Lake Tahoe Ski Week 2009

We finally got our big family Christmas in Tahoe trip planned! All the kids are old enough now...no more babies, AND we found two houses close together that we all agreed on! Yippee! Last year we tried to coordinate this, but it was terrible just finding houses to accommodate us all. Anyway, we used to spend a lot of time in Tahoe, and have made some choices based on what we used to do and enjoy...we're hoping it hasn't changed too much! We'll be 3 couples, 1 grandma, 9 kids (ages 4-13) staying between Northstar and Kings Beach in two houses that we found through ReserveMyHome.com. I never publicly plug businesses, but this was great, especially compared to last year when we never did find accommodations. This website is awesome - it has such great descriptions of the properties, down to whether or not there's a crock pot in the kitchen, and we booked them and paid right there on the site.

So, we're thinking that we need to do some sledding, but we're not sure where the sled hills are. Also, we'll have probably 7 kids that we want to put in ski lessons. We haven't been to Northstar since it's been all re-done...does anyone have any recommendations to go there or to stay away from there for kids' lessons? We also heard that there's a Children's Museum in Truckee...I really can't imagine that it's super-big, but how many hours could we realistically get out of it?

I'm so excited about this trip...to get it booked for Christmas in late September...I'm so happy about that. I was worried that if I wasn't a year in advance, we wouldn't get anything. Anyway, after looking at both the houses on Google Maps, we could see that the neighborhood we'll be in is great.

Hope someone will have some advice to offer! Check out the restaurants I picked...are they still good?