Dinner Party

Life has returned to normal...The Office is back on! Thank goodness my Thursdays will be humorous once again. Last night we spent a great 30 minutes laughing at the attempt at a dinner party. My favorite part was Jim's attempt to get out of it half way through.

SPRING FOR A DAY

Berlin was in the 60's yesterday! I took this pic from inside our kitchen, but you can still see all the red blossoms starting to appear on the trees outside.

DEON'S DENT

Here is a nice pic of the remodeling job I did on Dave & Robin's garage door (courtesy of Robin). This picture is a flattering angle of the width, length, and depth of damage from the Sub. I think they actually popped-out as much as they could so the garage door could still function.

PENNSYLVANIA PALETTE

INTERCOURSE CANNING COMPANY

Friday morning, our first stop in Lancaster County was a canning company. Steve was a little apprehensive at first, until he discovered all the delicious samples distributed throughout the store. We truly found some incredible recipe ideas for canning this year: Jalapeno Pepper Jam was a big favorite!

AMISH: BLACK & WHITE

PEOPLE'S PLACE QUILT MUSEUM

Steve could have spent hours and hours at the quilt museum in Intercourse, PA. :)

FARMER FARE

The Farmer's Market in Bird-In-Hand, PA was filled with delicious, homegrown food.

MINI MISTY MINTS

It's hard to believe, but the Wilbur Chocolate Museum was probably the most interesting and delicious of all our chocolate adventures in PA and CT. We all enjoyed learning some chocolate history and candy-making techniques from the nice ladies in Lititz, PA.

MUSEUM OF CHOCOLATE

STURGIS STAND-UP

Our last stop in Lancaster County on Friday was supposed to be the grandest . . . a visit to the oldest pretzel factory in the world: Julius Sturgis Pretzel Factory. Although the magnitude of the factory/tour did not live up to our expectations, the humorous manner in which our young tour guide conducted our tour more than made up for the lack of pretzel paraphernalia!

"SUITE" DREAMS

We lucked out and scored a nice suite at the Hershey Sheraton in Harrisburg, PA on Friday night.  After raiding the Club Lounge, Mom and I displayed quite the breakfast spread before hitting the road for Hershey.

HERSHEY HEAVEN

Saturday we had a wonderful time touring around Hershey World. The amusement park wasn't open for the season yet, but I don't think Mom was too disappointed about that.

SWEET MUSIC

The Hershey Tour was truly riveting . . . Steve was in awe of the singing cows.

Sunday Mom had her big debut as the only soprano in my ward choir. Steve was actually the only tenor attending for the majority of practice, so Mom had another family member equally annoyed that I hauled them both to choir with me. Regardless, she sang beautifully!!!!

We did a little cooking that afternoon and had a delicious meal . . . thanks for all your talents in the kitchen, Mom!

GIRL TIME

Monday was ALL about girl stuff: shopping, girlfriends, fun eats, and even a chic flick.

FILET FETISH

Tuesday we did some shopping and ate some great food! Mom was a little overwhelmed by all the marshmallows on her side dish.

LOVE OF THE DARK SIDE

On Wednesday, Mom & I ventured to South Norwalk to tour the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion and to visit my favorite European chocolate restaurant, Chocopologie. However, we were so excited about one more chocolate stop, that we neglected to pay the parking meter and got a ticket! Obviously, you all know the ticket was just the beginning of my driving worries last week :).

We also ate at our favorite Vietnamese Restaurant in W. Hartford that evening. Mom is a big Pho consumer now.