The Long 7 Years Post

Jordan and I celebrated our 7 year wedding anniversary earlier this month, and at this point, we are close to our 7 year and 1 month anniversary ;)

 

The last 7 years have flown by, but this post is long. So this is the discaliamer: the following may be too sappy, too detailed, too cheesy, too lovey, etc. and thats how I roll.

 

This year I was bound and determined that we were going to go on a trip and do something for us. Not for the whole family, but be totally selfish and do something that costs money and is totally unnecessary. I knew that my favorite group Coldplay was on tour so early in the year I bought tickets to see then in Auburn Hills, Michigan because they didn't come to Ohio - at all!! The drive is just short of 4 hours so it wasn't bad at all.

 

We contemplated bringing the kids with us and staying at Jordan's sister's home but as our summer travel went on (Kentucky, Zanesville, Indiana) we decided to go sans kids. And I am so glad we did!! We secured my two sisters to stay with the kids at our house and off we went!

 

Here is my adorable husband driving us to Michigan! We talked, listened to whatever music we wanted, relaxed and just enjoyed a car ride with the two, not four of us.

 

 

The two of us - giddy, excited and partly anxious. When we left the kids, moments before Lily had said 'Don't leave me Mama..' She has never said that before. All week we had been preparing her for our trip and us leaving and I think it really helped.

We slowly made our way up to Auburn Hills with our first stop at Chipotle for lunch. Followed by a stop at Coon's Candy. 

 

We had seen this place on the way up to Michigan before but haven't stopped since we have the kiddos with us and you know we are going to stop a million times so we might as well stop at a place with a bathroom and not one with candy everywhere.

 



There were all kinds of goodies at this 5th generation owned candy and goodies shoppe.

 



 

And they had candles... yummy, delicious, intoxicating candles. Better than Yankee, and dare I say, better than most BBW candles too. They had a line of soy wax candles that are 'intensely fragrant'. After about 10 minutes of sniffing, we decided on a candle to buy. Note: my face seems to say 'this is amazing and I wanna eat/lick/smell it all day'

 

And the winner was.... vanilla pound cake! We just opened it up and left it to scent up our whole car. Yuuum!

 

Another stop we have wanted to stop at was Beef Jerky Unlimited. It's a like a buffet of various dried meats with seasons on it. After I tasted the honey jerkey, I was sold.

 

Barrel after barrel of meats, all different flavors. They gave samples and I think Jordan and I sampled about 10 of them. The smell in the store was so intense - beef and salt. As I type this that sounds gross but in the moment it was amazing.

 

Does it get much manlier (word?) than scooping out your own jerky into a paper sack?! I say, no.

 

After that stop we made it to Waterford, Michigan which is the city our bed and breakfast is located. However, as we made it through Detroit around 4:00pm we hit bumper to bumper, barely moving traffic for over an hour. I think it took us an hour and 10 minutes to go 15 miles........horrible. Reasong #456 to never live in Detroit.

 

After we settled into our darling B&B, we had dinner at a local Italian place and it was so good. Jordan had picked it out beforehand and it was perfect!

 

I had a grilled chicken with three cheese tortellini in a bed of alfredo rosa with all the salad and garlic rolls I could manage (which was a lot!)

 

Jordan opted for a personal alfredo chicken and artichoke pizza

 

After dinner, although I wanted to eat dessert but had zero room left in my body... we headed off to the Palace at Auburn Hills to see COLDPLAY! I fell in love with Coldplay back in the winter of 2002 when I was a junior in high school. My love has never died. And I finally, finally, got to see them in concert.

 

Here we are about to enter the arena



As we walked in, they handed us these bands to put on our wrists, no one was really sure why but we knew they were apart of the show.

 



 

We came late on purpose, to miss most of the first two openings, they weren't my style of music and both British so I wasn't even familiar with their music or who they were at all. So we came in, settled into the second row from the back and waited. It was hot..hot...hot. It had to be at least 80 degrees if not 85 in there.

 

The last group wraps up their set and instrumental music starts playing with the lights on in the arena while the crew sets up the Coldplay set. The interlude music starts to get more energetic as finally Jay Z's song - 99 Problems comes on, really loud. For a second, everyone is looking around like... umm?? This is a Coldplay concert.. not hip hop? As the last note drops, the lights go down and Coldplay runs out onto stage and starts playing their first song from their new album and when the guitar hits, everyone's bands light up like a 20,000 bulb Christmas tree - all LED, multi colored and on everyone's wrists. People, including us, went absolute mad.

 

The xylobands, as they are called, would turn on and off, in sync with the chorus, verses, etc. It was insane...

 

Here are our bands, all aglow

 

The concert was amazing - even if a few punk boys in spandex hot pants were smoking weed a few times behind us. Coldplay sounded just as good as they do on their albums, the crowd participation was great and they played every song I had hoped for, and more. They played 5 songs off their 2nd album that came out 10 years ago!! I was in heaven.

 

After the concert, we made our way back to our B&B which we had all to ourselves! The owner lives off site and since it was a Wednesday night, no one else took the other two rooms.

 

This was our own suite

 

Complete with it's own bathroom and a jacuzzi tub

 

Just about to leave the next morning. We had breakfast at around 9:30am and the owners made up a fruit salad, donuts, danishes, yogurt, toast and orange juice. All, just for us. They set the dining table for the two of us..it was darling.

 

This is the back portion of the home that was originally built in 1868

 

Here is the front side of the house. The door on the right shows where the orignal parlor was built, a one room house. Then the drawing room and kitchen were added in 1872, with the upstairs being added in 1890.

The current owner bought it in a completely dilapidated condition and fully restored it. The phone from the turn of the century still remained in the parlor.

 



 

The stairway and first floor bathroom

 

The drawing room

 

The upstairs hall with a cedar plank ceiling that smelled incredible

 

Looking downstairs to the front door.

 

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at the B&B, much much more than we would have at Holiday Inn! The cost was equivalent for the type of room we had and the coziness and personality of the place was priceless.

 

Before we left Michigan, we traveled about 15 minutes to see Jordan's sister Dawn and her kids. We had a delicious lunch, chatted about home improvement, talked with the kids, picked up some goodies for Lily and off we went, back home. A wonderful trip I will never forget. Jordan and I vowed to do something like this every year for our anniversary!