The only reason I have so many pictures of this trip is because I was keeping Joe and my stepdad, Rich, up-to-date on "their girls". This is something I'm always asking Joe to do when he is out so I can imagine where he is but he never does it. I guess it's a girl thing.
Anyway, so my mom travels for her job quite often. For some reason, I always imagined the fancy hotels we stayed at when on vacation and I envied her. Concierge taking her bags up, beautiful lobbies with fancy fountains and restaurants. Rooms with a view, fully stocked mini fridges and luxurious beds and bathrooms.
Turns out, the Marriott Courtyard isn't really fancy. It was clean, safe and efficient. I definitely recommend it but man... no glamour!
That was my sneaky attempt at taking a picture of the cheerful lobby without looking obvious. If I were a business traveler, I'd totally grab a coffee from here. But it would be room service every night.
It was my mom's birthday so we decided to do a girl's night out for dinner. We went to a restaurant that was only a few miles from our hotel in a really cute part of Huntsville. We sat at the bar and talked about husbands, babies and the future. It was really nice to catch up without all the distractions that come with our families.
Eventually, I convinced my mom to eat and we got a table.
I let mom pick the appetizer and she picked ESCARGOT. I was terrified but I promised to try it.
But it was AH-MAZE! It was snail inside butter and topped with toasty parmesan cheese. Our server gave us some bread to dip in the butter and cheese and we devoured it.
Isn't my mom the cutest!?
One thing I love about eating with my mom or sister is when we share food. Most of the time I would rather eat a little appetizer, a little entree, maybe a half salad and some dessert. Joe wants his own entree every time. Sometimes I can convince him to trade bites but that's it. No adventure!
My mom was on a mission for adventure so she picked our entree, a whole red fish. I must admit, this was also delicious although I quickly turned this plate around, I couldn't bare to look at those giant eyes!
Since mom picked out the appetizer and entree, I picked the dessert. It was a chocolate peanut butter truffle mousse thing with ganache and basically just all of my favorite words in one.
It was perfection.
The next morning, it was back to business...
We actually drove up to Huntsville to participate in a seminar her company produces to teach loan originators, processors and underwriters how to calculate self-employed income per Fannie Mae guidelines. Sounds exciting, huh?! For my job, it is (a little). With so many online shops opening up and people working from home we have seen an increase in self-employed borrowers or, at least, surprise write-offs on tax returns and I wanted to know what it all means so I can be prepared.
We got coffee, orange juice, a pen with post-its and candy! Could you guess that I really miss school sometimes?
This was my worksheet... lots of crossing through because I tried to skip ahead and got confused.
I definitely learned a lot about how to analyze tax returns. I also learned more about my mom, talked to her about my goals and how much she and my dad mean to me. I will work everyday of my life to have a good, close (in a healthy way) relationship with Emmy. Maybe one day we'll go out to eat for my birthday and we will laugh and talk about dreams and the people we love and we will both be happy and I will be so proud.
OH... how did Joe do you ask?
He did great. She was alive, the house was still in order and he didn't have to call me for anything.
He did, however, put her hot pink dress shoes over thick gray socks with a gray and red sweater.
He said "What? They're shoes!"...
No comments:
Post a Comment