When we were growing up, we would spend Thanksgiving weekend in Minneapolis.  We would stay at the Hyatt, walk around downtown, marvel at what it must be like to live in a big city.  Marty has similar memories from when he was a kid, except that they didn't stay downtown, they stayed at The Thunderbird.  In each of our separate memories, we remember loving to stay at hotels and thinking that we were big shots.  So last weekend, we planned our first family big shot weekend getaway.

We kicked off our weekend with a trip to the Target Center to see Sesame Street Live.  When you're a kid who lives in a small town, everything in a city is new and exciting.  Especially parking ramps, ticket booths, skyways, escalators, elevators, and (luckily for us) public bathrooms.  The walk from the ramp to the Target Center was filled with excitement.  Everyone around us was happy and chatting and talking about Elmo.  We made our way into the arena and found our seats, which were by far the best either Marty or I have ever had at a performance (this excitement was totally lost on our kids since this was their first performance ever).  Seriously, look at this, we were like 15 feet from the stage:


We bought junky, glowing, spinning toys.  We let them eat snowcone-like slushes that turned their faces and clothing blue (later their diapers too).  They loved it.


They danced in the aisle, cheered from their seats, cried when we wouldn't buy them Elmo balloons then cheered even more when Marty did.


Oh yes, they liked the performance too.  Martin said that he wanted to ask Elmo if he could live with them and go on the stage.  I asked if I could go too and he said I'd have to ask Elmo.  Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to get too close to the stage because one of the "security guards" told me in advance that it wasn't a good idea to let the kids climb up there.  I thought it was a dumb point to make at the time, thinking "well, who would let their kids go up there?"  But then when I saw that she wasn't much of a "guard" as she spent the second half of the performance grooving to the disco tunes and it sort of made me want to.

By the time we left, we were all very tired and ready to eat.  We started the long trek back to the car.  Everyone was sticky, tightly holding those spinning toys, giant Elmo balloons tied to my backpack were bouncing off the heads of the people behind me, and both kids wanted to be carried.  The pleasant atmosphere we witnessed on our way in was gone, now replaced with crying kids everywhere.  I looked at the faces of parents around me and we all wore the same expressions that said "thank god my kids aren't screaming like that one" and "I hope we make it to the car" and "don't breathe too loudly, we have a very delicate balance here".

We made it to the car, got some food, then checked into our hotel.  By this time it was mid-afternoon and it both of the kids were exhausted but it was obvious that they weren't going to take a nap.  Clearly the perfect time for me to leave the kids with Marty and go have a glass of wine with my friend from home, Amy, who conveniently lives one block from our hotel.  It was nice to see her again, and lovely to meet a friend for a drink, which I haven't done in years.  When I came back from my brief hiatus, we put on our suits and went down to the hotel waterpark:


We swam until everyone was pruned, shivering and itchy from all the chlorine.  We all changed into pajamas, then introduced the kids to one of the best things on earth... room service:


It was awesome, we set the kids up in front of a movie and let them eat on the coffee table while Marty and I enjoyed a peaceful dinner just a few feet away.  It was almost like having a nice dinner with just the two of us, assuming that there is some restaurant for adults that would play the soundtrack from "Tom and Jerry" in the background.

On Sunday, we walked to Caribou for coffee and hot chocolate, then returned to the hotel for breakfast.  We went swimming one more time, then went out for lunch at a restaurant that Martin selected.  For two days, he talked about going to eat at "Rock and Roll" (which you may know as the Hard Rock Cafe) and introduced the kids to Marty's very favorite thing (even better than room service) ... valet parking.

It was a lot of action packed into a short period of time, and we had a great time on our first family big shot weekend getaway.