sarah anderson: Memorial Day Weekend

So about a year-and-a-half ago, a few of Jordan's buddies were coming out to visit for a long weekend of skiing. To make things a little less expensive for our friends, we're usually able to borrow a couple of ski medallions, which are transferrable ski passes for unlimited skiing and riding with no blackout dates to six mountains in Colorado - aka a medallion is to a skier/snowboarder as a Golden Ticket was to Charlie Bucket. Unfortunately we weren't able to obtain any medallions for the weekend, but a friend who works at a really nice resort in Breck suggested we sit through a 90-minute timeshare presentation and in exchange we would receive two free ski passes, no purchase necessary. Okay, perfect.

Or not.

South Park aired an episode a while ago called "Asspen," and it's still one of my favorite episodes ever. It's so funny. If you're not a South Park enthusiast like myself, the episode is about the boys and their parents vacationing in Aspen for "free" because they saw an ad that if they sit through a 30-minute timeshare presentation they could stay the weekend for free. The parents sit through the presentation and repeatedly refuse to buy, but then they're told the presentation is actually a lunch. So they sit through the lunch and ask to leave halfway through when they're suddenly told to look at the other side of their place cards, which reveal a prize to use an exclusive chairlift. So they're finally excited to be out skiing and thinking they're going to be skiing an exclusive part of the mountain when suddenly their chairlift takes them straight back to the presentation room. They try to leave the room only to be held at gunpoint by police officers, who evidently work for the timeshare company as well, and find out everyone in authority, including the President of the United States, works for the timeshare company. Finally, the parents are forced to buy a timeshare, but by the time they're done signing, the weekend is over. It's ridiculous and hilarious -- and so. freaking. true.

HELLO.

Jordan and I totally got South Parked.

The presentation was supposed to be only 90 minutes, but our friend who suggested the idea said they usually only last an hour. A whopping four-and-a-half hours later, Jordan and I finally met our buddy for a drink -- as the proud owners of a "Breckenridge Grand Vacations: Timeshare Experience" holder. Dead serious.

But even though we didn't intend on buying anything, we did get a lot for what we paid: in addition to the two free ski passes, we also got an entire weekend at the resort, two more activities of our choice (ski passes, round of golf, spa services, etc.), a $50 gift certificate to one of their restaurants, free use of their underground, heated parking garages for a year (Breck charges $20 to park in their lots during the season), free day use of their resorts for a year (including gyms, game rooms, locker rooms, ski storage, indoor and outdoor heated pools, indoor and outdoor hot tubs, etc.), and the big ticket: a one week "Dream Vacation" (literally what they call it) at one of their timeshare resorts anywhere in the world for the timeshare price of $200-400 (yes, for the entire week) - and that's really what sold us. We knew we were going to start trying to get pregnant, but c'mon. It was November 2012 - we had plenty of time before June 1, 2014.

No, actually we didn't.

Wednesday, May 14th, I remembered our "Dream Vacation" and realized we had of course run out of time. I checked their website for resort availability, and there was practically nothing available at such short notice, so we didn't have much of a choice other than to book the week in CO. The resort available was one of the nicest resorts in Breck, which was awesome---but we booked knowing fully well we wouldn't even get to enjoy half of the week due to work.

AHHHHH.

But we did manage to get up there by Thursday afternoon, and we had a lovely, relaxing weekend. (Although I wanted to slap myself when upon checking in, the concierge said, "Mrs. Anderson, we're so overjoyed you're staying here, but we're also wondering why you chose to have your Dream Vacation with us when you could have gone anywhere in the world." Yeah---thanks, buddy.) We met up for dinner one night with my girlfriend Keri, who I was dying to visit with since I had only seen her once for 10 minutes after she had gotten back from Sochi (yes, she was in the Olympics!), we saw our friends who recently moved to Silverthorne and saw their adorable place (the guys also went golfing at an awesome course), and we took Sydney for her first dip in a pool. It wasn't anything super extravagant, and the weather was a little chilly, but the resort and suite were so nice and it was so much fun to just to cozy up with our little family in the mountains. Can't complain about that, right?

Hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. I heard/saw on Facebook how gorgeous the weather was in Minnesota, and with so many pictures of cabins/lakes posted, I can't say I wasn't a tiny bit homesick!