Deer Valley Weekend Extravaganza

Since we've been diligently working on perfecting the art of staycationing this year, we've been uber-clued into watching for good local deals. So when a weekend in Deer Valley popped up on our radar, we jumped on it faster than you can say do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do!

We used CJ's birthday as the perfect excuse, because that's the way we roll. We like to celebrate birthdays for a good week around here. We're fun like that.

Lucky for us, some of our besties jumped on it too and we all got to enjoy a much needed just-close-enough-yet-secluded-enough-to-feel-far-away kind of weekend getaway at the beautiful Chateaux at Silver Lake.

We spent Friday night loving every.single.minute of the delightful VonTrapp Children at the Deer Valley Music festival. I argue that the only possible thing better than feasting on a delicious picnic in a beautiful mountain setting with crisp, clear mountain air and symphony music playing is also being able to sing along to the Sound of Music favorites. A perfect combination really.

staying up waaayyy past bedtime
and loving every bit of it!

She clapped and bounced right along with the music and couldn't have loved it any more.

evidenced by this smile.

...and this one as she's lovin' her some auntie g time!

This picture is a little deceiving as she really only crashed for about 25 minutes only to wake up in a start, wondering what she had missed and ready to go again. As hard as I tried to get her to sleep, she lasted pretty much until the bitter end (and was actually delightfully happy)

We took a beautiful mid-day Saturday drive to Oakley to feast on cheeseburgers, onion rings and milk shakes at the Road Island Diner. It was well worth every single calorie.

After the second mostly failed attempt at baby naptime... we snuck in some afternoon pool time, which pretty much makes a vacation a vacation, atleast in my mind.

There's nothing sweeter than a daddy and his little girl.
Nothing.

We rounded out our nearly perfect Saturday with a beautiful and insanely delicious dinner on the patio at Cena. The setting was breathtaking, the food was delicious and the company couldn't have been better. A nearly perfect evening.

LJ was loving her some of the endless, warm Italian bread. mmm.

And just in case we weren't entertained enough with all of the copious amounts of mouth watering food, Leah kept us all laughing with her newest trick of sticking a lotion bottle (or whatever else) in her mouth and giving us the look of "Hey, do you see this...no hands. Cool, huh?". It's amazing (or embarrassing) how much I swoon over all of her cute, little proud moments... no matter how absolutely ridiculous they may be!

Unfortunately, all good weekends end sooner or later and the only thing that slightly softened the blow was one last pit stop of outdoor dining at Loco Lizard on our way down the canyon...

A pretty great weekend, indeed!

We're getting pretty good at this whole get-away thing with our new little sidekick. She's a fantastic traveller, a good sleeper, a good sport when choosing to bypass her naps and a great go-with the flow travel buddy. If she keeps this up... there may very well be a Hawaiian beach trip on the horizon!

And in the meantime... 2011-Year of the Staycation is treating us pretty alright if I do say so myself!

(and yes.... as clearly evidenced, I easily ate a weeks' worth of calories in about... oh 36 hours)

(and no.... I don't regret one single bit of it)

(and if you want to see more of our fun weekend, you can check it out here)

xox