Brad REALLY enjoyed the napping aspect of the vacation!
One of the major parts of the vacation is the Peterson family early Thanksgiving. Brad's brothers built a HUGE cabin but it still seems barely big enough to hold us all! All the kids were in the downstairs family room playing video games and pool (this is only the young kids, all the teenagers were behind me).
What's this?!?! A picture of Brad and I together finally! I'm sure he prefers not to be photographed eating, but you seize the moment, right?
Petersons as far as the eye can see :)!
Back at our condo--all my boys with morning hair enjoying a game of chess.

THIS IS A LONG STORY BUT WORTH THE READ:

I think the most 'exciting' part of our trip happened on Friday night. One of Brad's brothers offered to treat us all to Chinese food. Somehow I got put in charge of the telephone ordering. Everyone had just called out what they thought would be good, I made a list of the twelve or so different entree's , and with no menu to guide me-- I was told to get enough of each thing for five people (there were actually 8 adults and 9 children, so we figured 5 would give us enough). I end up on the phone with the owner of the restaraunt whose English is good, but not perfect. I give him my long list and tell him I need 5 servings of each. He says "five orders?", and I say, "well enough to serve about five people"--then I tell him exactly how many people there are to make sure we get enough fortune cookies. Anyway, we finish the call, he doesn't give me a total, and they show up about an hour later with about ten of these HUGE catering-style pans of food. He ended up giving us five ORDERS of each thing. Seriously, there was enough food to feed about 45 or 50 people. Now hold on to your horses, because we then get told it's going to cost : $498.00!!!! Now Brad's brother is pretty well off, but there is no way he's going to spend that much on food. There are some rather unpleasant words exchanged between he and the delivery man (once again, the owner) (and Karli--this is Mark we're talking about, so you can imagine what the words sounded like), we decide there was fault on both sides--mine for not being more clear about exactly what I wanted, and his for not saying 'hey lady, this seems like an awful lot of food for the number of people you told me there were, and do you know this is going to cost 500 bucks?!" There are some threats about calling the police, yadda, yadda, yadda, we are all civilized people, yadda, yadda, yadda, we end up taking about 1/4 of the food, paying $110 plus tip, and thanking our lucky stars the whole thing had a decent ending. And the food was quite tasty.

The days I didn't post, I know I felt most grateful for such an amazing family. The Peterson's have taken me in as one of their own, and though I wish we were all a little closer the rest of the year (we're a holiday gathering kind of family)--I know that they all love us and care for us very much. Their examples are a constant source of inspiration to me.