Away in CT

I can't believe I haven't posted in over a year and a half. Where has the time gone? I think it was mostly spent on my hands and knees picking up cheerios and other crumbs of unknown origin off my floor. Seriously. The day after the cleaning lady comes, you'd never know she came by. -_-

Blogger.com used to be blocked at work and let's be honest, work is where I used to write most of my posts: during my lunch break, or my Starbucks coffee break, or my Starbucks Marshmallow Dream Bar break. But today I checked the site, just cuz, and for some reason, it's not blocked anymore. Maybe I will start blogging more regularly. I used to be a dedicated journaler in my younger days, but it's so hard to find time to do that now because see cheerios above. But I find that I love going back and reading old posts and remember things I forgot. I'll read a post and say to myself, "wuuut, J used to be a little baby who didn't eat more than his big sister??" That kind of thing.

Well today I want to memorialize a big occasion. The hubs and I went away on our first overnight getaway ever since kids. At first, I kept saying "first overnight trip since J!" but no. It's since L. Our last overnight getaway was when I was a 36-weeks-pregnant-with-L beached whale and we stayed at a great little B&B (which has unfortunately since closed) near the Poconos. That was 2011. I know. [insert horror face emoji here] My mom and aunts are here, so we took advantage and went away two Sundays ago. SH planned the whole trip. If anyone is looking for a quick getaway (parents or not), the trip we did is a great weekend getaway from the NYC area.

Mystic CT
We drove up to Mystic CT and first had lunch at the Oyster Club. It is an adorable little restaurant. We had raw oysters, NE clam chowder (best I've ever had--I love NE clam chowder but most are too thick and creamy--this one had a touch of creaminess but was very light) and coconut lemongrass mussels OMG. I'm still thinking about them. The waitress brought the bowl of mussels out and I gasped. It was huge. I think we counted over 30 of them. I think SH wanted to guzzle the broth from the bowl. But he's not shameless so he did not. The brunch entree was good but it was too late to the game--after the oysters, the beer, the mussels, the soup...we were so full that we couldn't finish it.

After Oyster Club we walked over to the water, where there's a cute little downtown area with small shops. We got to see the drawbridge go up (I took a video of the whole thing for L who loved watching it) and we grabbed ice cream at Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream. Also very good.

Mohegan Sun
Next we drove to Mohegan Sun which is about a 25 minute drive. We came here once but it was probably ten years ago. We originally tried to do a Fri-Sat trip, but the hotel was $400. So we checked other dates and Sun-Mon was $129. The price discrepancy is crazy.

We went to the pool, listened to a free concert (Junior Brown? SH recognized him), walked around, had a quiet dinner, had really good blueberry cheesecake for dessert, then watched TV in the room before passing out with no children nearby. It was pretty glorious. The next day we grabbed a quick breakfast and hung out at the hotel for a while before leaving around 11am.

We'll definitely do this trip again with kids sometime. I hear Mystic has a great aquarium. Also, I was pleasantly surprised by how the common areas of Mohegan Sun were not smoky. If you're not going through the casino, it's not bad at all. The kids would have so much fun at the big pool, and there's also a kids zone indoor playground.

On the drive up, I said "don't forget, we need to take a picture of us to commemorate this trip." SH said "yup." ...we forgot. We are so terrible at taking pictures of us. Maybe that's because as of today, SH and I have been together 12 years. -_- Where does the time go? umm...cheerios.