Blue Roses

I'm back from Wisconsin! We really had an awesome time. Mucho fun. <.g> This is the part where I describe what we did (fog, blizzards and swimming are the tip of the iceberg), so read at your own risk. LOL

We drove up Friday morning, making a pit stop at an A&W just past the WI border. Yes, bad Catholics that we are, we all had hotdogs to go with our rootbeer. So then we're driving, and driving, and the overcast skies start lowering and lowering until the fog pretty much killed all potential for seeing, well, anything. LOL At one point, dad and I were surprised to see cars turning, because we couldn't see the bend in the road 10 feet ahead of us. Quite the adventure, let me tell you! So we get to the hotel an hour early, and they let us check in. We are quite literally in the farthest room on the first floor from the pool. We have to walk about a block through a maze of hallways and grand ballrooms to get there. Well, Josh is still recovering from last summer's surgery, plus his other knee is not so great, and so he can only walk 600 feet. This was farther. So we got to switch into a different room, two doors down from the pool. We stuck Josh onto one of those luggage carts and pulled him to the room. LOL The room was smaller than the first one, but the location was so perfect.

So, we took Josh swimming, and then back to the room. He watched videos, then Cadet Kelly (I was NOT impressed...Hilary Duff did a good job, but the writing was beneath what I've come to expect from Disney), and then mom and I got Harry Potter off the pay per view!!! We were really excited, and were up until midnight watching it. We were both exhausted, but somehow managed to stay up. (Okay, I think I slept through the entire climax scene with the Stone, but I was up in time to se R&H huddling on the balcony, and isn't that what counts? <.g>)

During the night, there was this HUGE storm. I mean, really really huge. I was facing away from the window, had my sleep mask on, and I could still see the lightening as clear as if I was standing right at the window. Poor mom was freaking out. Ick. So we got up a few hours later, on not much sleep, and headed down to the pool. While we were there, the snow started. The winds were whipping around, making the snow actually go horizontal. Eeek! LOL it slowed down after awhile, though, and we left at 11 to rent a wheelchair. (God bless the WI tourist board, BTW, for having such a wonderful service at such a low cost...only $10 a day!!) We got to the downtown area around 12 to hit a few stores. We ended up at 2. When we left at 11, the temp was 42. When we got out of the car at 12, it was 22. Windchill was below 0. We felt it. LOL We hit the candy store, then drove to the candle store, and by the time we got to the restuarant for lunch, we could barely move against the wind. We got back to the hotel around 2, went swimming, and watched the snow fly horizontally again. <.g>

At 5, we headed to the conference room for the RTS stuff. This was the low point of the weekend. It was just so stupid and boring and unorganized. They stuck all the kids in front of the TV and played Disney videos. Yes, hello, let's take our kids who thrive on structure and just stick them in front of a TV all night. Wonderful. And it's just so hard to see parents who do so little for their children. One girl there is 18 and has NO way of communication other than a holler for her mother. I don't understand that. Josh isn't the oldest of the kids, but he's gone so far past everyone else. It's been a lot of hard work and fighting and struggling, but it's so worth it. It's sad to see that not everyone fights so hard and are so surprised to see a kid who spells out his communication and lets people know what he wants. It's great to see so many kids with RTS around, but there's no one who can offer advice or ideas there...they have none.

So that sucked. But hey, the room was right near the bar! LOL I had about 2 apricot stone sours, and a tequila sunrise. I liked. <.g> Then we went back to the room and rented Ocean's Eleven, which mom and I just loved.

We got an early start this morning, leaving around 9, and stopped at the A&W again. (I forgot to mention...I had my very first cheese curds this weekend. LOL They were so yummy!) Then we drove to Border's, avoiding the extremely terrifying and elevated highway in Milwaukee that still gives me nightmares. I had the radio on most of the drive, listening to top 20 songs of the week, so I got to hear Girlfriend, which was fun. <.g> At Border's, I got Making the Tour (half-off), and The Winter Album, which is fun. JC singing lead on I Drive Myself Crazy is just so odd to me, and there was another song I didn't know, either. So that was cool.

So, did I get any work done this weekend? Not so much. LOL I did one day book entry (I wrote a 3 page little story, taking Rupert Holmes' idea of Sam Dane, Private Eye as a 1940's detective story updating of Hamlet and writing a scene, based on the prompt of a disater scene in a restaurant <.g>), and started my application for Camp Chatterbox. (Must mail that tomorrow.) I barely looked at my notes for my exam tomorrow, and don't foresee myself doing that tonight. Oh, but I had an idea for my last story for class...combining elements from hotel stays that I've experienced and turning it into an XFilesian mystery. <.g> The elements would be: lights flickering, ghost woman in hallway carrying a baby, disappearing into fog, rose colored room, doors opening and closing themselves, a voice crying "Help me!", and a parking lot full of cars but no one seen in the hotel itself. LOL It would be a young woman going to her friend's wedding at a hotel, and all these bizarre things keep happening. <.g> I think it could be fun.

So, this was my weekend. It was a lot of fun...we laughed a lot, we played alot, and we froze a lot. <.g> I read all my blogs before I started this post, and i see many many quizlets to be taken. Expect results shortly. <.g>