The Visit

My friend came to visit! Hot-diggity!

We had so much fun, and I still can't believe she was actually HERE.

I only have a short time to write, so I'll just throw out the highlights.


Kristin arrived on Friday evening, just in time for our town's "2nd Friday" event. (Every second Friday, the stores in our town stay open past 5 o'clock. Whoo-HOO! Wild and crazy in Pennsylvania!)

We hustled down to Main Street (me, George, the boys, Kristin, and her 10-year-old daughter) and soaked up the twinkle lights and street guitars and window displays, pointing at pretty things and saying, "I know! Our town IS super adorable!")

We chatted and popped into shops, and eventually George took the kids back to the house while Kristin and I stopped at the pizza place on Main Street to pick up dinner. By the time we got back to the house with our pizza (walking, of course--everything here is walking), the kids were camped out on the living room floor watching Star Wars.

(Luckily, Kristin's daughter is a Star Wars maniac, and she loves Legos, and climbing trees and, and, and...so the boys are crazy about her.)

The next morning, we got up at the cracka-cracka dawn (-ish) and high-tailed it to the BIG CITY of Lancaster (7 miles away) to go to the perfectly gorgeous Central Market. From the first time I went there, I knew this was a place Kristin would just LOVE. (And I was right.)

We ooh'd and ahh'd over pretty vegetables and baked goods and AMISH PEOPLE. We drank decaf coffee and ate sugared doughnuts and tasted yummy cheese and bought fresh dairy milk. And once we experienced every inch of that place, we then high-tailed it back to my tiny metropolis where the 9th Annual Chocolate Walk awaited us.

What's this, you say. A Chocolate Walk? What ees theees Cho-co-late Wahh-lk?

Um. Yeah. It's a Chocolate Walk and it's awesome. It's basically walking around town and eating chocolate. It's Trick or Treat for Grownups.

We had 30 stops to make and only five hours to get it done. Get out of the way, everybody! It's time to eat some chocolate!

First stop: The Wilbur Chocolate Factory. --I don't remember exactly what was in the confection we inhaled while we were there, but I think it involved pretzels, maybe a tiny marshmallow, perhaps some caramel, but definitely some serious chocolate. I nearly ate my own fingers trying to gobble it down.

The second stop featured a teeny-tiny hot fudge sundae and some yummy chocolate mousse. I was seriously wanting a bigger helping. But they did not give me one. Good thing, though, because I had 28 more stops to go, and would soon realize the importance of pacing oneself.

Third Stop: The Toy Soldier Restaurant and Pub, featuring...SPICY CHOCOLATE-DIPPED CHICKEN WINGS. Oh, man! Sounds weird. Tasted scrumptious. Wanted more. (Still want more. I want chicken wings dipped in savoury chocolate. I want it NOW. At 8:47 in the morning.)

Fourth Stop: Lititz House Bed and Breakfast for some kind of chocolate caramels.

(You get the picture. We stop every few feet and eat chocolate. This goes on all day.)

By the end of the day, we are exhausted, a little headachey (thank you, Advil!), but still pressing on. It is possible that we missed a few (Don't you judge! It's hard work eating chocolate all day!), but we ended with a triumph: Whiff Coffee Roasters, where they were featuring the Mocha Java Crunch chocolate bar (with fresh-roasted coffee beans and dark, dark chocolate) and a weensy-beensy cup of some super scrumptious coffee that somehow combined coffee and cinnamon and dark chocolate. YUM.

Ok, so after all of that, we essentially fell over dead--sick, sick, sick of chocolate (true story!).

We must have eaten something that night for dinner, but I truly don't remember what it was. The fact is: I don't remember anything at all from that evening.

Next morning, we got back to work! Our mission: find Kristin some amazing pumpkins and look at Amish people. Check! and Check!

She and I took the kids on a picnic at a nature preserve where, lo and behold!, all the Amish people in Lancaster County were also having a picnic! Truly had no idea they'd be there. Truly went nuts with the camera. (Though we tried to be so smoooth...)

On the way home, we found a serve-yourself pumpkin stand with really the most amazing pumpkins I've ever seen. Kristin bought all of them. (Not really. She only bought some. Then she came back the next day and bought the rest.)

Let's see...what else did we do? We drove around and looked at farms and took more pictures. We talked. We walked. We watched our kids play. It was perfect.

Oh, and then on Monday night, while she and I were sitting on the porch enjoying a perfect October evening, my neighbor walked over with a steaming pot of chicken dinner. Because, if I haven't already mentioned it a million times, I'm in a dinner co-op. And it was not my night to cook.

HAHAHAhahahaaHAHAHAAHAHAhahhaaha!!

PERFECT.

And then the next morning, my friend left.

Not perfect.

Still missing them. --Hard.

Ok--Who's coming to see us next?

Seriously. Which one of you is coming next?

Seriously. Get off your bee-hinds and come see me.

Now.

(Please?)