Christmas Miles 157 through 455: Wilmington, DE

Our Christmas Day drive to Wilmington was an exciting and stressful one.  The weather was horrible.  There was freezing rain and wind so violent that I was actually afraid that the car might blow over.  Dave was driving, and even in the passenger sheet, I could feel the effects of the wind on the car, and I saw how much he had to struggle to control it just to keep it on the road.

On top of that, the fog was denser than I've seen.  On the Pennsylvania Turnpike, there are mile markers every 1/10th of a mile.  In addition to that, there are 5 mini-mile markers between each 1/10th mile marker (so, basically a marker every 2/100ths of a mile - 105.6 feet, according to Dave.)  As we passed one 2/100ths of a mile marker, we could not see the next one - that's how foggy it was.  There was a car about 4/100ths of a mile ahead of us, and we never saw it unless the driver tapped the breaks.  We were going 35 mph at some points and it was awful.

Fortunately though, there was very little traffic on the turnpike and literally no congestion.  We still made decent time - less than 6 hours total, including rest stops, and arrived at Dave's mom's house by 5:30 p.m.

We had a few drinks, played a ping-pong tournament (Dave and I were both eliminated in the first round) and then opened gifts. 

A thoughtful look on the face of the elder Hartman

Are those canned goods that I received?  Why yes! They are!

I set up our air mattress in a little room off of the living room, since it was a full house.  Unfortunately, it had been raining all day, and when we went to bed, we learned that the roof was leaking right next to our bed.  We put a bucket with a towel underneath it but I was still going crazy from the noise, so we were forced to move the air mattress into the living room, which is always sad for me, since it means that we're the last ones to go to sleep and the first ones to have to wake up.  Needless to say, neither Dave nor I got a good night's sleep that night and it sort of left us at a deficit for the rest of the trip. 

But either way, Christmas Day was over and we had more driving to do the next day!

Christmas Miles 145 - 156: The North Side

On Christmas morning we packed the car and headed to my sister's house.  A mere 12 miles away, this was by far the easiest drive of the trip.  We had already exchanged our gifts the night before, and my family had carted away the larger gifts that were going to be opened this morning, and yet we still had a packed car.  So much so that Murphy had to sit on my lap, which he was absolutely thrilled to do.

For some reason I forgot to take pictures of this morning, but that is not to say that it wasn't a great time.

Dave received his brand-spanking new laptop, which was a joint gift from me, my parents, my older sister, and Dave's mom.  He was very excited about it, and thrilled at the level of coordination required on my part to keep it a surprise.

Let me explain.

You see, Dave had a list of "wants" that weren't particularly exciting.  However, I wanted him to get the things that he needed, while also getting a few surprises (I love surprises, and apparently I think that other people should too.)  So, I coordinated the joint laptop among everyone so that they could still buy him a little something else.  I also had it shipped to my place of employment instead of at home, so that he wouldn't see it in the driveway (since he is usually the first one home.)  Even then, I still told him not to look at the boxes of the gifts that were delivered, to keep him on his toes, and since I was coordinated the gifts for ALL of our family members - mine and his.  All he had to worry about was a gift for me (which I'm pretty sure he still struggled with.)

The other gift that took some significant coordination was a filing cabinet that his Dad and step-mom ordered for him. Since it was a big gift, they had it shipped to our house, but that meant that I had to be home to accept the delivery.  It was being delivered by a full-sized tractor trailer, which is ridiculous in itself.  Furthermore, I had to coordinate the delivery on my cell phone while in the car with him on the way to his brother's wedding.  Fortunately I had that following Monday off already and was able to be there (even though it arrived 3 hours later than the 4 hour window that they had given me - I literally wasted an entire day off waiting around for this thing.)

Anyway, the delivery guy parked his 18-wheeler in the middle of our road, lugged this enormous thing up the driveway and pushed it in the back of our garage.  I promptly covered it with a sheet, put a "Dave - stay away!" sign on it and pushed a lot of crap in front of it.  He was intrigued but stayed away, and I don't think that he ever guessed what it was.

So anyway, we had a good Christmas. In addition to the laptop, Dave received a sweater, a pair of jeans, a snorkel set for our Mexico trip (which I also received), some stocking stuffers and a 4-waffle iron.   I got a new black pea coat, jeans, two sweaters, a heart-rate monitor, snorkel set, and an I-pod nano! We definitely made out.

But two and a half hours after arriving at my sister's, we had to leave Murphy behind with my mom and head on to the next leg of our journey - Wilmington, DE.

"Swedding"

Or SLEDDING, as it is more commonly called.  In a moment of blurred speech, I called it swedding and I was promptly teased for being drunk (I was not.)  The term stuck for most of the day... 

What day, you ask?  Well, New Year's Day, of course!  Eldest Hartman brother had a lady-friend guest in from out of town, and she currently resides in Arizona.  Although she has certainly seen snow before, we decided that she needed to partake in some good old fashioned sled riding.  Our mountain of a backyard - and a half-dozen sleds collected over the years - was the perfect backdrop.

Determined

A smart dog knows when to abandon ship

Although I was primarily the picture taker, I did take one journey down the hill with the fastest of the three sleds that we were using.  Because I broke my leg 8 years ago (actually, it was almost exactly 8 years today) I was nervous about using my legs to slow down to make the turn at the bottom of hill.  So, instead of braking, I ended up going right past the turn, through the pakasandra (sp?) garden, and off of the retaining wall into the driveway.  While that sounds sort of crazy, it felt much safer to me than braking with my legs, and was actually quite amusing.

And I survived to tell the tale

Elder Brother Hartman asked me to wear my ski goggles, and I happily obliged

Braver than me

It was a good time and soon after going inside, we promptly fell asleep.  A great way to start the new year!

Team photo that I took with my extended right arm. Pretty good, huh??

Christmas Mile 144: Christmas Eve at our house

The one event we did not have to travel for was the Christmas Eve gathering at our house with my immediate family.

As soon as we arrived home from skiing I started cooking.  We had planned a low-key, appetizer-based event, but on the drive home from 7 Springs decided to incorporate potato skins in our menu, something that I had never made before, but knew that they took a lot of time.

In the end, we're glad that we decided to make the potato skins, since my family came hungry, even though they knew there wouldn't be a formal dinner.  We made: potato skins, fried flatbread with fresh spinach and artichoke dip, and soft pretzels with cheese and honey mustard dip.  My sister also brought shredded pork and rolls, which ended up being the "meal" portion of the evening.

Then, in our effort to cut down on the number of gifts that we had to transport, we convinced my niece to open her gifts that night at our house.  She received Dog Park Barbie.

And a Sponge Bob Connect Four.

Which Santa ALSO brought, even though I TOLD Santa in an e-mail that I had purchased that for her

We were really glad that she opened her gifts then, since she really enjoyed getting them and since on Christmas morning, there's always so much going on, that she doesn't even realize or get excited about some of the things that she receives.

We also enlisted her help in opening Murphy's gifts.  Murph is one lucky dog!  He received an enormous bag of dog treats and a new fleece for his bed!

Sniff sniff... what are those???

This is SO much better than an old, crappy towel!

After gifts, the party wound down, and we loaded some of the larger gifts into my family members vehicles since our car was already going to be packed to the brim and we didn't think we would be able to fit everything (that turned out to be true.) 

As is our tradition, Dave and I decided to exchange gifts that night.  He gave me a piece of abstract art for above our bed (something that I asked for), a collage frame for our basement family room wall, and a rawhide.  I'm still not sure why he wrapped the rawhide and gave it to me, obviously that was passed on to Murphy.  If you ever want to see instinct at it's best, give a dog a bone and observe.

He walked around trying to find a place to bury that thing for nearly an hour

After presents, we went to sleep.  After all, we had a big day and the bulk of our traveling ahead of us!

Christmas Miles 0 - 144: To Seven Springs and Back

As I mentioned previously, we did a lot of driving over the Christmas.  I've decided to chronicle those adventures by tracing our miles to recap our travels (and I promise I'll finish with the Hartman brother wedding recaps soon after.)

Our holiday started on Wednesday, December 23rd, when we traveled to 7 Springs for an overnight ski trip.  Dave had already planned a January one-day trip with his brothers, but part of the fun of skiing for me is staying in the lodge, but trying to coordinate that with a group of people has proven to be a pain in the ass, so we decided to do our own little get away.  We took advantage of the last day of their pre-season rates, and got an amazing deal on an overnight package.

We upgraded to a king bed, slopeside room and this was the view we got when we arrived.

Totally awesome

Lift tickets for skiing that night were included in our package, but we decided to skip the night skiing and rest up for the next day.  "Resting up" meant having a nice big dinner and quite a few drinks before calling it a night.

We watched skiers and "drank" everytime one fell.  Sadly, most people who do night skiing are pretty good, so even though we were looking exclusively at black diamond slopes, we saw very few falls.

The view of the main lodge when out on the balcony

We rearranged our room to provide ourselves with viewing comfort

It was also during this trip that Dave decided to start growing a beard.  Here is a picture of Day 1. You will see subsequent days in the upcoming posts.

The next morning we rose early for our free breakfast, and we realized that preparing for skiing is quite a time investment.  Since we didn't ski the night before, we still had to rent out skis that morning.  And, since it was already 9 a.m. by the time we were done with breakfast - and since we had to be out of the hotel by 11 - we needed to basically get completely dressed and pack the car to check out before skiing.  So, we didn't actually get to hit the slopes until 10 a.m., but all of the time investment was worth it because it was PERFECT skiing weather.

On the lift

Blue skies, plenty of snow, and temperatures that were just below freezing, which meant no snow making! (I HATE skiing during snow making...)  There were almost no skiers there, probably since most people were still at work, and nearly every slope and lift was open, which meant absolutely no lines at the lifts, and no pile-ups at the intersections of slopes.

Sidenote: When Dave whipped out my cell phone to take the picture you see above, I was scared to death that it was going to be the end of my new Droid.  Fortunately, that was not the case.

We skied until about 3:30, which was way earlier than we had planned on leaving, but we had both skied so much and so hard (given the ideal conditions) that we were absolutely exhausted, and we both felt like we had gotten more than our money's worth out of the experience, so it was well worth it.

A daytime shot from the balcony

Up next: Christmas Eve party at our house!

Mexico!!!!

That's right!

We've booked our Mexico trip for next summer. 

We're going to the Dreams Tulum Resort and Spa, an all-inclusive resort about an hour and a half from the Cancun airport, near the Mayan Tulum ruins.

I'm super excited about it!
Dave?  Not so much.  Well actually, that's not really true, but I do think he has some reservations.

He's sad because our original plan was that a group of friends and/or family would come with us, and we've gotten lukewarm responses, particularly from his brothers - two people that we thought would definitely be in.   We've had a few other people ask us about it, and we were totally willing to organize the travel dates and/or location if someone was willing to commit to going and felt strongly.  But no one wanted to commit, and after weeks of waiting and watching the prices slowly crawl upwards, we decided that we just needed to decide what we wanted and go for it.

He's also concerned about the cost and rightfully so.  We've had a lot of HUGE expenses sneak up on us over the past few weeks, including a new washer and dryer and new tires for my car which were more than $700.  Add on top of that my need for new contacts and glasses, and Dave's desire to start his grad classes up again relatively soon does definitely leave us feeling slightly poor. 

But, I've been saving up for this trip since our honeymoon, and while these "savings" are the vast majority of our savings, my new goal is to save the total amount of the trip over the next few months by eliminating unnecessary costs.

Let's start with tonight - Dave is at Bar Louie and I decided to stay home. Why go out to eat and drink when I can save that money and count it towards this trip?  I'm counting $15, even though I would have probably spent way more than that.  I'm going to continue to cut my own hair in the front, and let the length grow out.  That saves me about $10 a month (a "bangs" cut is only $7.)  I'm going to groom Murphy at home instead of taking him the groomer - a savings of $50 per quarter.  And finally, I'm not going to enroll in the January session of the Zumba class that I wanted to take, and will instead work out at home on the equipment that we already own, which would have cost me another $50.  Already, that adds up to about $227, and if I keep thinking of ways to save, I will have "saved" the cost of this trip all over again!

Anyway, back to the vacation...

Dreams is nice because if any of our friends/family with kids wants to come, it's child-friendly.  And for all of our young, couple friends, it's all inclusive which means a lot of drinking.  The distance from Cancun means that it's more secluded and in a more rural area, which I already enjoy.  I don't like being surrounded by a bunch of other hotels - I would prefer to be able to walk along the beach and enjoy the scenery and not have to worry about wearing a plastic bracelet that identifies which resort I'm staying at.  The other thing that I like about Dreams is that they don't have an ala carte restaurant limit.  At many Cancun resorts, you get a certain number of restaurant reservations per number of nights staying - for example, 3 restaurant reservations per 7 nights of staying at the resort.  At Dreams, you go to whichever restaurant that you want to go to, and if there is a wait, they give you a buzzer just like you're going to Red Lobster or something like that.  From the reviews that I read online, there weren't too many complaints about long waits, so I hope that it ends up being true.

But no matter what, I'm determined to have a great time!!!  We don't get to take major vacations every year, and since our mini-vacation last year was basically rained out, I've been craving some sun and relaxation. 

If you are friends or family of ours and you are interested in coming with us, please contact me for the details!  I will give you the specifics and we really hope that you can come.  But even if no one else comes with us, I know that Dave and I will have an amazing time and an amazing vacation - just the two of us.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year 2010 everyone!

My NYE's was fun and low-key - exactly the way I like things.  We went into Regent Square for drinks at Dave's brother's new apartment, and I oversaw a blind-taste-test of 12 different types of bourbon (I did NOT participate - ewww.)  Then we went to a small party down the street from them and left around 11:15 p.m. to beat the drunks on the road and to ring in the new year at our house, with our mutual love, Murphy.

At midnight (specifically 12:00.02) I let out a small "whoop" and who should swoop in for my very first kiss of 2010?

Murphy.

Yes, that's right - my first kiss of 2010 was not from Dave.  He was sort of sad about it, although I'm pretty sure there's no one else in the world he would rather share my first kiss with.

Now, to taunt him, I've taken to calling Murphy "first kiss." As in, "Good morning First Kiss! Come here! I want to give you a hug!" and Dave makes a sad face as if I hurt his feelings.  It's all in good fun.

We don't have any specific resolutions for 2010 except for losing weight, which we both really want to do, but is so cliche to get as a goal.  Nonetheless, my goal for Dave is 20 pounds and I need to lose at least 10.  We're resolving to continue eating out less, and to also start saving more money.  All three of these goals actually complement each other very well, and I think they're very achievable.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a wonderful New Years!  I will leave with a photo of the "bourbon lineup" from the blind taste test: