In which we travel to rural Azerbaijan with all four children and everyone survives

I'm not much of a traveler.  Those of you who live in the U.S. can now laugh.  But really when you don't include all of the back-and-forth to the U.S. traveling and moving traveling, I haven't traveled much.  Well, for someone who lives overseas.  While in Egypt Brandon and I made it to the Red Sea twice and Istanbul once.  I slept in the Athens Sofitel for two nights while I was being evacuated with the kids.  And I've been through the Frankfurt airport countless times, but that hardly counts as travel.

All of my travel while we were in Egypt was travel without the children.  Because traveling with children is not a vacation - it's just work in a more difficult, more public place.  It's a nightmare, a waste of money, and when you're done you need a vacation from your vacation.  The only reason we take the children with us in the summer is because at this point everybody actually wants to see the children more than us.  Otherwise, they'd be left at home and save the taxpayers thousands of dollars.  I don't. travel. with. children.

This weekend, however, was a first.  Brandon had two days off for Gurban Bayram, and so in a temporary bout of insanity I suggested we take all four children (that seems like a whole lot when it's written down) on a trip to the mountains.  

And then in an extended bout of insanity I had my housekeeper call and book a cabin at the Long Forest "Resort" for two nights.  The booking wasn't very formal - she talked to Ismail and told him that George was coming for Thursday and Friday nights - but I figured that if I'd already bothered to do that, we might as well bite the bullet and get out of town.

And so we did.  

It was quite lovely and I don't think I even caught myself wondering why exactly I had thought this was a good idea.  I won't vouch for Brandon, however. 

Now pictures, to convince all of you who were undecided about visiting Azerbaijan that the country here really is very scenic.  And some children for the grandparents who read this blog.