Weekend Get-away

 It has been such a nice weekend!  Yesterday my husband decided we ought to get out of town.  Well, the decision to go was made last weekend.  He wanted to ski Jackson Hole one more time before the season was over (which of course the nine year old was thrilled to hear.)  He wanted me to come along too.  Not to ski, but to be able to shop and have meals together, which I thought sounded wonderful.  Since I opened the daycare to 24/7 care, I've had kids without a break.  It was definitely time for a break.

On the way up, I started working on a new scarf.  I had been eyeing this pattern on Pinterest for a long time - it's called a crocodile stitch because it looks like scales.  I made it this far just on the drive up (about an hour worth of crocheting - which will go faster now that I know the stitch well.  It's much easier than I expected.  I had thought about taking the younger boys to the library while we waited for our skiers to be finished, and when I checked out the Teton County Library online, I found that they had a meeting for people to come and crochet at the library.  I intended to join them (the meeting was conveniently located in the children's area) but it was such a nice day and the boys had been so good while I shopped, that we went to the park instead.

 Our day started with dropping off my husband and nine year old at Teton Village.

You can see the ski runs on the mountain as we drive up.  It's pretty interesting geography - completely flat land, with these mountains just going straight up all of the sudden.  No foothills.

 Then the youngest two boys and I headed into Jackson Hole and did some shopping.

 We met the guys back at the resort for lunch at a place with a German theme - the Alpenhof bistro.  It is connected to their resort.

Being allergic to nearly everything under the sun, I wasn't sure that we'd be able to find anything on the menu for the one year old, but they had fresh fruit bowls left over from their breakfast menu.  And WOW.  It was huge and incredibly good.  The baby was in food heaven.  He ate every single bit of it. (You can't see the, but there are grapes at the bottom of the bowl too.)  I had some of his rice cereal along, so he had that too.  And the best part was that it only cost $3.50.
 

 My husband and I decided to each order something different, then split them.  The sandwich in the front is schnitzel, and the one at the back is battered walleye.  Both were very good, though apparently this restaurant doesn't believe in salting their food.  Once I put salt on it, they were both amazing.  In the end though, I decided that my tastes have changed, and I would have preferred to get the Caesar salad with chicken.  I almost did, but how do you go to an authentic ethnic food place and not order something cultural?  If we ever go there again though, I'm definitely having the salad.

(In case you're worried about my diet, I'm still on it, but I get one day a week when I can have anything I want, so I planned for this to be it.  That didn't pan out so well, as I no longer seem to be able to handle carbs.  They made me sick. Literally.  Good lesson though.  Next week, instead of gorging myself on junk food, I'll splurge and have a sweet potato with my steak, or maybe some garlic bread, and ONE little something sweet.)

  

 After lunch, the little boys and I hit the whole foods grocery store to pick up supplies for the youngest.  Odd things like guar gum, and other things I never would have known existed before our rude introduction to the world of food allergies.  Good news is I ought to be all set to bake anything in the cookbooks now.

(Okay, so this is gross, but I had to show you.  When you go to a park around here, you've got to watch for droppings.  These were either moose or elk.  And he wasn't playing with them when I started to snap the picture.  And yes, I did get to him before he got to them.)

 The boys were very into the slides at this park - especially the one they could go down side-by-side.

I bought the four year old a snack of "cheese curds" at Dairy Queen (remember I could have anything I wanted to eat that day, and I wanted a turtle bowl sundae - which I knew right away was way too rich.  Should have opted for the rootbeer float.  All day long, I kept thinking, "How in the world did I not notice how bad/rich/icky all this food was when that's what I normally ate?"  I kept buying things I thought I was dying to have, then taking a bite or two and setting it aside - which I guess in the end was a really good thing.  Still though, it ended up being too much.)

 It was a real task to keep up with these two at the park.  There is no fence and traffic does go by all the time.  It's not a super-busy street, but busy enough that you can't let your guard down.  I had hoped to crochet or read, but mostly I just ran and chased, and helped up the slide :)  which wasn't a bad thing either.

 Mostly this little guy was interested in throwing leaves and wood chips.

During our shopping adventures yesterday, I found two very large beef roasts on sale (manager's special type sales), and I immediately thought of the recipe I had seen on Pinterest for making your own deli meat.  So tonight I baked them both and we had some for dinner, and will use the rest for sandwich meat.  We ate less than a quarter of one roast, if that gives you any idea how big these were.

The recipe is very simple - oil the roast, then rub on salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder, and put into a 500 degree oven for 20 minutes.  Reduce the heat to 300 and cook another 30 minutes.  Remove from oven, tent with foil, and let it rest for 20 minutes, then slice.  I only sliced up one roast tonight.  I wanted to see if it slices any easier when it's cold.  I suspect it will.  It would be very handy to have a meat slicer, and I'll probably get one when I can, as this is definitely going to be something we'll want to make over and over.  I'm anxious to see if it stays moist.

 I've been working on putting together individual portions for the one year old and freezing them so he can have a good variety of food.  I've been adding to it with most meals we make - just making a bit more and taking his portion out ahead of everything.

 The pumpkin here was left over from making pumpkin pancakes last week in the daycare, and the bananas were the over-ripe banded variety you can get super cheap.  I used what I needed to make his  banana oatmeal cookies one day, then portioned out the rest for future cookie days.  That reminds me I need to set one of those packets out tonight so he'll be able to have more cookies for breakfast tomorrow.

 I've got a gallon bag that I keep the snack size bags in to keep them from going all over the place in the freezer.  It is completely full at the moment - and that doesn't include the containers I have in the fridge with things I plan for him to eat in the next day or two.  I bought a set of containers with green lids (as opposed to our normal set which is red) so I can see at a glance that those things are okay for him - green light items, so to speak.  Only his own safe foods go in those containers.

 So I'll leave you with a couple shots of the four year old, who likes his cowboy boots so well, that he thinks he has to wear them with his footed sleeper too.

Yee haw!