Weekend Recap

Dave and I had a fantastic Anniversary weekend. We typically don't do much for our anniversary. Our birthdays are in January, Valentine's in February and then our anniversary in March?! It's a lot of "holidays" jammed in the start of the year. This year, we purposely didn't do much for birthdays or V-day and made our anniversary special.


First off, you will notice no pictures in this post. Welp. In Florida, my camera start acting funny the last day. I thought it was just the humidity making the lens foggy. I remembered my dad's DSLR acting this was the first 2 days or so in the Outer Banks. This is not the case. Even with my extreme care of my DSLR, casing it everywhere we go, laying it on a blanket or sweatshirt in the stroller when I wanted it more handy, it's broken. AGAIN. I think it's just the lens, so I'm just going to buy a new lens. I'll try one of my dad's lenses on it today and see but for right now, I'm camera less. UGH. Good thing my Droid has a pretty decent camera for kid pictures.

We headed out on Friday afternoon, around 5:30. We went to stay for the night with Dave's BFF. (ha) Jason is a great guy and he is Rory and Trace's Godfather. We stayed with Jason and his wife Friday night because we couldn't make the full 4 hour trip to Hershey on Friday. We ended up meeting up with one of my SK alumni for appetizers and a cocktail! I can't believe I have students old enough to drink. But that's beside the point. ;) We then got ice cream from the PSU Creamery. (People who aren't in/near Central PA are missing out so BAD on Peachy Paterno!) We headed back to their house and the boys played Just Dance 2 for quite a while. Cinematic evidence was obtained and will be shared. :)

Saturday was without a doubt one of the best days Dave and I have had in a long time. We were relaxed with our plans, going with the flow and just enjoying unscheduled and quiet time together. We went to Chocolate World. If you've never been to Hershey, Choc. World is relatively large building housing all things Hershey. There's a ride you can go on that explains how chocolate is made (FREE!) and you get a sample of a new type of candy at the end. There is, of course, a huge store. Dave was in heaven. :) There's all sorts of things to pay for now that weren't there last time I was at Choc. World. We weren't super interested in most but Dave was ALL OVER the make your own candy bar. It's an interactive factory experience where you actually pick the type of chocolate, toppings and mix ins that will be in your candy bar then design the wrapper. You know my sugar addict husband was like a kid on Christmas with this one! Hey, for ten bucks it was easy to please that one. :)

Then we went to the Hershey Zoo, called ZooAmerica. It was a smaller zoo but it was very nice. It was based on all the different land zones in the US. A neat concept!

Red Robin was next. I was so excited, I've never eaten at one before. It was major delicious. I had some sort of BBQ Chicken Wrap and it was great. Not too heavy or carb-y, which the scale will appreciate on Wednesday.

After that, we headed to the outlets where you have already read I hit the motherload of sales. I also got about 90% of Rory's birthday shopping done for less than HALF of what I had budgeted! I am thrilled, by the way.

It was about 4:30 by that time, so after a quick stop of Sbucks, it was off to our hotel at the Hershey Lodge. SO PRETTY!! Everything is chocolate themed, of course. We were in the main building, the Hershey Kiss Tower. Everything was printed with Kisses. It was a really nice room and the bed was major comfy.

We had dinner at the Hershey Grill. I was a little disappointed in the atmosphere. The website showed the tables much more spread out and it appeared much quieter. I got over it quickly though. (haha) The food was delicious! Our appetizer was my favorite part. It was potato crusted scallops with pear and sweet potato chutney and some sort of delicious beurre blanc sauce. I seriously could have eaten two plates of those and a salad and been THRILLED with my dinner. :)

We slept in some yesterday then got up and headed to meet up with some friends at a mall in Harrisburg.

That's all I'll say about that because it was a disaster. We stayed about 10 minutes then peaced out. NO ONE was harshing our flow at the end of our weekend! :)

We stopped at the dollar theater in State College and FINALLY caught up with the rest of the world and saw Black Swan.

A.Maz.Ing.

Clearly, not for children and there was a couple parts that made me uncomfortable, but it was a fantastic movie. I was super impressed with how true to real ballet rehearsals and work they stayed. And Natalie Portman's training was spot on. She was completely believable as a ballerina. I could be wrong, but I really think the only dancing she didn't do herself was the Black Swan's Coda. If you know anything about ballet, you know that section is often referred to as a dream killer or ballerina slayer. It contains incredibly fast and difficult turns. I can't imagine she mastered the foutee part, but hey more power to her if she did! Maybe she can give me some pointers since I haven't successfully hit the 14 foutees properly en pointe since I was 18. ;)

We got back to Dave's parents around 4:30. We ate dinner with his parents and his grandma and picked up the kiddos. We stopped in to see my parents and by the time we got home, both kids were ready for bed. Easy. Wonderful. Relaxing.

I am so thankful for my fantastic in-laws who took the kids for 2 nights so soon after having them before. It was incredible to just be with Dave and not worry. I didn't worry for ONE SECOND about Trace. (I never worry about Rory, she'd be happy working in a factory.) Trace was fantastic, a little fussy on Saturday but over all a completely different kid. All the details of his current treatment are on my blog dedicated to him: Trace's Journey.

Back to reality today. I have so much work to do. It's recital season! YAYYYY!