It was Mike’s birthday. Mike is David’s best friend, and roommate. He invited all of us to his cabin in New Hampshire for the weekend. I was so excited for a weekend away with David. Grant and Ellie were going to spend the full weekend together as well! It was going to be a romantic, but cold weekend in the white mountains. 

The trip out to the cabin was beautiful, but was a rocky road toward the end. It was very snowy, and his cabin is located on the back roads on a scenic mountain. The final hill was very steep, and it took a few tries, but we made it up! I was in awe when I saw his cabin. It was a beautiful log cabin style home, overlooking a gorgeous lake! It was small and quaint.  An interesting fact about this lake was that it was made from a volcanic crater. 

We walked into a cute little kitchen, with old wooden cabinets. It is an open floor plan, and attached to the kitchen was a small dining room and bathroom. After turning the corner in the dining room was the living room, and a beautiful open view of the lake and the mountains in the background.  Upstairs is a loft area which is the main bedroom, with a balcony that overlooks the living room, and two large windows looking over the lake as well.. The basement has a family room and two bedrooms. David and I took one of the downstairs bedrooms for the weekend, while Ellie and Grant took the room across from us.

I was very excited to see that there was a beautiful stone fireplace in the living room. We decided that we were going to start a fire that night. Mike is very into camping and outdoor events, so he was all too excited to collect firewood! He also decided that he wanted to do hot pot or Shabu Shabu for his birthday dinner. This is a Japanese way of cooking. You have a pot that you boil different broths in, and you cook your veggies, and thinly cut meats by boiling them in the pot! It is a lot of fun, and very tasty. I have found however that the spicy side is usually way too spicy for me. 

As the night went on, we all snuggled in front of the fire that David and Mike built and just talked. David was a bit distracted by Natalie who was texting him with issues about  the weekend. She was not thrilled that I was invited to Mike’s cabin. Ellie and I asked David to put his phone away and enjoy the time, we could tell that he was getting worked up and frustrated dealing with the situation. This is something that I believe was a reasonable request because when he was with her, she did not allow him talk talk to anyone else. We never said he couldn’t talk to her however, just wanted him to take a break and enjoy his time with us, it is okay to set boundaries.

David and I went downstairs to bed, and had a great night together. We may have almost broke the bed that night. We still laugh about it whenever we go to visit the cabin. The room that we were sleeping in had no windows, so the room got pitch black. You could not tell what time of day it was, so needless to say we slept very well, and slept in.

The next day for lunch we went to a local pizza restaurant that was located in an old barn. It was really neat! The food is very tasty, but the grease went right through my system. This was the first of our weekend getaways this year. David and I had been talking, and we decided that we wanted to plan a day trip together, just the two of us. I was very excited about this concept. We thought about different places that we liked, and I had never been to Gloucester. So David and I planned a day in Gloucester! He said that he loved Gloucester, and it is on the ocean, so no matter what I knew that I was going to have a good time. This day was great for us, but little did we know what else it would lead too.

Highlights/ Learned Lessons:

• It is okay to set boundaries. It is not always an easy thing to do, and sometimes you have to think about how these boundaries affect the other people involved. I always struggled with the fact that whenever David saw Natalie that he couldn’t talk to me, but if he was with me she expected him to be talking to her non stop. I finally started speaking up on my feelings about this, and the double standards that were being set. I didn’t mind him checking in with people, because I liked it when he checked in with me, it let me know he was thinking of me. But it should not consume copious amounts of your time with your partner. 
• If you have not tried hot pot (shabu shabu), you really should! It is very tasty!