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Author Archives: Jen

A cool time at ICE!

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I’ve been wanting to do this…so since this is our last winter here it was now or never! ICE!® featuring Christmas Around the World — We told Katie we were going to see an ice castle so she was totally on board. 🙂

Experience the magic of more than TWO MILLION pounds of hand-carved ice sculptures and slide down two-story ice slides. All kept at a chilly 9 degrees! Delight in the celebration of cultures through holiday scenes and travel to the North Pole to see Santa and his elves.

They give you parkas to wear OVER your own coats.

Now, I grew up in Michigan. I know 9° weather. I’ve lived in 9° weather. And let me just say my body no longer likes 9° weather. EGADS was that cold. I’m very glad they gave us the extra parkas…

Waiting for the ice slide!

The ice slide!

And this is where my phone died from being too cold. It had only been out 12 minutes! Thankfully Tom’s had been under all his coats so he got his out and his worked better in the cold.

The kids liked it but it was really quite cold. I have to be honest and say I rushed through a bit faster than I’d planned because I was FROZEN. OF course after you exit, the outside 34° felt like a sauna! Then it was back inside the resort where they had lots of things set up to siphon away your money like photos, hot chocolate, mini carnival rides, Build-A-Bear, cookies with Mrs. Claus, etc… Katie really wanted to ride the tea cups and since I’m all about either of them learning to like rides, we spent the $5. She enjoyed it.

Then since it was lunch time and we were close to a yummy restaurant…we went to Succotash (it’s where we ate lunch before the USMC ball). The kids had a bit of hat head. 🙂

And then after we left we drove around National Harbor Pokemoning for about a half hour!!

Overall I’m glad we went…but it was a big chunk of money for what it was.

The only sights I recognized.

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So, you’d think that flying into DC would be cool because you could see lots of monuments and stuff, right? Nope. I didn’t see ANYTHING familiar on my Texas trip—and this time National Harbor was the only thing I recognized. So I’m either blind, we don’t pass over the monuments, or we are really too high or far away to make them out clearly.

   
 

I have TSA Pre-check!

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So, I had kept checking and checking and checking every few hours because I really wanted to get pre-check for my flight home if at all possible—and I did finally get it Friday afternoon!!! So, with all my worries about it, there were literally (LITERALLY) zero people in EITHER of the security lines this morning. I got through in about 12 seconds. Well, make that 23 seconds—I forgot my phone in my pocket so that took an extra bit.

So I’m not sure if that is considered a rave…or a fail? 😆

Bucket list lunch: complete

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We lived in Troy for three years and I wanted to eat at Zingerman’s Deli the whole time but we just never got there. Today, since we were literally right down the street, it happened.

Linda and I split a large reuben and it was still too much (we should have split the small).

Then we sampled this $26/lb cheese and it was VERY tasty. I was sad I couldn’t take any food home…

I wish I could come back here because there were A LOT more sandwiches I wanted to try…

Catching up on 20 years!

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What a small world! I posted on Facebook that I was in Ann Arbor at the hospital and my college roommate, Marina, saw it, posted, and long story short, stopped by to catch up! We haven’t seen each other in 20 years (aside from posts on Facebook)!! And I had forgotten…she’s actually a nurse at the main hospital!! What are the odds?!

2016-12-09-12-46-46-marina

Here’s us waaaaay back then, at the end of our freshman year (1992):

1992-05cmumarina

I talked to someone in the airport.

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So you may or may not know the story about how way back in the day I got a lot of grief about being bothered that some guy was trying to talk to me at a gas station. If you don’t know the story, ask me sometime. But the gist is that I generally don’t talk to people.

But sometimes I do. 🙂

After we deplaned in Detroit, I was sitting at the power bar recharging because I still had about a half hour to wait until Linda picked me up. AND I TALKED TO SOMEONE. I honestly don’t even remember exactly how it came about, but after some small talk, I realized we were headed to within about a half mile of each other in Ann Arbor and his Uber would have been $70. I called Linda to make sure it was okay (and of course she said yes) and it was a perfectly pleasant experience. 

I assured Matthew that my friends would get a BIG kick out of it. 

Off to Michigan!

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Hey, there’s nothing like starting my trip with a FULL BODY pat down and hand swab. Seriously? I got the full-body scanner THEN got pulled aside for a full-body pat-down, and THEN got swabbed for explosives. Are we having fun yet?!

Then, amazingly, Gate 35X wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated, though it did seem a bit ridiculous to board a bus for a (maybe) 200-yard bus ride to the airplane.

Cue major travel anxiety

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I’m always a little anxious about flying—not the actual flying but the timing of things and getting through security and getting to the right place, etc. So I just really looked at my flight info so I could find my gate on the map (yes I’m that person) and I find out that I’m leaving from (apparently) THE MOST FUCKED UP GATE IN THE KNOWN WORLD: DCA 35X. Google it. Or read some of these FourSquare comments:

Down an escalator at which point there’s no room to sit and then hopefully you hear your announcement for your plane and then you are SHUTTLED out to one of the many commuter planes where hopefully there’s no weather happening because you’ll be outside.

Seriously? 

My Facebook friends tried to assure me I’d be okay (though they admitted it was confusing) and I kept my fingers crossed and told myself I was an intelligent 43yo and I could surely manage an airport gate. 🙂

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.  🙂

P.S. I’m flying to Michigan because my dad is having an aortic valve replacement. It’s nothing we’re seriously worried about (it was planned and not an emergency procedure) but it is surgery so I want/need to be there.

The kids put on a gymnastics show!

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They were busy busy busy in the basement this afternoon and they finally told us they were putting on a gymnastics show. So we went down before dinner. This is what we saw…

At the top of the stairs:

Gymnastics show 6:00–6:30pm

Gymnastics show 6:00–6:30pm or 6:30–7:00

At the bottom of the stairs—see it?

Directional arrow!! 🙂

Another arrow!

The stage…

…and labeled audience seating area.

Afterwards we went to look at the label on the bounce house:

And then we noticed this afterwards (not sure how we missed it):

I :heart: these kids!