Mini-break.

Ever since I read Bridget Jones' Diary to Todd several years ago, he's been fascinated with the concept of a "mini-break." It's just a weekend getaway, but "mini-break" sounds so much more...Continental.

So that was my "pack a bag" surprise yesterday for our anniversary. First, Todd came home at lunch time, bringing me my present: a teeny tiny MP3 player. Then we went to our favorite diner for lunch, and then down to Mt. Trashmore in Virginia Beach to fly kites. Then we stopped at the LSS there--and they had the new Paper Crafts book that I contributed to, and that I've been DYING to see for months! So we sat and looked through that, and found all my cards. It was such an unexpected treat!

Then we went over to Portsmouth and had dinner at our absolute favorite German restaurant, the Biergarten. Their claim to fame is having umpteen-dozen fancy beers on tap, but since I don't drink beer, and Todd doesn't drink at all, that part is sort of lost on us.

What they do have is fabulous bratwurst, knockwurst, cabbage, sauerkraut, dilly green beans, German potato salad, of course...oh, and Black Forest cake. And excellent coffee. It's delectable.

Then we drove back up to Yorktown, walked along the river in the dark, spent the night at the hotel on the river, got up and took another walk along the river...then we had lunch, and Todd went off for an afternoon at work.

Wasn't that a nice mini-break? I'm happy Todd thought of it.

Here's the cover of the book--I'm kind of surprised they went with this all-white look for the cover, but the book is really excellent: spiral-bound with a built-in stand, tabbed sections for each set of techniques, designer and theme indexes, and a DVD with 40 extra cards. I'm really thrilled it's finally out...it was fun to do the projects for it.