Travel - Pocketful of Joules

Celebrating our Lucky 7

Travis and I had our 7^th wedding anniversary back in October, but every single weekend has been so busy that we finally had a chance to celebrate this past weekend.

My parents treated us to a night on our own by watching both Jack and Ollie for the weekend. Typically this wouldn’t be a big deal, but Ollie decided to vomit on their carpet and Jack woke them up at 6am by singing at the foot of their bed… so they get like 1,000 extra grandparents points!

In the vein of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ we decided to stay at the same B&B we visited for last year’s anniversary weekend (you can read about it here). Also like last year, we knocked off some stuff off our ‘to do’ list on our way into Baltimore. One errand had us walking past a furniture store, so we stopped in to check out their dining table selection. Instead, we found random life-sized animals, so we did what normal people do and posed with them….

This is what happens when my husband and I have a date.

A photo posted by pocketfulofjoules (@pocketfulofjoules) on Nov 7, 2015 at 11:49am PST

Travis took a picture of me nibbling a horse’s ear and fondling a pink elephant, but they are both super blurry — either he doesn’t remember how to focus or he was laughing so hard the camera moved…

Once we made it in to Baltimore, we settled in our room at the Blanc Noir and immediately dove into the amazingly delicious bed to watch the end of Back to the Future 2 and part of Back to the Future 3. Because that is what full-time working parents do when they have a minute to themselves… sit and watch TV while snuggled up in bed. Whatever, those movies ROCK and I don’t regret a second of it!

When we suddenly realized that we never put the parking placard in our truck and we had already been parked for the allotted 3 hours, we raced out of the room, threw the pass in the truck and continued up the road to dinner at Amicci’s. There are plenty of amazing restaurants in Little Italy, but we keep returning to Amicci’s because the food is always delicious and it’s priced reasonably. Fast forward to the next morning and it was all about the food again when our B&B hosts spoiled us with a delicious breakfast.

Once we gathered our things and checked out of our room, we decided to drive to the Harborplace area. I did a little browsing at the Anthropologie (where I surprisingly didn’t buy anything, WHAT?!) and then we went to see the new James Bond movie, Spectre.

SO FREAKING GOOD!

We love going to the movies and it was a nice treat to be able to see a grown up movie without minions or someone having to go to the bathroom a few times!

After the movies, we went to our favorite sushi place, RA. If you like sushi and you have a RA by you, GO THERE and EAT EVERYTHING!

We somehow ended up being there during Happy Hour (on a Sunday?), so pretty much everything we choose was half off. Our absolute favorite was the Viva Las Vegas Roll — Crab and cream cheese rolled in rice and seaweed, lightly tempura battered and topped with spicy tuna, crab mix and sliced lotus root; finished with a sweet eel sauce and spinach tempura bits. YUM!

Once again, it was the most relaxing weekend of the entire year and we had a great time just being able to spend time together. I do feel like one year we will have to branch out and do something different, like maybe Hawaii for our 10^th anniversary!

How do you celebrate your anniversaries? Do you tend to stick with the ‘tried and true’ or do something different each year?

Halloween in Hersheypark

For the third year in a row we celebrated Halloween in Hershey, PA at the Hersheypark in the Dark event. Even though we’ve gone for the past few years, this year was by far my favorite experience!

Hersheypark is about 2 ½ hours from our house, so we got there around lunchtime on Saturday. When we checked into the Hershey Lodge, we were surprised with a fabulous canvas bag filled with all sorts of goodies… including a ton of candy!

Jack immediately stole all of the Twizzlers and then once we changed into our costumes he filled my leather bag with handfuls of ‘gold doubloons’, aka caramel kisses to eat throughout the day.

Here we are in our costumes:

We took the shuttle over to the park and spent the afternoon riding a ton of rides. The weather was perfect – not too hot and not too cold – and the entire park was decorated with pumpkins, hay and cornstalks everywhere.

After a couple hours, we decided to walk over to check out Chocolate World, starting with the free Chocolate Tour ride where you can watch all the steps to how chocolate is made and then get a super fresh mini candy bar on your way out. Once again, our Hershey friends spoiled us and provided us with tickets to the 4D Chocolate Mystery movie, Chocolate Tasting, and the chance to Create Our Own Candy Bars.

Even though we’ve been to Hersheypark many times, we’ve never done any of these activities so it was really cool to try them all! Travis and I really enjoyed the chocolate tasting and learned a lot about the different flavors that make up each type of chocolate. Of course, Jack was more interested in eating the chocolate and playing with the flavor wheel on the iPad touch-screen.

All three of us agreed that the Create Your Own Candy Bar was by far our favorite activity. We were first suited up for the experience by having aprons and hairnets added to our outfits:

Then, we used touch-screens to choose exactly what we wanted in our special candy bars and the packaging. Once the choices were made, we were able to actually watch the bars being made and the ingredients added in. At the very end, our special Hershey’s chocolate bars were placed in a really cool metal container and wrapped with our specially designed packaging.

This experience usually costs $15.95 per person and we really felt that you got your money’s worth between the activities and the HUGE chocolate bar you get to take home to eat!

By time we were done with all the activities at Chocolate World and hopped on the shuttle to get back to the Lodge, it was already past 9pm. As much as we would have liked to go over to ZooAmerica with our flashlights to check out the animals at dark or visit the Hershey Gardens for their pumpkin glow, we decided to order a pizza from room service and call it a night.

The next morning we had breakfast at Lebbie Lebkicher’s (named after Milton Hershey’s life-long friend), checked out of our room and took the shuttle back over to the park. We spent a few more hours on the rides, did another tour and ate even more Hershey’s candy.

We were all pretty exhausted by time we left, but couldn’t skip one of my favorite stops for a late lunch/early dinner before we left. If you’re at Hershey, you MUST go to the Hershey Grill. Every year it is one of our favorite stops, as the food is delicious and they have an entire menu of Hershey’s chocolate martinis! We filled up with an amazing last meal and then hit the road for home.

All in all, it was an absolutely wonderful weekend away and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a fun and YUMMY getaway!

Seeing as how we survived for most of the weekend on Hershey’s candy, what is your absolute FAVORITE candy?

Disclaimer: Hershey provided us with tickets to Hersheypark and the Chocolate World attractions, as well as a discounted hotel rate. Thank you so much to our friends at Hershey for making this trip possible. Even though it was ‘sponsored’ by Hershey, please know that all thoughts, yummy noises and calories eaten are my own.

Do you have Tips for Cruising with a Kid?

Before we had Jack, Travis and I went on quite a few cruises. Actually, if you want to be technical about it… Jack DID go on a cruise. In my belly, when I was 5 month’s pregnant.

Here I am doing the classic ‘I’m holding my baby bump so you don’t think I’m just a little fat’ pose:

And here Travis is doing classic Travis:

A lot of cruises have really awesome children’s programs though, so we’ve been thinking that we want to hit the seas again soon. Then, when casually stalking cruise deals out of Baltimore I found a fantastic option for April and booked it. YAY!

We will be sailing on a Carnival ship right out of our local port, so we don’t have to worry about plane rides, bringing along car seats or any kind of transfers on the way there. We just have someone drop us off and we step right on the ship. Our stops will be Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay and Freeport, Bahamas and we will have a few at-sea days to get down and back.

So now I can use your help, do you have any super awesome cruising with kid’s tips? I’d love to hear your thoughts!