Sunday Scribblings: Hotel Stories

I love to vacation not necessarily "travel" (although I do like that, but money and time are always short). We love to take little weekend trips and stay in cheap motels and then splurge on fun things to do. When I thought about the prompt "hotel stories," I immediately thought of my adventure in Mesquite, but then I thought of Hawaii, my honeymoon, DisneyWorld with the kids, and a few others. What is funny is that I did not think of the hotel we had to stay in for ONE MONTH when we moved to Atlanta and had to wait for our house...with a three-month-old, two year old and a car that hadn't been shipped yet! So here are the motels/hotels that stand out in my life.

Hawaii: The second time I flew to Hawaii, it was alone with my Grandma. I felt so grown up. We stayed in a beautiful hotel and ate in restaurants that overlooked the island. I ordered horse radish with my filet because I wanted to do the same as my Grandma. I remember ordering pancakes each morning with coconut syrup from room service and buying a beautiful crystal pineapple necklace in the gift shop. My Grandma Stout also taught me the invaluable lesson of NEVER, EVER sleeping with the hotel bedspread. They rarely get cleaned, and to this day I panic when my kids even sit or lean against a hotel bed!

Las Vegas: MY HONEYMOON; Oh, how fun this was! We stayed at Treasure Island (not so exotic, but we had just graduated from college and money was tight). We spent most of our time in the hotel room...if you know what I mean. Well, we were watching the Summer Olympics (1996) and Dave went to the huge window overlooking the pool of our 15th floor room and parted the curtains and looked out. The problem is, he wasn't wearing anything and ladies clear down at the pool kept pointing at him and laughing. He kept turning to me and insisting there was no way they could see him. They just kept pointing and laughing until he admitted that he had put on a show for the entire pool below.

Mesquite: Have you ever felt like a third wheel or maybe like you are the outsider at someone else's family reunion? Well, my ex-sister-in-law (kind of a mouthful) had invited my sister-in-law/best bud and me down to Vegas. She was going with her husband (Dave and Chelie's brother) and we knew it would be fun to see them. So, the two of us drove down and it ended up not-so-good...except for the fact that Chelie couldn't lose that night at the casino. We could not stay another night in a sister-in-law's mother's boyfriend's house, so the two of us drove to Mesquite and stayed in the cheapest motel we could find. It was HORRIBLE...so horrible it was funny. It was filthy, dirty, had mismatched vinyl furniture and beds that sunk in the middle when you tried to sleep. We decided we didn't care because we were going to hang out in the casino anyway...well, we ended up losing EVERYTHING, so we had to go back and stay in the horrible place.