Happy New Year!

We always struggle coming up with New Year’s plans.  We like to go to concerts for New Year’s and almost did that this year, but plans never really got finalized.  Then a few days before Christmas our friends Amanda and Craig came up with the brilliant idea of renting a cabin!  It was kind of challenging for them to find a cabin being so late in the game, but they found 4 couples who were interested in going and after some extensive research they found a cabin that was walking distance to the little town of Helen, GA.  It wasn’t the fanciest cabin but it was just perfect.  Splitting a cabin between 5 couples is really inexpensive and lots of fun!!  We would love to continue doing this each year with friends, if not for New Year’s then at least some other time during the Fall/Winter!

Our living quarters for the weekend

We had a balcony with a little view of downtown Helen

Before we left on Friday, Amanda and I had lunch with our sorority sister Jennifer at Brio in Dunwoody.  Jennifer lives in Alexandria, VA and she is expecting/due in May so we were really excited to see her and glad we were able to have lunch with her!  We had a great time catching up.  Wish I had taken a picture of us with her and her cute belly!

Then we were off to Helen!  We got there around 5:00 and went straight to the cabin.  Once all the girls got there we went to the grocery store and got groceries for the weekend.  The boys cooked pork roast while we were gone and we came home and cooked the sides – hashbrown casserole, asparagus, green beans, and croissants (burnt croissants, thanks to an oven whose dial doesn't work!).  We didn’t eat until around 9:00 but it sure was delicious!  We had a great time just hanging out at the cabin that night.  And I can’t go without mentioning that we ate some late night deer sausage from “the best butcher in Kentucky!”, according to Craig, AND his dad :)

Just a super cute couple that went with us (one of my sorority sisters and one of Kevin's best friends from growing up...can't help but to give ourselves a little bit of credit hehe)

On Saturday we got up and Kevin cooked a big breakfast of biscuits, bacon, and eggs for everyone.  Then we got dressed and Kevin and I walked down to Helen so that we could get back in time to watch the GA Tech bowl game.  Everyone else stayed back and watched the Kentucky basketball game.  We had a great time walking around Helen.  We went into several of the little shops and stopped to share a bratwurst and Octoberfest beer.  We went to Helen for Octoberfest in 2010 and saw the beautiful Fall leaves and went to the pavilion where they have polka dancing and Octoberfest beers in enormous mugs and bratwursts – but we somehow missed most of the rest of the town!  No wonder we weren’t too impressed by Helen, ha!  Anyway it was a beautiful day and we had a really nice time walking around.

Just a short little walk down the mountain to Helen

Kevin LOVES rivers

We came back and watched the end of the Kentucky basketball game and then everyone else left to go down to Helen while Kevin, Zack, Katie and I stayed back to watch the GA Tech bowl game = depressing ending :(  When everyone got back we broke out the snacks – buffalo chicken dip, chips and salsa, hummus, and sausage pinwheels, yum!  We hung around watching sports for a while and then the boys created some sports of their own (beer pong) and got a ping pong ball stuck in the pool table!  It was quite a disaster but made for a very complicated and hilarious group bonding/team building exercise (keep scrolling for the video that captures the moment of glory when we got the ball out!).

Watching sports

I might have worked on my Africa album during the game, ha!

Enjoying (sort of, haha) some Elderberry wine!

Having fun...

and then the ball got stuck!

Serious business

Thanks to the flashlight app and Joanie's skinny arm, we finally got the ball out!

And here's a video of the ping pong ball incident; it's pretty entertaining and worth watching through to the end

For dinner that night we had lasagna, salad, and garlic bread.  The lasagna took a really long time to cook but that was ok because we entertained ourselves by doing things like making sure the stuffed squirrel on the wall wasn't a hidden video camera.  It wasn't.  Then we rang in the New Year by popping several bottles of champagne, shouting the countdown in front of the TV, kissing our significant others, and sparklers!

Prepping the salad!

The lasagna is finally done!

Enjoying some Chimay Blue in the wonderful glass selection at the cabin

Wow.  Happy New Year!

On Sunday we all packed up and left around 12.  Kevin and I stopped at the Dawsonville outlets on the way home – had not been there in forever, they are nice!  We got a glass Kitchenaid bowl that we have been on the hunt for and Kevin got some natural remedies for his gout from the vitamin store (which seem to be working!). 

It was a great weekend and an awesome way to ring in 2012!!