Wild and Wonderful West Virginia

Well, much time has passed since my last blog post and it's about time for an update. We'll blame it on winter  - it tends to put a damper on traveling and activities. There was one bright spot though:

Over President's Day weekend I went with some friends to a cabin in the middle of the woods in West Virginia. Literally nothing around us for miles. Prove it? O.k.

The view from our back porch.

It was beautiful and secluded and my favorite part about the whole weekend was the lack of cell phone service. Being cut off from the world for a couple days is a glorious and refreshing experience. I recommend it to all.

Where to begin? Let's start with the trek up the mountain to get to this cabin. I drove up with James and Liz and we were apparently the luckiest travelers. We hit the bottom of the hill just after our new friend BJ (our favorite West Virginian) finished plowing the road leading to the cabin. The couple cars before us had serious struggles, but we just cruised right up there in that Ford Focus. Built Ford Tough. The rest of the cars left quite a bit later due to work schedules and such and didn't arrive til LATE that evening. The roads got worse so we had to call BJ and have him shuttle people up in his plow truck, leaving the cars at the bottom. I think the final group arrived around 3am. Poor BJ. I think he liked us anyway.

So it was a rough first night for some, but Saturday brought some good times with it! One of my favorite things was the "hot tub." Trust me, it deserves those quotation marks. The jets didn't work and it required filling up via a hose from the cabin every time we wanted to get in (which took a good couple hours).

This is Jonathan. He loved hot tub duty. Just look at his face. 

Totally worth it though. I mean, who wouldn't want in on this?

W.V.!

The other great thing about this hot tub? It slowly drains while you're in it. So if you wait long enough, and weed out the weaklings, you'll end up with four people slowly moving toward the center (deepest) of the hot tub, crouching down til there's nothing left and then jumping up and making a run for the door. Hot tub conversations are also highly entertaining, but we won't get into that here.

Liz and I - ready to go sledding!

Sledding was another highlight of the weekend. Hunter brought up a couple tubes and we made our own runs on the hill behind the cabin, which meant there was a slight danger of running into trees. As a result, Joseph stipulated that if I was on the tube with him and he yelled at me to bail, then I HAD to bail. The first run, we get about halfway down, and Joseph yells "Bail! Bail!" I do an awesome roll in the snow and look up expecting to see him recovering as well, only to realize that he has continued down the hill enjoying a great ride, completely unharmed. Um, thanks Joseph - I have snow down my pants now. Anyway, those tubes quickly received puncture wounds and didn't last long. Then we found a couple tubes by the barn next to the cabin. Either these tubes were VERY old or they were meant for summer activities, such as calmly floating in a pond, but here's what happened to one of them when Brad and I jumped on and hooked into the middle of the train going down:

Yeah, not just a puncture wound on this one. 

We literally moved a couple inches and then the tube just exploded underneath us! I rolled off to the side, laughed for about ten minutes and then decided to call it a day (for sledding at least).

Snow-shoeing was another popular activity, but I decided against that due to my upcoming knee surgery (I had ACL surgery on Feb 21st if you didn't know). Next time.











The rest of my time was spent in the cabin playing games, watching movies, reading by the fire, and just relaxing.

Best game of Nertz EVER. 

Sunni "trying" to beat me at California Speed.
Jk Sunni, I had a blast playing with you.

I LOVE card games!

No neighbors = no one to disturb.

Oh, and we can't forget about the dance party Saturday night! We had some serious dancers in this group. Not sure I'll ever forgive Nils for skipping Ke$ha on the playlist. At least the Biebs got left alone though.

Group Dinner

Good-bye West Virginia - I'll miss you!
President's Day 2014 anyone? 

I had a blast and now I have to throw in another story because this happened on our drive back to DC. Get ready for a Presidents Day Miracle!
When I moved out to DC a little over a year ago, I mailed a box (a large box) of things that I couldn't fit in my suitcases and that I could live without until they got there. In this box were 2 of my homemade quilts that are very dear to me, my entire DVD collection, my iHome, some clothing items and some shoes. I shipped it the slowest way, but after about a month I became extremely concerned and began the headache of talking to the Post Office. I was eventually informed that the day I mailed my package there were several packages stolen and that there was a federal case opened and they were looking into it. But basically there was nothing they could do cause I hadn't purchased insurance on the package. Lesson learned. So after crying to my mom a bit I had no choice but to just accept it and move on. I bought new running shoes, I started replacing DVDs and life went on. Every once in a while it would cross my mind that somewhere out there someone was enjoying my DVD collection and had probably trashed my precious quilts.
Well, on the way home from WV, once we had service again, I of course immediately checked my email. In my inbox was an email from the mom of the twins that I nannied when I first moved to DC. She wrote that on her front doorstep in IDAHO was my package that I had sent on December 31, 2011!!! Apparently it had been sent to her old office in DC (where we always had things mailed to while I lived with them) and a co-worker forwarded it onto her new address in Idaho. She didn't realize what it might be until it arrived at their house. I have never been so SHOCKED in my life. I think I must have re-read that email about 4 times before it sunk in. I thought that box was gone for good and had lost all hope. But miracles happen, people! So they forwarded it onto me out in Maryland and I received it about a week later. Everything was still inside, no damage done. But where has it been for OVER A YEAR?? If that box could talk, the stories it might tell...
Needless to say, it made my year. I haven't experienced such pure joy in a long time. I don't know what I did to deserve such a blessing, but thank you Heavenly Father.

I'm not sure what March will bring, but the weather is warming up, my knee is healing, and I'm sure good times will be had this spring and summer. I'll try to keep the blog updated. Thanks for reading!