Boyne Mountain

Jason and I have been super excited about our President's Day Weekend excursion to Boyne, Michigan and the calendar finally rolled around to February 18th! We left on Friday and got back late Sunday night. We spent three days exploring and snowboarding Michigan's version of a mountain and laughing a lot at the antics of our 18 month old. I think I was most excited about anticipating our stop at Noodles & Company in E. Lansing. Jason and I stumbled upon Noodles when we were in Denver and it quickly became an obsession. If there was ever a restaurant to meet my pasta fix, it was definitely Noodles & Co. I've often scratched my head about why I didn't come up with their brilliant business plan before they did. Oh well, we love Noodles and were ecstatic to find out E. Lasing had one of their very own. Jason typed their address...205 E Grand River Ave, Lansing, MI... into google and we were on our way! Ninety minutes later we found ourselves in about the worst neighborhood of Lansing searching for a block of E Grand River Ave that didn't exist. We found the 100 block and the 300 block but for the life of us couldn't find 200! Fortunately, during our futile search we stumbled upon a bike shop and ambled in hoping to find someone who could point us in the right direction. A local kindly pointed out that we were in Lansing, not E. Lansing and we would need to head 3 miles east to find Noodles. He gave us directions, sent us on our way, and 5 minutes later we walked into our favorite Noodle joint on MSU's campus. It was 50 degrees and the college kids were wearing shorts and flip-flops. Man if felt good to be on a college campus again. Or maybe it was just the sun?! It didn't matter. We didn't even have to look at the menu to remember our old favorites. Penne Rosa with Feta, please!

Now you're probably wondering how Mr. Levi did. He was a saint the entire trip. I was pretty leary about the car ride after our infamous drive through Kansas last winter. I was starting to dread the feeling of wanting to pull my hair out while I helplessly listened to my wailing child. I waited and waited but it never came! For 2 hours Levi babbled in the back seat. He would carry on converstations (hand movements and all) with himself and when he got tired of talking to himself he would just say Daddeee or Mommaaaa until he got one of us to talk back to him. It was amazing, and such a relief! When we were about 20 minutes away he started to get antsy so I offered him a cracker. 15 minutes later he was still saying "More Cracker. More Cracker." while signing more. This is a classic Levi carseat photo. It doesn't matter where we're going or how long the drive is he always takes off his left sock and shoe. If you look closely you can see Levi's version of the sign for more. Somewhere along the way he got more and medicine confused so it looks like he's saying more medicine, but don't worry we don't drug Levi!

I lost count of how many crackers Levi had in the last 20 minutes of the trip, but it was a lot. So many that he started storing them in the cupholders of his carseat. We should have cut him off as those crackers would come back to haunt us. We got to the resort, got checked in, dropped our car off, and headed off to find some dinner.

We found a great little restaurant at the base of the mountain with window seating that allowed us to watch the night skiers on the double black diamonds. We were some of the first diners there and were seated adjacent to a group of families. There were 3 couples and 8 tweens among them. Jason ordered a Monte Cristo, Levi had mac n' cheese and I got my beloved French Onion Soup. My soup came out first and was piping hot. I began to blow on it and no sooner than my first puff hit the spoon did Levi start shrieking "Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot!" Yes Levi, momma's soup is hot. But he didn't stop. "Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot!" The couples next to us just smiled and chuckled. I hurriedly downed my soup and reminded Levi that it was no longer hot. I guess we're getting to the point that we need to watch what we teach him. When I taught him that his food is hot a long time ago I never thought he'd be screaming at me in a restaurant to tell me that my food was hot. The humiliation didn't end there. As we waited for our check to come Levi was getting anxious so I held him on my lap. I noticed that his belly was extremely taut. I thought that was weird but quickly figured he was just full. Boy was I right! No sooner than I started to think about Levi's distended stomach did he begin puking gallons of puke right there in the middle of the restaurant! To top it off the pre teens at the table next to us all started shouting in unison. "Ewwwwww Groossssssss!". I could feel dozens of eyeballs staring at us and my cheeks redden. I have never wanted to roll over and die so quickly in my life. And poor Levi! He was still sitting on my lap wimpering and confused and wondering where the acrid stench cloaking his body came from. I don't remember much of what happened next, but I rushed Levi back to the room got him changed, checked his temp and realized he was good to go. It must have been the 2 dozen crackers he ate in the car or the 16 times he spun himself in circles in our room before dinner. Regardless, he was praticing his J-turns by the time Jason paid the bill and got back to the room.

The next morning we planned to be up early, but not too early, to catch the breakfast buffet at the aforementioned restaurant. Levi was sleeping in our room in a pack & play. He slept great. So great we got a few good laughs out of him. He rustled around at 3:30 a.m. but fell right back to sleep. We heard him again at 6:30 but we stayed excrutiatingly still hoping he would fall back to sleep. Wrong. It was like a timer went off in that little head of his. Ding. We heard him jump up, grab the side of the pack and play and shout "All Done!" So much for sleeping in! Stick a fork in Levi he's done. Thanks to Levi we got a head start on all of this...

And while we were off having fun, Levi had his own fun at Helga's Haus. Jason and I must have had the same converstaion about a dozen times. We can't wait until Levi is big enough to tackle the hills with us! The lady at Helga's said Levi spent a lot of time just watching the skiiers and snowboarders come down the mountain. It won't be long little buddy!

One evening we took Levi up to see Petoskey & Lake Michigan. If it wasn't frozen over we would have let him stick his toes in!

We stayed in the Edelweiss. It was the only building with ski-in ski-out accomodations and it was located up the mountain from the lifts. It would have been perfect except Levi can't ski-in or ski-out of anywhere! We had to do a lot of trekking, but Levi seemed fascinated with all of the action. We took this picture from the lift on our last day.

And this...let's just say it's Pure Michigan!