A nice way to kick off the holiday season!

Niki and I went out for dinner on Saturday night at Cracker Barrel. It's a favorite restaurant of ours and the food is always good. While we waited behind the 50 people from the tour bus in front of us, we took the opportunity to meet another couple waiting in line. They are from Ohio and are getting ready to retire in the next few years. We made small talk and they told us about geothermal power with windmills - it was pretty cool. We eventually were seated and enjoyed a fine meal. When we were ready for the check the waitress told us that another customer had anonymously paid our bill (we figured it was most likely this couple we described). What a nice gesture and surprise! That has never happened to us before. We decided that we need to pass the favor on to someone else this holiday season in one way or another. Thanks to the kind couple from Cracker Barrel for kicking off the holiday season in such a GREAT way!

Hershey and Lancaster!

Aaron and I spent a weekend visiting with our friends, Steve and Kellie and their son Bennett. They live in Hershey PA and showed us some of the different sites in Lancaster and Hershey. Saturday morning we drove to see the Amish and went to a farmers' market where we tasted samplings of their homemade goodies. They are friendly people who have a gift for making beautiful crafts and furniture - not that I'm advertising for them. Anywho....we also drove by their farms and over a covered bridge. They say if you kiss on the bridge, you will have seven years of good luck. So kissed we. On our way back we stopped at a pretzel factory and tried our new luck at making pretzels.

The day continued with a tour of Hershey’s Chocolate World. It was fun to see how the famous chocolate is made. Merchandise galore! Anything you can imagine they have available. It was cool. The rainy weather from earlier in the day scared off the big crowds at Hershey Park so when the skies cleared up in the evening it was perfect for Hershey Park in the dark. Aaron tried to win Niki a stuffed animal by scoring points with Skee Ball – but it turned out that Niki was much better at the game than he was and so she ended up winning the stuffed Hershey kiss for herself! We laughed pretty hard about that! On our way back to Erie we took a few pictures of the town of Hershey and enjoyed the fresh chocolate smell in the air. What a fun trip! Thanks Kellie, Steve, and Bennett for being such great hosts! We had a BLAST!