grown-up weekend adventure

Last weekend, Mike and I took a little trip to celebrate our fifth anniversary. Believe it or not, this was the first vacation-type trip we've been on since our honeymoon. I guess that's what you sign up for when you plan to start having babies as soon as possible following the wedding. Anyway, Saturday morning, we bid farewell to the boys (who spent the weekend at the family "compound" -- more on that in a following post)and hit the road for scenic Canton, Ohio.

If Canton seems like a random choice to you, it wasn't. It was something worse: a completely nerdy choice. We picked Canton because of its proximity to an attraction for each of us. (We picked our hotel because the room boasted a giant bathtub, but that's neither here nor there.) When we arrived, we discovered that our hotel was in the middle of a chain-restaurant paradise. All the major chains were represented; too bad we're more into one-off kinds of places. Still, we managed to enjoy a delicious dinner Saturday night at the seafood emporium (you know the one).

Mike, in the middle of telling me, "I was at this game!"

After sleeping in Sunday morning (oh, so that's what that feels like!), we headed to our first destination: The Pro Football Hall of Fame. It turned out to be smaller and less impressive than Mike thought it would be, but it did have a large, creepy hall of heads that featured busts of all HOF players. It also had a nice gift shop (of course) so we were able to get the promised souvenirs for the boys (Chicago Bears semis).

Mike channels Da Coach.

Monday morning, we got up too early and set out for Newell, West Virginia, the home of Fiestaware. The fog was low in the mountains, and we drove through lots of small, desolate towns where we got no cell phone reception. I'll admit, the whole drive sort of gave me the creeps. But then we arrived, and the trip was instantly forgotten. We took a tour of the factory and watched the Fiesta being born, which was really interesting for me. Mike was more focused on the "poor bastards" who had worked there for 30+ years, moving clay molds from place to place monotonously the whole time. Apparently, it made making tires not seem like such a bad thing to be doing.

Mecca

After the tour, we hit the Fiesta outlet store. The highlight was the second quality room. Stacks upon stacks of Fiestaware, some obviously cracked and damaged, others with just slightly "off" colors or tiny white spots. Paradise, I'm telling you. We spent a happy and dusty hour in there collecting my souvenirs, then we packed up the car and embarked on the long drive back home. It was really good to get away by ourselves, but by Sunday night/Monday morning, we were definitely missing the boys and just wanting to get back to them. Those little devils have us wrapped around their fingers.