Weekend away

This weekend we went up to Vermont to celebrate Joe (Dave's friend from college) and his wife, Monique's marriage. Last year they got married in South Africa (where Monique and her family are from) and unfortunately we (and many others) weren't able to make it. So for their 1 year anniversary their parents had a wedding reception for them at The Vermont Inn.

I was just beside myself with how incredibly adorable the Inn is! I couldn't get enough of it! It made being in Vermont in the middle of winter with the freezing weather and all the snow tolerable.

The Inn


Our view

The Inn is now owned and run by the Duffy family including their dog Sassy (a bonus in my book) and when we arrived Jennifer, showed us around. Since not many people were checked in yet we got to take a peak at a lot of the other rooms. Every room was different! I immediately fell in love! Some even had their own fireplaces.

Our room


Mike next door in his pink room
He wasn't a big fan of the Inn. Being over 6 feet tall he was really close to hitting his head on a lot of the ceilings! But the pink room is actually the most popular room at the Inn due to it's charm and price.

After we settled in we decided to check out The Greenbrier Inn store that we passed coming in. MOST ADORABLE store I've ever been too! It was an Inn that was converter into a gift shop so while there were many little rooms set up with a theme it was an open floor plan. So you go from room to room and each one has a zillion of it's own cute-sie things for sale. We easily spent and hour there. I found so many things I'd love to have and a tons of things I wanted to get for others but had no occasion in mind for which I could get them. And since we'd just finished buying all our Christmas presents I really didn't want to buy anything to store away for some future gift. Although I did buy a couple small things and got some good ideas for a couple things to make. Definitely a store we'll visit again next time we are in the area. I'm hoping for a fall trip in the next couple years!

The Greenbrier Inn Store

After our shopping adventure we headed back to the Inn to find home baked cookies and hot cider! How much cuter can this place get??!

Later that night was the wedding reception. It was so nice to celebrate with Joe, Monique and their families and catch up with everyone from the VT 251 crew that was able to make it (Morgan, Emily, Val, Jeff, & Mike) and those who couldn't make it were missed.

And of course I didn't take a single picture at the reception dinner so I have to wait for Morgan to post all of hers!

Aladar

Aladar (our bearded dragon that I bought myself when I was 22) just recently turned 8!!

Because Al is contained in his 40 gallon tank he doesn't get in any trouble and he's such low maintenance he doesn't require much attention. He's fed and I keep his tank clean but other than a hundred passing by's a day, a few licks on the glass from his buddy Oliver, and a visit now and again from the little girls that live next to us he's sort of left to entertain himself. And frankly he doesn't even like to be held anymore, which is completely my fault since I stopped handling him when he was still pretty young due to his fascination with fleeing from my hands. He'd always run to a hiding place that was IMPOSSIBLE for me to get to and I would have to sit and wait and entice him with a bowl of meal worms until he decided to come back out. Well that was fine and dandy when I lived in a room at my dad's but once I moved out to my own apartment his days of freedom slowly came to an end. And it only got worse for Aladar once he and I added Dave to our family and adopted his younger sister Roxy who it turned out was not his biggest fan! And that's just through the glass.

And [this is so embarrassing] earlier this year I thought he was dead and Dave and I went as far as turning off all his lights and heaters for a couple days and it wasn't until I went to take him out to bury him that I realized he was just in a VERY deep sleep (in my defense: he's been known to "hibernate" for a couple days but not so deep that you couldn't wake him up out of it)! I've thought about giving him to someone that may be able to offer him a more exciting life but it just wouldn't be the same without him around and frankly I wouldn't be able to sleep at night thinking about how he was. And I know that feeling would never go away. And Oliver would miss him.

I wish we could get him a lady friend (if I put another male in the tank there would be a fight to the death). But unfortunately it's hard to come by adult dragons (and when you do they're expensive) and you can't tell whether a young dragon will be a male or female for a year or 2.
I'm not even sure he'd appreciate having to share his tank, I was never a big fan of sharing my room with my sister! And who knows, maybe one day we'll have a fearless son (or daughter) and they'll be the best of friends!

Giving Thanks

I can't believe it been over a week since Thanksgiving! Between being in charge of our big move at work during the day and my nights being consumed with all the things I need to make in time for Christmas, time is FLYIN'! And since Thanksgiving is my 2nd favorite holiday (St. Patrick's Day being my 1st) AND this is our first year with a successful turkey dinner I couldn't let it pass without a posting (even if it's over a week late).

We had our guinea pigs (my dad, Jen and Joe) over for an afternoon lunch again. We tried this last year and it was a total disaster so we figured we owed it to them. Really we just needed to prove to ourselves we could make a delicious dinner and since they were such good sports about the raw turkey last year we figured anything would be an improvement for them! And in our defense we had no control over the turkey being raw. We had NO idea one of the heating coils in our stove was going to blow on such a crucial day! Which really just screwed everything up because I did my best to time it so the sides would be ready when the turkey was supposed to be ready. So not only did we have raw turkey, we had cold sides! TERRIBLE!! Absolutely terrible! Good thing it was just the 5 of us and everyone had a better meal waiting for them later in the day, except my poor dad!

So really there's no where to go but up after that experience! I even made a nervous joke about how there was the chance the 2nd heating coil could blow this year. Knock on wood they both made it through the whole 4 hours we needed them to.

Dave made a delicious turkey; the little red thingy even popped up (yes that was the most exciting part of the entire day)! I can't take any credit for that though, he even cleaned it! But I must say I impressed myself with my side dishes (I don't normally toot my own horn but I thought they were delicious). I was even brave enough to try and make my own apple crumb and pumpkin pie (I know neither are trivial but my scar from last year is still healing and I've never made a pie before, maybe next year I'll get really crazy and even try making my own pie shells!)

And since I knew I had to go into work on Thanksgiving I baked the pies and prepared all my sides the night before so all I had to do was bake them for 30 min., which I did while Dave was preparing the turkey for dinner. So the timing couldn't have worked out any better and it made everything stress free.

I even decided to be a little fancy now that our dining table is set up. Dave bought some flowers and I sewed a fall table runner. I even pulled out the china for it's first time use! I was a little weary (I'm super paranoid about breaking anything) but then I thought, what the hell do I have it for if it's going to sit in it's plastic storage cases for all of eternity?!!

I even got to use the claddagh napkin rings Jen got us for our first anniversary.