Seastar turns 35.......

There is much planning that goes into taking a few days off from your 'life'.  I felt really thankful prepping for this trip that I have a wonderful community....and it really does take a village.  Carrie turned 35 on thursday....the day before the camp had its Spring Break camp, so Chris was fully engulfed in plans for that. Mike and Laura picked up the boys on the friday after school and kept them until their piano recital on Saturday, and then Rachel picked them up from their recital and took them home to be on property (where they most love to be).

Kelly, meanwhile, blew my socks off and said she would drive me to AND from the airport since Chris was so busy with the camp.  I have been so thrilled that she would do this for me....we have known eachother for almost 10 years, but its only really recently that we are starting to get to know eachother better, such a nice friend.  Here we are at the airport at 6:30 (we left at 5am!)

And we ran into these guys as they were heading to Hawaii!  Jon was wearing flip flops.....punk.  As we were leaving, I hugged Mel tight and whispered 'Make sure you really enjoy your LAST kidless holiday!!!'

ARRIVAL!!!!  

No kids, no schedule, Carrie made the flight with no ear pain, 

and we were finally together - we were very happy.

We rented this fantastic house with the owners living downstairs and we got the main floor!  2 bedrooms with huge cozy beds, a stocked kitchen (this is what we arrived to, so we ate lunch with our 'breakfast' items and yes that is Mango Juice, and yes, my tongue did swell a little that night.....but i figured it was just the atmosphere change......lol)

First stop, down the road, was the glass class where Carrie and I each made a glass pendent (which I haven't take off yet)......we were both pretty tired, and after awhile, we both kinda just stared at all the pieces...too many choices.  We ended up just laying some pieces down and pushed our chairs back....done.

After the glass pendents, we still were riding pretty high on the adrenaline (we WERE planning a nap)...but enstead, we headed to the Mall to get the lay of the land for the next day (which was going to be our HUGE day!!!)......so, we got this amazing parking spot outside the front doors, and walked around for a few hours. It was too big to get any kind of layout....the maps were a little confusing.....the info desks were a little sparse...but it was an adventure.  Carrie and I aren't shoppers, so it was nice to go to the mall with someone of the same mindset.  Before we left, we agreed to get our passes to the amusement park and the waterpark so we didn't waste time doing that the next day.  I knew that the hotel we were going to stay at had the passes for $20 where the parks were selling them for $35....so I went up to the hotel lobby to buy them.  This is where I learn that you have to have a room there (and we WERE going to have a room there, but when i went to book it, they had given my room rate to a conference and so it was going to be like $300/nt!)....but she said the fact that was GOING to get a room there didn't count, so she wouldn't sell me the tickets at that price.  Hmmm...and here I thought I knew a secret place to get cheap tickets....nope.

So after one fail with a country couple who seemed to not want 'any trouble', which I suppose I looked like, the nice tatooed couple were walking towards the hotel agreed to purchase 4 tickets for me with cash.  I let them keep the change and skipped off to the car with cheap tickets in hand.  Carrie laughed at me.

Then it was time for BIRTHDAY DINNER!!!  We headed to an Ethiopian hookah bar restaurant.....yes, this little country mouse just saw Ethiopian food and knew thats what sista wanted for dinner!!  Were we in  for a shocker.  It was hilarious......sweet smoke filled the air as we walked in to the room...everyone was sitting pretty quietly at their tables with their phones or computers in front of them, with a hookah pipe beside the table.....chachi guys were everywhere.

Food was interesting, best quote of the night from birthday girl as she put her last mouthful of spicy lentils in her mouth with her fingers "you know, I am not full, I just don't want to eat this anymore....."  Yup.....lets get outta here.  We left the smokey establishment laughing and shaking our heads......

Each morning, this is how much snow was on our car!!!!  We complained about our runners, but this was pretty awesome...the snow was fluffy and lovely..but man it was cold.

We both had the sleep of our lives that night....no kids to listen for meant that we both slept hard.  We had a sweet breakfast and headed out to the mall.  Our phones both had issues with battery power so we didn't take them around, but we started the day at the waterpark...and lo and behold, since our tickets said we were 'hotel guests', we pretty much got free towels!  ;-)  The loopdy loop slide was closed, so we started with this one: Its the yellow one (Carrie got the blue one as we raced side by side)......Not sure what our brains were thinking starting with this one....they shut us into a glass upright coffin and the floor dropped out from under us and we raced as fast as I have ever gone NOT in the car, wearing that little amount of clothes!! Carrie had fun, but my back got a quick exfoliation from the divides or the little breaks in the slide where they attach.  When we both looked over at eachother after with wide eyes, I said 'I have to poo....right NOW!!'....she said she had to as well....yup, it literally scared the crap out of us.

Man, that morning was fun.....up and down, up and down.....we took a break around 2 and went for lunch (fire brick oven pizza!  Made me excited for the womens retreat!!)....

Then we headed to the amusement park -- which was like a ghost town!!!!  We just walked onto every ride...we did the major rollercoaster first (we moir sisters like to start big i guess....), Carrie was freaked out at how close the walls were to the rollercoaster, I was more concerned about the compression I felt in my spine in those loops!!  Man, it was fun.  So, as we stumbled off that right and wandered next door to this unassuming tower with chairs, we didn't really know what the ride was, just that there was nobody there, just she and I....so we sat down, buckled up, looked at eachother and said 'I wonder what this one does?' as it shot us up into the air in rocket speed, resulting in this shot:

After it was over, we looked back at eachother laughing and said what we said a few more times that day "THAT was unexpected".....oh man, we laughed so much that day...it had been years since I have had that much fun squeezed into one day with one of my favorite people in the world.  We went back to the waterpark to do the "I am 35" waterslide loop de loop....terrified, I followed her up the stairs "it's only 30 seconds, it's only 30 seconds" repeating over and over in my mind.  The floor dropped out, our bodies were hurled down at 60km's an hour....and then it was over.  We played for awhile longer in the waterpark....but we each took turns getting a bit more hurt....the last straw was this unassuming waterslide that just looked like a wavy straight slide down - not unlike one you would see at a park.....just bigger.  We laid down, and raced eachother down....first bump was fine, second bump was faster, and the third bump had so much speed that it launched me airborn and I landed on my back and had the wind knocked out of me abit.....when I looked over at Carrie at the bottom since we had raced down together, she looked at me in pain -- her back had been exfoliated too by the cracks in the slide.  We agreed that we should quit while we were ahead and NOT hurt since that was the direction we were both heading!

So much more to write, but I need to get started on the day.....we ended the waterslides and headed for dinner down Bourbon Street.  We decided that the more 'hip' places all had chachi guys, and lineups (we don't do lineups)...so we went to this wicker-type cheesy little restaurant....and we ordered their specialty (see below) and chicken fahitas....it was such a great day.

We thought it would be fun to do a few more runs on the rollercoasters before heading home....so after dinner we headed back to galaxyland only to be met by a lineup of kids with their miserable looking parents in a lineup that went down the hall of the mall!!!   Yup...school was out now, and the time of walking onto rides was over for us.  So, we grabbed a cheesecake on a stick (me) and a mini cupcake and frozen yogurt (carrie)....and headed to the home with the red door!!

The next day we slept in a little, picked up our glass pendants  had a visit with our cousin Erin, watched rollerderby championships, did a little shopping, dropped off a piano cover at Dana's,  and prepared to head back to our lives.

(pumped gas into this car on the way to the airport, and nearly froze my hand off....carrie laughed and took pictures......this was the worst part of the trip.....COLD!!)

Winter is pretty fun though!!  Probably only because we knew we 

were going home to green grass and t-shirts!!!

The long wait at the airport.....

Thank you Carrie, for everything.....it was honestly one of the best days of my life.....rollercoasters, waterslides, my sister, good food.....Happy 35th birthday!!!