The unexpected

It's funny sometimes how things come full circle...

Last year, over Memorial weekend, Adam and I went down to one of our favorite beaches for fireworks - Huntington Beach in Orange County. They have fabulous display at night and a fair during the day. We played in the ocean, ate far too much cotton candy and stopped at a few booths for freebies. I love free stuff just as much as the next guy. I can find a use for just about anything. But I draw the line at one place -- time share offers. I hate going past those booths. They always try to suck you in with promises of fabulous vacations on warm sandy beaches. I'm at the beach; what more beach do I want?

It wasn't until we passed by one of these "fabulous offers" that I realized my husband did not share my sentiments on the subject. As I was saying "no thank you" he was saying "sure!" So with the promise of a totally free vacation... in we went.

Maybe we're a good team when it comes to these guys because the more I tried to pull away the more they threw at us. A fabulous Hawaiian vacation. Free dinner. Oh and four free movie tickets. How about a trip to Lake Tahoe? And it was over. We shook the mans hand and signed up for a pitch the next week.

As much as I rallied against it, we went. Surprisingly it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. Very low pressure - of course we said no - and we still got our free vacations. We planned Tahoe for just after the new year and Hawaii for the summer time. I was so excited!

Adam's fantastic at planning vacations. He researches everything and finds the most fun, low cost, maximum impact activities for us. So I was totally thrilled when he surprised me at Christmas with a skiing package for our vacation in Tahoe and an afternoon in Yosemite. I love to ski -- I miss snow!!

We packed up in early February for a fantastic 5 day vacation. I love road tripping with Adam. He's the most fun car partner. The trip up was great. The cottage was adorable.

And the vacation - amazing! We skied, we snowboarded, we went to the lake, ate the best sushi, toured all of Tahoe. We had so much fun. One of the best vacations ever. You can see some of our pictures of Tahoe here, or Yosemite here.

But oh, was it interesting...

My first set of ski's were far too long, and down the mountain I rolled. New set of skis.

We parked a little too close to the bottom of the mountain and got the car stuck in the snow. For over an hour. Tough to get out, but hilarious.

The most interesting event, though, came after our day of snowboarding. We were exhausted! It was our first time trying the board and we spent most of the day sliding down the mountain. We decided to grab a bucket of KFC, some PowerAde from the grocery store and head back to the hotel room to "heal." We practically bought out the store of PowerAde and loaded our bags into the car. As we were pulling out of our parking spot I heard the all too recognizable sound of a metal on metal car crunching. I turned around to see that a man had just backed into a Mercedes in the parking lot. Wanting to make sure he did the right thing by at least leaving a note, we pulled back into our spot to watch and wait. He got out of his car to inspect the Mercedes which seemed good enough for us and we started to leave. As we pulled out, so did the man. He never left a note and seemed to be "fleeing the scene." Oh buddy, little did you know...

I took down the license plate # and headed back to the grocery store to find the owner. We went inside and had them paged with no luck. We waited outside for another 15 minutes, and no one came. Finally we wrote a note and I was just sticking it under the windshield wiper when -- HORNS AND LIGHTS and the attention of everyone in the lot, including the owners who were headed towards the car. I had set off the alarm. This wasn't really going to help my case of a "hit and run" driver.

After some quick and heavy explanations they called the police with the information we gave them. We waited in the parking lot as pictures were taken and statements were given. There was quite a bit of damage done to the car. The couple was in town for their nieces wedding the next day. They were so sweet and apologetic for taking our time. They offered dinner or groceries but we already had everything we needed and thanked them for the offer. I was just happy they didn't come out to a mess with no explanation.

After about an hour we hugged goodbye to our new friends, thanked the officers and went back to our hotel. We had been called once by their insurance company to give another statement and that was it. I haven't really thought of it much since then.

Yesterday Adam brought me a letter addressed from someone I had never heard of. I thought maybe a late birthday card from... someone I didn't know? I racked my brain. I opened the envelope and found a hilarious thank you card along with a gift card to Barnes and Noble. The Andrews - the wonderful couple we met in Tahoe four months ago - remembered us and wanted to thank us for "watching over" their car that blustery night. I was so surprised and touched that they even gave us a second thought. The unexpected certainly caught us off guard!

I want to thank the Andrews for reminding us to always do the right thing, to help those around us - friends and strangers, and that there are wonderful people around us all the time. I'm so glad that our odd, wonderful adventure to Tahoe was so much more then we expected!