the celebration of a lifetime

literally! it was my birthday celebration(s), so we were in fact celebrating my lifetime, AND it was all fabulous, haha. i managed to stretch my birthday for four glorious, family-, friend- and food-filled days, and a girl really couldn't ask for more.

thursday jon and i slept in wonderfully late and then went to the big e, where we spent my grandmother's birthday check to me on such things as maine baked potatoes, vt beer & flatbread pizza, hot kettle corn, opa opa (ct beer),... mmm. oh and jon got apple pie with cheddar cheese, possibly in the vt? house, and i tried it, and it was the first time i've ever had them together. i had always thought it sounded particularly gross, but no.. it was delicious. how weird, though.. who was eating apple pie and thought, 'hey! why don't i add some cheese?'
for those of you who don't know what the big e is, it is a giant fair with everything from 8 gabillion booths set up selling everything you can imagine to carnival rides to elephant rides to 'see the world's smallest pony' to petting zoos to buildings full of more booths (the international house, the farm house, the house of random wares). there's everything from an irish/ireland booth to people selling knives that cut leather or tools that can drill through concrete or .. etc. and there are shows during the day -- horse shows, product demonstrations, etc -- and concerts at night. and THEN there are the state houses -- connecticut, rhode island, massachusetts, maine, new hampshire and vermont. each state house showcases the best features (and food & beer) of said state, usually offering maps of places to go, things to do, samples of food & beer. i am sad i didn't try the maple cotton candy in the vermont house because it sounded delicious. that's my only regret!
so after we came homew from that, we hung out, watched tv, cooked up some breaded chicken cutlets, green beans (love) and lipton garlic shells noodle package -- which i absolutely love and haven't had in FOREVER -- and it was a fantastic birthday dinner if i do say so myself. and by cooked up, i mean jon cooked and shooed me out of the kitchen every time i tried to help, haha. AND he gave me fall out boy tickets for my birthday!! he told me awhile ago i had something to do on nov. 10 but not what, and it turns out that's the concert. i heeeart fall out boy, they are one of my latest favorite cds. so i am pretty stoked for that!

friday we decided to go hiking. going up to unh was thrown out on the table; jon knows i want to take him there and show him around sometime so that when i talk about something he can actually picture it and know what i'm talking about. but we decided it was too much driving for one day, so it's on the itinerary for next summer's nh vaca, when we'll only be an hour away instead of 2.5. so instead, jon called his friend pete, an avid hiker (he's done the at (appalachian trail -- how i'd love to, if only i could afford to not work for 3 months)) and asked for suggestions, so we ended up going to a place called case mtn, which was actually pretty small -- only like 974 ft or something. it was a very easy climb, but that's probably for the best anyway since i'm not really in prime hiking (*hillwalking, anyone?) shape. but we got to the top pretty easily, and oddly enough, the hillside before the trees started again really powerfully reminded me of culloden, of the actual battlefield. so we sat on one of the benches and i told jon about culloden, just the bare bones of the rebellion and how it all came to a head there, and how the thing that had really shocked me about the actual battlefield was that it was so covered in bracken and brush and thorny things. i would have pictured an open field, but it is instead something that would tear your legs up in about 3 seconds. and this, despite it being a hillside, looked much the same, with the sort of low, prickly, different-colored bushes (for lack of a better word) all over it. so that was a fun little scotland moment.
and then we decided to go down a different trail (we took the pink trail, which i thought was not very hard-sounding, but theoretically was the hardest, according to pete. so i wondered, was the white trail an escalator, cause pink was super easy..), a white trail, because the parking lot up to the pink trail was a white trail. so we kind of picked a direction out of 4 choices (one being the way we came) and gallavanted off into the woods. (and by that i mean walked calmly..) and at some point, we came across a big wall of rocks with big rocks strewn on the ground in front of it, and i wondered aloud if they used to be part of the wall but had fallen. and somehow this prompted jon to go climb the wall of rocks. rather than watch him and think about how i was going to go get help if he broke something, i decided to wander a bit father.. at which point i found an easy-as-pie way to get up to where he was. so as he fought his way down the rock face, i climbed it, musing about how women are definitely the smarter sex. although when i shared this, he gave the classic, 'well i wasn't looking for easy, i wanted to be challenged.' ....mmhmm. okay.
so we continued on our way and ended up at a parking lot. and i do say A parking lot, because it wasn't OUR parking lot. whoops. so we look at the map, which was a terrible map in the first place AND situated behind a metal cage so you can't take it, and figure we've got to go pretty far back. so we end up going all the way back where we had come from until we reach the pink trail, which was about three minutes from the summit. literally. and by the time we had reached the first (wrong) parking lot, we were pretty okay with nature being done for the time being, so we weren't really loving the fact that we had to climb it twice, but it was okay. i just had a blister forming and i really wanted to get out of my shoes -- i need new ones real bad. i could feel every rock under my feet and it got old after awhile, yknow? why i didn't wear the hiking shoes heather gave me i don't know.. i guess i figured i wouldn't need them on such an easy hike.
it was nice to be out in nature, though. it's not often i get to do anything like that anymore, solely because of the hours i work and we've just been so busy lately. so it was a nice little refreshing jaunt, although i will say i was excited to see the truck at the end, haha.
but seriously, who freaking puts maps in the parking lots and at the summit but not in between?? maps AT the destinations. not on the way to said destinations. pfffft. turns out we could've taken a much easier way to get back, but we had no way of knowing that since there were no freaking maps in between. jerks!
so anyway. we went home and showered and went to dinner with his friends sarah (cousin) & eli and freya & bobby to chili's, and it was delicious. chili's makes an excellent frozen raspberry margarita, and i heart their southwestern egg rolls (and the awesome blossom, which jon got and i stole pieces of) and their steak fajitas. and the company was swell, so it was a good time. we went to sarah & eli's afterwards to play apples to apples, and it was another good time. i did manage to walk into a parking spot curb leaving chili's, though, because i was texting my cousin and not watching where i was going, and it did cut my poor pinky toe under my nail and bleed and hurt and turn purple, but jon emt-ed me with triple antibiotic lotion and a bandaid and a kiss (on my lips, not my toe.. ew), so i lived. (whew. it was close.)

saturday we had to be at my mom's at 11, which meant waking up at 10 -- a little early for my birthday weekend, but worth it. my grandparents arrived less than a minute, i'd say, before us, so we made it fairly well on time. and it was wonderful to see them, i hadn't seen them in awhile, which is actually why i requested said dinner from mom. so mom cooked up chicken and maple-syruped carrots and there was macaroni salad & potato salad and homemade apple sauce (which my grandfather kept trying to get her to put in a pie crust -- he loves apple pie like nothing else). and my mom had a cake for eric & i to decorate like we use to when we were kids. i still have pictures.. his bday is the 4th and mine is the 20th so we tended to do mixed celebrations, and one thing was to get/cook a sheet cake and then let each kid decorate half. and as i'm trying to make an 'M' out of mini m&ms on my half and my brother is just chucking chocolate chips on his half, my mom, not even looking, was saying how monica used to decorate hers pretty and eric would just throw stuff on. haha. classic timing, cause that's exactly what was happening. so eric just kept throwing chocolate chips on the cake -- and especially on my side, to obscure the 'M' and just be a pest -- until i a) threw m&ms at him and b) took the choc chips away. so then i'm trying to make it pretty and fix the piles of choc chips he left, and he starts putting slices of cheddar cheese on the cake because i had taken away his choc chips and the m&ms and that's all that was left next to him. pffft. (so then, of course, later, when mom brought out the cake, there's a piece of cheese on it and eric wearing a shit-eating grin. pffft again. ha.)
so after that, my grandparents left (eat and run, it's their game -- although saturday my grandmother did have to work, so they did actually have a reason to leave for once, haha) and eric, tiana and jon all fell asleep on the couches. and i tried to stay awake to chat with mom, haha. so i chatted, and finally gave in and fell asleep for a few, and then chatted again, mostly about real estate and how she's going to have to sell the house someday probably soon. and i tried to persuade her it might be a good idea to paint the living room a neutral color instead of pink, and she resisted, and i dropped it, haha.
and then we went to kmart & kohl's to try to find jon a belt cause his had broken, and we found him one, which is yay because the day before on the hike his pants kept sagging down like he was a g, haha. and then we booked it out to coventry to go to bidwell's tavern, which is an amazing place circa 1872 or something. it's got a good pub feel to it, and they make like 50 flavors of wings. i got a trio of honey mustrad (eh), honey bbq (pretty good) and my favorite, hot teriyaki sesame. they're just hot enough to give you the good flavor and a teensy bit of kick without burning your mouth. mmm. i already want more.
i only invited a few friends, but they seemed to mesh pretty well, which was good since some of them didn't know each other. i had a great time, i hope they did too, haha. heather bought me a car bomb, which was the first i'd done in a couple months at least if not more. they're tasty, i sorta forgot.. =P
after that, jon and i went to blockbuster and picked up some movies (and beer, but not at blockbuster) and went home, watched 'vacancy' and 'you kill me', which were both okay. not stellar and not terrible. decent entertainment.

and then sunday we went out to the mall to get baby a giants jersey.. i think last week, when tiana showed up at the bar wearing a giants jersey and jon was the only one at the table of me, my dad, my brother, and tiana not wearing a jersey, i think that was the straw that broke the camel's back, cause he was very into getting a jersey this weekend, hah. so we ended up finding him one after a couple stores, and i am happy to report he looks very good in his red jacobs giants jersey. mm. :)
so we went out to my dad's newly built house where he was cooking the best bbq ribs you'd ever have in your life, zucchini & summer squash, red potatos, and the best corn EVER. he cuts the corn off leftover (cooked) corn on the cob and sautees it up with onions and peppers in butter with garlic and salt & pepper. and it gets .. not syrupy, but i can't think of the words. but it is so ridiculously tasty.
so we got to eat some fastastic food with my dad, his fiancee, her sister, one of her sons, and my brother & his gf again, and watch the giants game on a ridiculous huge hd tv that my aunt got my dad & bonnie as a wedding present. i asked eric if he thought we'd get those when we get married too and said i'd contemplate a ceremony in town hall to get one.. it is freaking sweet. it's a plasma too, not an lcd. and huge. and clear. and .. okay, so i'm a little jealous.

so that was my weekend, and it left me feeling rejuvenated and happy, which was good. although it's only tuesday and my glow is somewhat gone already. it's amazing how fast work saps me of that. but i was giddy wednesday night last week when i got home, and it lasted for four days. it was so nice to not have to work and to see jon and to get together with all my family and friends and have so many people saying happy birthday. i was afraid my weekend wouldn't live up to my expectations, but it was really nice. i think this was definitely the longest i've ever stretched a birthday, and that wasn't even my original intention. i just wanted to see people i love and do what i want. we've been so busy lately but this was the first weekend where it was all stuff i wanted to do, stuff that i planned. well, minus the dinner fri night, jon suggested that, but it was a good idea. so it was just really comforting to be surrounded by good people and good times.

i have plenty more to say, but i am a little tired of typing, and i am thinking you might be tired of reading (especially if you're kate or sami, who have both already heard all this, haha.. sorry guys!), so i will wait til later to update more.

PLUS, it's almost house hunters time. woot! i freaking love this show.