Report Back on a Very Fun Weekend

What a fun weekend! Of course, it was almost a week ago now - but I have had issues to work through, which I will share in this long-winded post. :) For my clarity of thought (I'll pause here while I, and you, laugh about that oxymoron as it pertains to me, haha)...maybe I'll just start off by listing.

- First off, Kim told me that if I don't use that picture of Mr. W and I as my blog background, she will. It seems stranger to me for us to be the background picture on *her* blog than my own, so we'll try it here. No promises that it's staying, though. :) When we went snowshoeing last weekend, Mr. W was chatting with a couple that had just finished the 3.7 mile loop. Turns out the husband was a professional photographer who was scouting the route for the snowshoe 5K/10K the next day (ahem, I am done talking about that one - you know, the snowshoe 5K I didn't get to do? haha). So he took our first picture together. We both agreed we got a couple better ones off my iPhone, but it's the thought that counts. :)

- Thursday was my actual birthday, thank you very much for the birthday wishes! It was hard to discern my real birth date out of the week, because we celebrated it so dang many times! With Mr. W and the kids, with my parents, with Mr. W. alone, and tonight I'm celebrating last night I celebrated with my friends when we go see Book of Mormon. YAY!! I have been waiting for this night FOR YEARS. Can't wait to see this one. It was as funny as I had hoped it would be! I loved it!

- So for my real birthday, Mr. W and I went out to sushi. Yum. :) We made out in my dentist's parking lot because my son had stayed home an extra night to do some homework on the computer. So I had a curfew and I made out in a car, both events combining to make me feel like I was just turning 17 instead of 43.

- Friday morning Mr. W picked me up early and we headed out of town. Yay for long weekends! We stopped at REI to return and exchange my cycling jacket, which had a defective zipper, and rent snowshoes for me. Oops, except we forgot to rent snowshoes, so we got 15 miles down the road and turned back for them.

- We stopped in the hokey little Bavarian village of Leavenworth, a place I can take or leave. I did buy buffalo beef jerky there, which was tasty! I fought over it shared it with Blake when I got home. Blake is a serious jerky hound - that kid loves his dried meat. Mr. W and I had fun in Leavenworth, just window shopping at cheesy little tourist traps. I'm not much of a fan. :)

- Hello! I do like wineries, though, and our first stop in Lake Chelan was at Tsillan Cellars winery. We bought a case of Gewurtz because it was only five dollars a bottle! Yay for closeouts! It is quite tasty.

- The hotel was great - I was nervous because I can be (whispering) a bit of a hotel snob. I get skeeved out easily at hotels. This place was nice, though, and skeeve free. That night we walked down to the marina for Winterfest activities, which were lame on Friday night. So we walked out to the utter darkness to watch the stars. Very sweet. It was like nine degrees. Eep.

- The weekend was full of lots of sweet surprises, starting with a couple fancy little chocolates waiting for me back at the hotel room. Saturday morning he made me tea (okay, we all know I'm a little addicted to Earl Grey) in my own new size-venti mug. Mine broke awhile ago and I have refused to buy one until I could find a venti-size. Mr. W found one!

- We snowshoed on Saturday. I love snowshoeing!! Oh my, so fun. All that crunchy snow, and it was gorgeous and sunny and cold. See pic above. Here's another good one of Mr. W and one of me thrown in for good measure:

I still gots some head issues, because I am wearing five layers but still think I look fat in this picture.
Crazy don't just disappear, ladies. ;)

- After snowshoeing, the world ended. Well, not really. But close! We stopped at the tiny ski area on the way back down from the snowshoe trail. We decided to go snow tubing, it was only $8 and they were open a couple more hours. VERY FIRST RUN, I hit a hard bump at the bottom of the hill and went FLYING like a rocket. Landed face first. My mouth filled with blood immediately, and I truly lay there thinking, "I am going to have to pick up my teeth from the snow, and I am not going to lose my isht when I do it." Ugh.

- Fortunately, I sustained no permanent injuries. It did really suck, though. When we got back home, I was seeing spots (because my eyeballs were so shook up, my ophthalmologist said). I had a head and neck x-ray. I already had a root canal appointment, so the endodontist checked my teeth, which were jarred a bit loose but not perilously so. It really sucked. I shredded the inside of my mouth:

Ouch.

- Well, anyway, that sucked, but the good news is Mr. W is good in a crisis, e.g. he did not start screaming and suffocating me with professions of love. And, he's a real "positive outlook" guy, but he wisely did not tell me how great it was that I only sustained this type of injury, haha. He was great under pressure. We went back to the hotel, I laid down for awhile and then...

- Chinese wish lanterns!! Highlight of the weekend! They were the coolest thing ever. :)

Funny story on this one: Matt and I were holding our lanterns, which were struggling to get away. I wanted a picture, but my phone was in my pocket. I was going to ask the man next to me to reach into my pocket to get my phone. I said, "Hey, can I ask you a big favor?" and he automatically reached to hold my lantern while I got my phone. Yeah, we could do it that way, too, haha. I reached into my own pocket and then he took our picture. :)

- The rest of the weekend was wonderful, too. I'm going to wrap this one up because it's taken me a week to get this far, haha.