Limos and Mattresses

You ask what limos and mattresses have in common??? Nothing, really, other than the fact that I am going to blog about the both of them in this post.

Darin left on Wednesday for an Executive Retreat in Park City. After three long days filled with intense training, planning, and goal setting, the spouses were invited up for a nice dinner with them on Friday night. A limousine picked us up at the office and drove us to park city to the new Waldorf Astoria Dakota Lodge where we met our "dates". After walking around the new hotel, we were chauffered to the River Horse on Main (restaurant) for dinner. Yummy. I ordered the salmon. It was fun going "out" with Darin and seeing him with his new co-workers. He loves his job and he is very much respected. He had to put out a fire or two while we were there (because he's the party planner), but for the most part he actually got to sit and enjoy most of the dinner. We then went back to the hotel by limo, collected Darin's belongings, and left for the office so that I could pick up my car. It was a nice evening and the kids were alive when I got home after leaving them with a sitter for 7 hours. What more could I ask for?

Saturday, we did "normal" stuff...bathed the girls, cleaned out some of the garage, put laundry away, unpacked a few boxes, and went mattress shopping, etc. Mattress shopping has got to be one of the most overwhelming things to do? Why does it need to be so hard? Sure, no one likes to spend that much $$$ on something without researching it out. And, we only spend 1/3 of our lives in bed. But, why is it so difficult? Since Darin's back surgery, we have seen the need to finally get a new mattress. Neither of us have been happy with the current one we have had for almost 14 years and we want to make sure that his back is taken care of. Darin slept really well on the bed at the hotel this past week, so he's comparing every other mattress to it. He tried to find out what bed it was his stay at the hotel, but could only see the Serta name on it. Our Dakota has a Serta twin mattress in her room and we consider it one of the best beds in our house. She is a lucky girl. As we were shopping, we laid on several Serta and non-Serta mattresses, but it was absolutely impossible to really get a feel for them, especially while the kids were running around the store. While we were at the last store, another customer overheard Darin talking to a saleswoman about the bed at the Waldorf. The customer explained that they personally have the Waldorf Astoria Serta mattress and absolutely LOVE IT. Apparently, they had stayed at one of the Waldorf hotels and loved the bed in the hotel so much that after arriving back home, called the hotel to find out more information on it. They were told that Serta makes a private line of mattresses specifically for the Waldorf Astoria hotels. And...that anyone could order one of these mattresses through their contact and have it delivered directly to his/her home. This customer strongly recommended we do just that and continued to praise the mattress. All the while, the nearby salespeople were looking more deflated as the conversation continued, realizing they would probably not make a commissioned sale with us that day. Needless to say, Darin is going to call his "contact" at the hotel and find out how to get one of their mattresses. I wonder how many pennies that'll cost. We'll see if it's even feasible. If not, we'll be back to the musical mattresses, laying on each, one-by-one, for 15 minutes to see how it feels, while your kids are jumping on all the other beds like the 5 little monkeys (4 in our case).

Do any of you have suggestions on mattresses? Just curious.

All this talk about beds has left me wanting for mine (as uncomfortable as it is). Good slumber to you all.