Day Twelve: HOLY CRAP BATMAN

How's that for a title? This report will be rather abrupt so I can get to the GOOD part.

Today's sleeping kid is SBS. Yeah, about to fall off. 

Woke up to rain. Ate breakfast, DD moved the PerkyMomMobile so we could load it under cover. Then we drove out to the St. Xavier de Bac Mission.

1- Once we were on the San Xavier Reservation, all the signs were metric. As in "Next Exit 1 km." Uhm, ok.

2- The mission was pretty but under renovation.

3- We thought it was a Jesuit mission but it was taken over by the Franciscans in the late 1700s. And their museum screams the bias. The sign explaining the transition said (paraphrased) "The mission was taken over in the 1700s by the Franciscans, an older and more traditional order of priests."

Ok, the paraphrasing didn't work. It was snarky. They may as well have said: In the late 1700s the much holier Franciscans took it over from those silly Jesuits.  We laughed. Ok. WHAT-EVER. The Franciscans now have to oversee the pilgrims carry a wooden sculpture of a sleeping Jesuit Saint around town and pray to and rub the statue. (St. Francis Xavier.) Yeah, they have plenty of statues of Francis of Assisi around but all their snark doesn't change the fact that their patron saint is a "Blackrobe"...

In the gift shop, the boys INSISTED that a certain souvenir must be purchased for GrandmaChurchLady. (Although it has nothing to do with church or religion.) They picked out one that really did reflect all three boys very well so I could not decline their request. I realized that I should buy a gift for the friend watching our house so I got something for her.

Then we hit the road, armed with my list of every Cracker Barrel in the state of Arizona. We decided to eat at the CB in Casa Grande on our way to the Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.

OMG. Ok, seriously. Does everyone KNOW about Cracker Barrel? I had a salad for lunch. As such, I now have the PERFECT Cracker Barrel Meal - I know what it would be and I share it with you all now, so book mark this or save it in a very special file:

Go on a Sunday Night. Order the Sunday Night Special Home Style Chicken with a side salad with extra sourdough croutons and buttermilk dressing and biscuits.

There. You're welcome. 

After lunch, we shopped a bit in the gift shop again. (Starkist Fruit Gems are a Naturally Fat Free Food...) And then we drove out to the Monument.

The same Jesuit who founded the San Xavier Mission before the Franciscans saved it, was the one who "spotted/found" the Casa Grande Ruins. The boys asked for the Junior Ranger Booklet. It absolutely cracks me up that some of the smaller places have the longer program expectations. We did them all and the ranger reviewed them with the boys. She was very impressed with MG's clarity of speech. All boys passed and did their pledge and got their badges. 

Then I called the Creator of my Barbie Self to double check my plan for getting into Scottsdale. She altered my route slightly and we are really glad she did. We got here in pretty good time.

OhMyGAWD.

OHMYGAWD.

HOLY CRAP.

This place just defies description. ComBS told me that it was going to be amazing but, remember me and expectations? I have to be careful about expecting too much. I just do. 

HOLY CRAP!

We pulled up.

Bellhop opened the doors of our car.

Lady in plain clothes (in Disney speak, we call these "Suits") is welcoming us to the Fairmont. She starts talking to us, escorts me to the check in desk, and then proceeds to stand in the lobby CHITCHATTING with my children while I check in and DaddyDoc directs the Bellhop who's loading the ROLL-E. Once we're checked in, another bellhop takes our ROLL-E to a golf cart and loads all our crap on that. DD takes pics of us on the cart (DUH) and we're off for a tour of the resort and a ride out to the Casitas where we'd find our SUITE.

Mr. Genius couldn't help himself, he HAD to help carry a duffle bag into the room. The bellhop felt bad about it. I told him MG doesn't get it. 

Bellhop shows us our suite, including the huge tub, the walk-in shower, the walk-in closet, the two robes, the ihome, the radio/stereo thing in the living room, the patio, the fireplace, the thermostat. Then he goes and fills our ice bucket FOR us and on the way, calls housekeeping to have three kid-sized robes sent up.

Our patio overlooks the casita pool. 

Holy crap. 

The boys were dancing around the room. They couldn't BELIEVE it, either.

Holy crap. 

Then we walked back to the concierge at the lobby to collect our itinerary. Because we have an itinerary. We only have one thing on it, reservations for tomorrow night. But it turns out that the water slide pool closes at 5:00 pm as do all of the food services offered at the pools, so our plan for kids to eat and swim poolside tomorrow night were a bit foiled.

Concierge suggested dining at LV Bistro which is near the South Pool and has patio seating which over looks the South Pool. Dinner plans for the kids and their new friends and the very gracious Mr. and Mrs. ComBS are saved! They gave me a copy of the brochure for the spa with prices. (Uhm. Hmm. Ok. Nevermind!) And we talked about the kid program and they had lots of questions about online resources for travelers planning trips to specific theme parks. 

Then we finished walking around the resort, finding the last two of the four pools, including the slides and so forth. We went out to the lawn where there are several outdoor games available.

HOLY CRAP.

How perfect is this?

There's a Badminton court. (Believe it or not, my kids know this game. It's a Cub Scout Belt Loop so it's offered at various camps!)

There's bocce ball.

There's whatever lawn bowling is called (it's like skittles or something).

There's a putting green.

There's croquet.

The kids played for a little bit and during that time I opened up my itinerary which had been sealed with a loverly Fairmont gold seal. (By the way, the front desk has everything as Dr. - I think that's how I put it on the President's club. Concierge called us MR and Mrs. It really doesn't matter, it just amuses me when I see "Dr." or when we pick up the phone to call someone and they say "How can I help you Dr. Daddy Doc?" And the Concierge lady made it a point to call me "Mrs. PerkyMommy" several times. I love this place. I love it so much.)

So I opened my itinerary and it said our reservation was for 8:00 pm. No! 6:00, not 8:00! I don't want to keep everyone out so late! That's RUDE. I left the boys at the lawn and told them to meet me at the restaurant for dinner. I took off back for the concierge desk. Thankfully, it was a misprint. The restaurant indeed had our reservation for 6:00 pm.

Here's the funny thing about being the event planner - I forget that I'm the only one who knows everything. The front desk showed me where LV Bistro was at check-in. The Bellhop pointed it out on our way to the room. Then we passed it in our wanderings around the resort back to the lobby. I knew from online research and calling last night to discuss what reservations we would need with the concierge, the names of the restaurants and where we would be eating tonight. So when I told DD "Go ahead and meet me at the Bistro," I figured "yeah, he knows where we're eating and where it is."

OOPS. I left Concierge and the boys all came walking up to find me.

We found the Bistro together.

HOLY CRAP.

Cutest Kid's Menu EVER.

KID APPETIZERS. Carrots and celery with ranch dip, a quesadilla, chicken noodle soup, something else. Too cute.

Then entrees, then a couple of desserts. 

Adult menu looked pretty good but the appetizers sang to me much more than the entrees. I had an heirloom tomato salad with cheese, grilled green onions and a chile dressing. I also ordered the mussels and fries with truffle oil. (Yeah, it was an appetizer that was literally mussels with truffled fries. Weird, huh? But I think that the guy may have misunderstood me and brought me a side order of truffle fries because there was a fried potato thing on the mussels so I think it was a confusion... Whatever.)

I also ordered an adult beverage. I hesitate to admit that I ordered Sangria. Yes, I allowed them to put JUICE in my wine. But it also had brandy and grand marnier in it - and it wasn't all that great. There was no kick to it at all. Now, everyone who knows me knows that I do not enjoy feeling out of control and the reason I know I'll never be addicted to alcohol or drugs is that I HATE feeling out of control like I do when I get buzzed. 

But, come on, if I'm going to spend the calories on an adult beverage, I want to know that there's some booze in there. It's part of the flavor of the drink. Daddy Doc had a glass of sauvignon blanc.

MG ordered shrimp cocktail and helped me eat the mussels and fries. SBS ordered a pizza and barely touched it. The refrigerator in here is a bar thing so no room for the leftover pizza. CS had quesadilla and fruit. I have to say that the kid meals are all VERY reasonably priced. Very.

After dinner we came back to our SUITE to change to swim. I called the ComBS to give her the lowdown on the pools and restaurants and where we are for tomorrow. We had a lovely HOLY CRAP conversation. I gave her the URL here, too, because apparently I hadn't before. OOPS. 

Off to the pool. That south pool is really fun. It has several "sprays" out over the water. It's rather shallow. We all went in. Unfortunately, the third bathrobe was entirely too small for MG but the little boys and I enjoyed ours. The pools are mostly open 24 hours (except the slides.) I tried to take a picture but the magic is hard to capture.

We came back to our room and the rollaway still wasn't here. (The front desk offered to send one to the room - no extra charge. I'd called to ask about it when we changed for the pool. DD called and they said it was on the way. It arrived shortly after that.

I went to log on to the internet. Unfortunately, there's NO Wifi here. Only ethernet in the living room. At $15.00 a day.

UNLESS you're a member of the Fairmont President's Club, which "J@AAA" insisted I do before she made the reservation!!! YEAH!!!! FREE INTERNET, TOO!!!

DD went to the car to grab a couple of things. The car smells like melting crayons. It's still packed with stuff and the boys have dropped crayons so who knows where they are. :( DD tried to find as many as he could. 

It's still pretty warm out there but there aren't any thunder clouds to be seen! It's been sunny so far the entire time we've been on this end of town! The front desk was a bit surprised that I would be at all concerned about rain so here's HOPING!

We ordered a little room service dessert for our anniversary. (Godiva chocolate torte.) Not only was it here lickety split - the guy didn't ask us to sign for it, there was a cute little receipt in an envelope and no place saying "Add a tip even though there's already a service charge." And the guy left without seeming to ASK for a tip, either!!

We actually even discusses ADDING a day here. Yeah. Holy Crap. The front desk said that at this time, it doesn't look like there's an opening. It's probably a good thing. We probably don't need to do that... 

Happy Anniversary, DaddyDoc! Thank you for the Fairmont Scottsdale.

Did I mention: HOLY CRAP???