much different than a normal day but it's harder to be in a tiny hotel room with stuff everywhere and Roxy is just nuts (because she's TWO). But life goes on... and we take repeat pictures of the boys pinching Jake 😆
And I couldn't be mad anymore after getting a new picture of Jake and I looking so fancy!
The awards ceremony was fun, funny and entertaining. The food was pretty good (I AM NOT COMPLAINING!!!! but the dinners in years past were much more tasty. One lady at our able commented that the dessert (raspberry cheesecake) looked like one of those cans of cat food dumped out 😆 But it was all still WAY tastier than I could make so 👍
We are always so grateful to be able to go to Summer Regional even though we both get stressed out so much by our kids. It is just so hard to keep everyone happy-ish... but we also recognize the fact that some of the best years are still ahead of us. When all the kids are out of diapers and when naps aren't needed 🙌
