*** hip mama blog ***: Weekends

Monday, July 20, 2009

Catching Up and a Productive Weekend

Hello, friends. I hope you had a great weekend. :)

My weekend was pretty productive. I don't know if I've mentioned to you all. But three months ago, I moved in with my boyfriend in his two-storey traditional twelve year old house that I think is very beautiful. It's not a perfect house and it definitely needs a little 'tweaking'. Anyway, since I've lived with Dan we've just been constantly making changes to "our house" (he prefers me to call it that way rather than "his house", lol)as far as decor, re-arranging the furniture, adding stuff in it, etcetera. He's loved the "woman's touch" and has been very grateful for all my new input to the house. By the way, we also have a Shih Tzu dog named Gibson who's so adorable but one that still needs potty training and all. Lately, he's been spending a lot of time in our patio and has left some you-know-what odor there no matter how much we clean up. So last Friday I told Dan that the next day Saturday will have to be spent on cleaning the house- especially our patio and garage to get rid of the odor and do some organizing. It was a great weekend plan. Now the patio is all clean, nice, and smelling good! I didn't enroll in an Organizational development program but I can tell you, I did a pretty good job organizing stuff around the house. ;) The garage is still so-so as far as the organization part, but we definitely got rid of so much junk and dust that's probably been sitting there for about three years or so. Take note that before I moved in to the house, only him and his twelve year old son lives there. My boyfriend is a busy business guy who doesn't have a lot of time in his hands to clean his house full force. So anyway, after we did our thorough cleaning this weekend, the patio, garage and even the basement look so much better! :)

Dan and were both so proud of ourselves being so productive. So yesterday afternoon, he told me out of the blue that we should go to Charlestown Races and Slots just for fun. And since we were both "kid-free", it was the perfect time to go there. The last time we did the slots was when we were on our vacation in the Bahamas last May. We had fun with it. I'll tell you honestly, those can get addicting if you're not cautious, lol. But no, Dan and I just plays for fun. I don't think we'll ever become casino/slots addicts, lol.

Anyway, we drove for about 1.5 hours to Charlestown, betted total $60 on the slots and came home with $138 cash. Not bad, huh? It was my first time being in that place so I was a little disappointed when we didn't see the horse racing. We got there too late- about 9 PM- so all the races were done for the day. That could have been fun. Anyway, I'm sure it won't be our first time there. The slots are fun to do and I'm sure the horse racing will be a sight to see the next time we go there. We weren't in bed 'til a little past 2AM this morning, so right now I am still feeling a bit dizzy from lack of good shut-eye. :)

That's how my weekend went. How was yours? I'd love to know! :)

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

[+/-]

Flight Disaster That Ended In Beautiful Cozumel Island

So Friday morning, me and my better half left Virginia for our Valentine weekend vacation to The Bahamas. Well, sadly it didn't happen. When we checked in from Charlotte, NC for our connecting flight to The Bahamas, we were told our US Airways flight was oversold and fifteen of us passengers didn't get seats at all. In short, we were told we can't make it to our destination. Imagine the pain and disappointment that caused us all? I can't even begin to tell you how upset we were. I cried. I just couldn't believe it was happening to us. We bought our tickets the first week of January. It just wasn't fair.. we felt cheated and very humiliated about it.

Anyway, to make the long story short, we had to make a quick decision to go somewhere else and make use of our "rare" time to go away. We agreed it has to be a beautiful island and not too far from Charlotte, NC where we were.

*View of the white sand beach outside our hotel room

So we ended up going to Cozumel- a beautiful white beach island in the Mexican Carribean. The only thing was that we had to wait for the next flight To Cozumel which was the next morning. So we ended up staying one night in Charlotte (with free hotel and meals). Not the best situation since we only had 3 days for the whole trip, but well.. it was better than going home and going nowhere at all.

All in all, we still had a wonderful Valentine's Day vacation. We lost one day of beach and sight-seeing enjoyment, but it was still a very unforgettable and very relaxing vacation. Cozumel is really beautiful- white sand beach, clear blue ocean, great Mexican food and yummy cocktail drinks! I loved the Intercontinental Presidente Hotel Cozumel where we stayed at. The room was very luxurious and had a fantastic oceanfront view complete with all the amenities you can imagine. I almost wished we never left, LOL. We were only there less than 2 days (too short!). So in a few months, we're planning to still go to The Bahamas. Hopefully we'll find good flight tickets on sale. And this time we'll make sure we have seat number assignments for our flight before we leave the house. Hard lesson learned.