Be it ever so humble

"We sleeped over two times at the motel. There wasn't a frigerator, there was just breakfast at the motel."

So goes Boy Wonder's summary of what we did on (part of) our Easter vacation. I'll elaborate a bit, though.

As previously mentioned, my paternal grandparents live in Illinois. They used to drive up frequently for visits, but as they are now in their mid-eighties and have assorted health issues, they do not so much make the long drives anymore. So we miss them, and my parents and uncle's family try to make the drive at least a few times a year. As I had a couple of vacation days to use up, the boys and I went along this time.

We stayed in the aforementioned motel, so my grandparents would not need to go to the trouble of readying the guest bedrooms, and also because my mother thought it would be fun to stay in a hotel with a pool and take the boys swimming. She went to great lengths to find a hotel with a pool, and located the one that the local college swim team practiced at. There was great excitement in the ranks--surely this would be a nice, well-maintained pool, if a swim team practiced there!

Well. The message must have gotten garbled somewhere along the line, because as it turns out, 1) it wasn't the local swim team that used the pool, it was the water aerobics class, and 2) they don't use it anymore anyway. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the pool was heated in a rather odd manner, with the heating mechanism turned on at 8:00 a.m., when the pool opened, and off at 10:00 p.m., when the pool closed. So if one were to, say, wish to use the pool in the morning, one would have a very cold pool indeed. And a very chilly Boy Wonder, who kept insisting that he WAS NOT COLD even as his teeth chattered inside purplish lips and he was bundled in towels and taken back to the room to stand directly in front of the heater for twenty minutes. (Action Hero, perhaps because he was perched on my hip during all of our water adventures, was not as chilled.)

Oh, and the hotel was a DUMP. If you're ever in Rantoul, don't stay at the Days Inn. Unless you like the type of atmosphere that makes you wonder when and why the CSIs will be showing up to gather evidence.

But, as it served our purposes well enough, I shall complain no more, and shall now relate pleasant things. It was very nice indeed to see my grandparents, along with my aunt and uncle. Pre-Easter dinner on Saturday was very nice, as was Easter dinner on Sunday; the boys ate chicken and turkey with wild abandon. Grandparents were very impressed by Boy Wonder's coloring skills and verbal acuity, and Action Hero very charmingly sang his versions of the alphabet song and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." A good time was had by all.

And boy, are we ever happy to be home. (Home, with some ice for scraping; home, where my iPod's playing; home, where the Advil's waiting silently for me...)