Viva Lake Tahoe!

We just got back from a fabulous trip to Lake Tahoe with my family to celebrate my mom's birthday. Her birthday isn't till August, but since my sister will be having baby #2 then, we bumped up the celebration.

We were really looking forward to this, as it's the first Choi family vacation since Banff in 1998, when Kevin and I were newly engaged, and my sister and her husband were "just friends". And I hate to admit this, but after coming to Tahoe at least once a year when I was a kid, it's my first trip up to Tahoe in more than 15 years!!

First of all, the house was amazing! Even by Dollar Point standards, I was still surprised. It was right across the street from the lake, and it was huge! Kevin, Lucas and I had our own suite upstairs, which featured a Jacuzzi tub and shower/sauna.

Back to our vacation ... We had a wide range of weather while we were up there (and it had snowed just days before we arrived). Chilly, sunny, hail, thunder, and rain. That being said, we still had a great time. We took daily walks to the beach, swam, biked, and hiked.
We also spent a lot of time indoors playing pool, playing board games, and just relaxing. With a house like this, there were plenty of nooks and crannies where you could go and curl up with a book, or just take a nap!
Lucas is at that age (4 and 11/12ths) where he's really into board games, especially when the rest of us are engaged in a game. I taught him the finer points of Scrabble, which he thoroughly enjoyed. We also played a game called Apples to Apples (which was way above his head with things like "the Mafia", JFK, atomic bomb). But he was a trooper and played as best he could. He would even look at the cards in his hand in the most discerning way, probably not comprehending or even able to read most of them, and put one down saying, "I'm going to have to go with this one," or "Aha, I have the winner," and other things he would hear us say.

One of our other favorite indoor pastimes was eating, of course...we ate in for every meal taking turns cooking and cleaning so my mom didn't have to take up her usual station in the kitchen. We ate ice cream every night after dinner and snacked all day ... we were quite indulgent.

But a Choi vacation wouldn't be the same without karaoke. My mom has a nifty little karaoke gadget that has a slew of Korean songs, but also some American and pop/rock tunes. While my mom took care of the Korean tunes and her token Elvis songs, Kevin rocked the house with his renditions of "Staying Alive" in this crazy falsetto voice. The rest of us took our turns "on stage" and took the jeers and mocking that came with some of our performances.

Here's Rocky and I doing our standard version of "Fame" with Kevin providing some seated dance moves.
We also had the cutest backup band ever. Lucas took the microphone a couple times and belted out "Row Your Boat" and "This Land is Your Land". Bedtime was another rule we broke on this vacation with the kids staying up to at least 10 every night.


Here's a Choi family photo on the beach. It took several takes for us to get one where we're all looking in the right direction (kids), smiling (kids+Kevin), and not blinking (everyone).
Lucas and I engaging in some shadow boxing as we were getting ready to leave.

And this is our family dream house, right down the street from where we stayed. It's on sale for a cool $4.5 million, so we're putting our pennies together. We'll be back!