Thanksgiving and beyond!

It was so wonderful to get out of Norfolk and get on the open road - only it wasn't as "open" as I had hoped! Holiday traffic made it a little more stressful than I had expected, but I made it to Wilmington, North Carolina in about 5.5 hours. Of course I was sad that Tito was not with me, but he had a lot of homework to do, so I took a much needed ladies trip to see my soul sister Aimee! Aimee just moved to Wilmington from Bend, Oregon where she was a wilderness therapist. She is now pursuing her dreams on the East coast - who woulda' thought...?Here is Aimee in her adorable apartment! We attempted to hang pictures, but we spent most of our time talking, relaxing and just hanging around... I was really appreciating a break from my school work. I brought it with me, but I didn't do a bit of it :)
Thanksgiving day, we took a little walk down to the Cape Fear River. This was an accidental shot, but I love it, it captures how happy Aimee is and I love to see her like that...

Why are my feet so much bigger than hers? Oh that's right - Aimee has "carnival" hands and feet haha!
We both ended up talking to our families over the phone right about this time. It was great to hear all of their voices and the sunset was beautiful!
I think this is the best photo that Aimee and I have ever taken together.
Thanksgiving dinner that night was perfect, we had domino's, chips and salsa, libations, our friend Corey, and the neighbors cat Mabel! We stayed up until 4 in the morning playing domino's and listening to music. Good Times!

It was really hard to leave Wilmington, but the exciting part is that we live so close now we can meet up more often. So we said goodbye and I headed back home to see my Tito on Saturday to celebrate our two year anniversary! It was my turn to plan date night, I got home around 6 PM and Tito was still working on homework, I took him to Boston Market for dinner and we came back to the house and I promptly fell fast asleep while we were watching movie. Oh well, guess we have the rest of our lives to celebrate - huh? :)

We have been busy finishing up school. I had my last two finals last night and Tito is finishing up tonight. He was up late last night cooking empanadas for his multicultural class and he is cooking a turkey for his work Xmas party on Friday - I will be baking some pies too. We'll let you know how everything turns out :) Last weekend I got to go on a trip with the Outdoor program through Tony's work. We drove up to Charlottesville Friday night and camped and were planning on climbing Old Rag mountain on Saturday. It is supposed to be a really hard hike, but beautiful.

So when we got to the campground it was already dark and of course Tony couldn't just put up the tent because that would be too easy. So he made a game out of it, he was blindfolded, and Christina couldn't talk and they each had one leg tied together and I was not allowed to touch anything. As you can see it was quite a challenge, and we were all laughing so hard I am not sure how the tent actually got set up...
This is my favorite picture when Christina is stuck under the tent... :)
This is the hike the next day! Winterwonderland! It was so beautiful, such a great way to spend a Saturday!
Unfortunately this was as far as we got, the snow was covering the trail and the trailmarkers, so our fearless leaders called it and we had to turn around. We weren't too disappointed cause really it is more important to live in my opinion ;)
This is my attempt at a timed photo so that we could all be in the picture...
Awesome!
And then at the bottom it was just rain.... oh well, the snow provided the magic on the hike that kept our spirits up and made me feel like it was truly the holiday season. The last time Tony and I were in snow like that we were in Chama with Sunny and Steven cross country skiing to a Yurt. Fond memories, good times.... gotta love it!

So that is all for now, we are headed up North on the 19th - Ohio first and then CT after that, we are looking forward to seeing as many people as we can fit into our schedule!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanza, Happy Festivas and Happy New Year (and anything else anyone out there celebrates)!