Christmas Trip Part 1!

We had a great trip out to the East Coast for Christmas!  The trip always involves so much traveling, so we decided to split it up a little bit at the beginning by staying with Angela and Brendan in Rhode Island for the first night.  They were great hosts!  They made us an amazing meal of vegetarian chili and cornbread, even making up a little plate for Skyla.  They also made us a cake that they decorated to mark the occasion -- so sweet!

  

The next morning we had a little fun playing around the apartment before setting off for the rest of our journey.  We were so happy that we got a chance to see them, and even more happy that we only had to say goodbye for a couple of days before we got to meet up with them in Kennebunkport!

One of the first things we did in Maine was cut down our own Christmas tree.  Tory and Brenda had a spirited conversation about which one to cut, how to cut it down, and how to get it onto the car.  Skyla, Mae, and I just sat in the car and laughed at Tory struggling in the mud.  We got a great tree for a great deal out of it though!

We stopped in Freeport on our way down to Kennebunkport to do a bunch of Christmas shopping.  Unfortunately, it was raining cats and dogs so we couldn't do too much shopping.  We did get to go to our favorite restaurant there, though, The Corsican.  We had a good old time staying dry from the rain, then hit the road to go to The Maine Mall to finish up our shopping.

Here's one pic from the mall: Tory discovering first-hand what Mara had been talking about wanting for Christmas -- a Yogibo!

We got to Brendan's parents' beautiful beach house that night.  We hung out with them a little bit, but went to bed pretty early because we had a big day planned.  We got up bright and early and went for a nature hike to a very exciting destination: an old house on the beach that they say is haunted!  We had to cross a rickety old sign that warned us not to continue further (spooky!) but we did anyway.  As soon as we did, we noticed that all of the trees on that side of the sign had been knocked down, almost as though a giant had come through and felled them.  We kept trying to scare one another, and of course it took very little to give me the heebie-jeebies.  

 

Next we went to downtown Kennebunkport for a fabulous lunch at Federal Jack's. They had great vegetarian options and an awesome beer selection -- we enjoyed the sampler so we got to try them all. Luckily Skyla slept through the whole meal so we got to have some nice adult time :)

 

After our delicious lunch, we walked around Kennebunkport.  It is so adorable!  I can't believe I've never been there in all the times I've been to Maine.  They had beautiful Christmas decorations up and there were tons of cute shops.  The best one by far though was Dannah, filled with tons of adorable hand-made gifts.  Angela and I went in by ourselves and were immediately offered a nice glass of wine while we shopped.  We each bought snazzy headbands and left the store feeling just great!

 

From there we went to the very chic Kennebunkport Inn for a drink.  We had already done so many fun things in one day but we still weren't done!

We went for a nice early dinner at an absolutely amazing vegetarian restaurant, Bandaloop (mentioned in Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume, one of my all-time favorite books!)  Angela told us about the amazing menu ahead of time and we were not disappointed!  The only thing was the dinner was so early and we had eaten so much for lunch that we didn't have a ton of room for all of it.  But what we did have, we enjoyed immensely!

That wasn't the end of the night though!  We had a great time back at the house eating amazing cheese, olives, and chocolate with some more delicious wine.  And we played charades!  We laughed so much and tried to stay up as late as possible so the night would never have to end.

Unfortunately for me, Skyla did not stay up late so she was up very early -- before the sunrise!  The bright side of that was that I got to watch the sun rise over the ocean as I played with my perfect girl.  The news of the Newtown massacre was still very much at the forefront of my mind, so I watched a few of the stories of the children and read more about it on Facebook.  I couldn't stop crying but I just kept looking at my happy, silly girl and feeling so grateful to have her.

 

We were very sad to say goodbye to Angela and Brendan, but very happy that we had such a wonderful weekend together.