An Honest Day's Work

It must be in the air, because I feel like several people have re-dedicated themselves to family fun in 2011. We have made it a priority to do one BIG and FUN family activity each month. We had decided a while ago to spend President's Day (a day we ALL have off) to finally take our family skiing. We live minutes from several ski resorts, and I swear we're the only family living here that doesn't spend every weekend skiing or having our kids do ski school. So we decided we would do it. Scary. Mr. Man has only skied once before, the kids NEVER, and I have never skied on a REAL mountain. Much to our dismay, the kids were not thrilled at all. In fact they were very insistent that they did NOT want to go skiing. They were scared and unsure and so that made me even more dedicated to taking them skiing so they could see how much fun it would be. At the same time, we wondered why we were going to drop so much money on something we would have to drag our children to do.

On Friday, Mr. Man asked what I thought about a quick weekend getaway instead of going skiing. We found a hotel a few hours away with an indoor water park and quickly made a reservation. The kids were delighted with the change in plans... and off we went. It's funny what living in a small town will do, but we also found great joy and good deals at stores we don't have: Kohls, Toys'RUs and eating at Olive Garden. And we spent hours and hours swimming and sliding and having fun at the water park.


And yes, I was the screaming woman getting thrills going down the slide!
It was a pure delight to be inside in steaming swimsuits while the snow came down the temperature outside was a mere 3 degrees Fahrenheit.

When it was time to head home, Mr. Man went to scrape off the car and heat it up while I checked out. I was looking over our bill and was a bit puzzled by how little it was. Since I had estimated how much our weekend getaway would cost. I realized that we had been charged for our room but not for our 6 swim park passes. So I went back to the front desk and let them know I thought I'd been undercharged. The one lady at the front desk just looked at me and said: "Wow! Why are you being honest?" I felt almost guilty and a bit self-righteous, while I hadn't even thought twice about it before. The gentleman serving me called up the water park front desk and tried to sort things out on his computer (since we had billed them to our room) and finally looked at me, called me by name and said "Thanks for your honesty. You swam free this weekend. Have a good day."

So great!!! And what a good ending to a fun weekend and a great story to tell my kids. We are reading these great books "Knights of Right" written by a young 17 year old high school student that are adventurous as well as teaching great principles in an effective manner. We had just been reading about honesty! I told the kids we could have swam free without me going back up to the front desk, but that I would have felt horrible; honesty really does pay off, even if we have to pay up. Just this time we didn't!

And now we have a day off before we get back to real life too (a day of homework for me). It was so worth it to get away. Life is good.