Rest, Relaxation, and Kid-Free Time!

Disclaimer: I truly do love my kids and enjoy spending days at home with them. Having said that...

My hubby works for a small engineering/surveying company. Once a year they have a Christmas party as most businesses do I assume. Oh wait, are they still called "Christmas" parties or are they now called "Holiday" parties? It's been so long since I've been in the workforce I'm not sure what the PC term might be...but I digress.

Whenever we have something like this, I always make sure my mother-in-law is free to watch the boys for us. Thankfully she was so I didn't have to figure out something else. She even suggested that we get a hotel room and spend the night since Freeport (where the party was held) is a good two hour drive for us. I think it's important to listen to my MIL so that's exactly what we did.

Dinner was held at the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport. It's a pretty swanky place. And no, this is not where we spent the night. Check out the prices on the rooms. The food was delicious but a tad haute cuisine as in the veggies with the meal were three green beans, two carrots, and two parsnips (I think). They were all delicious but there definitely needed to be more of them! Oh, I had the filet migon and it was pretty good but also far too pink for me. That was served on a bed of mashed potatoes with bacon and other things inside it. Not real sure since I'm not a huge fan of potatoes unless they are fried. Yeah, I know.

Hubby and I were very thankful we had planned to spend the night since it was snowing pretty heavily by the time the party broke up. Well, okay, it did break up by around 8:30pm. That was okay as hubby & I planned to go change & then head over to L.L. Bean. After all we were in Freeport!

The store was far from busy at 9pm at night but it is always fun to browse at Bean's. Of course, I like to play the "so, how much do you think this is?" game with hubby. He's pretty good at it! I am always shocked at the prices of most of the stuff but it is high quality stuff. Hubby desperately wanted a Maine Warden jacket but that wasn't happening either. He did walk out with a blaze orange bomber hat and I got something for the boys as well. At this point I had hit a wall so we headed out. However, we did stop to see the new moose display. It's pretty impressive.

I'll openly admit that we stopped at Shaw's on the way back to the hotel & picked up a rotisserie chicken and sides to go with it as hubby was starving. Did I mention the haute cuisine we were served at 7pm? It was now closing in on 11pm. It was pretty delicious.

The next morning we headed back in to Freeport and stopped at the L.L. Bean outlet store. We had a lot of good luck here. Hubby found a winter jacket he was satisfied with for a third of the cost of the one from the retail store the night before. He also scored an amazing deal on a wool hunting jacket - $50! Got to love deal's like that!

We spent the rest of the day going around to various stores and finishing up on our Christmas shopping. We went to Cabela's (of course - I had to pretty much drag hubby out of there after two hours), Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Barnes and Noble, and I think that's it. We also enjoyed an extremely yummy lunch at Texas Roadhouse. There are only a couple of these in Maine so we hadn't eaten at one yet. It was so good! It was a great day spent in the company of my best friend.

By the time we finally arrived home it was close to bedtime. Perfect timing I'd say.

It was a fabulous weekend and I'm always grateful when I get a chance to spend uninterrupted time with my hubby reconnecting. It's what helps us stay strong after 16-1/2 years of marriage.