My One Anniversary Request

Yes my 10 year anniversary was a little over a week ago but I just got back to work and I have been slammed since I walked through the door I haven't had time to capture my anniversary weekend. Ok with the excuses over, here is the story. When Wally and I decided that it would be better to hold off on the BIG anniversary trip, we knew we wanted to spend a romantic few days just the two of us. So Wally asked me what I wanted and I told him, "I just want to ride in a one-horse open sleigh." I got the Jenn "maybe you need to be on some meds" look but I knew Wally would make it happen.

Why this request? Maybe it was hearing and singing Jingle Bells over and over again? But, the truth is that when I thought of something utterly romantic to do, this popped in my head. Now where to make this happen, we tried a few places in New Hampshire and most were booked and others I didn't nor wouldn't want to stay in. We then thought Vermont must have this activity a plenty. In fact, I thought that's probably how people got around in Vermont. We found a wonderfully quaint place to stay called the Yellow Farmhouse Inn (yes, it was Yellow). We stayed in the Stephanie - not sure why the rooms had Jersey Girl names but the room was darling. With our room all booked, Wally started calling around to a few places to arrange our romantic hot chocolate-filled ride and that's when the problem happened.

Apparently, Vermont had experienced a "warm-spell." THIS COULDN'T BE!!! Yes, there wasn't enough snow on the ground the day before our anniversary to go sleigh riding. However, they were expecting some snow during our stay but we would need to play it by ear. Wally in his truly positive nature said, "don't worry it will happen." As we began our drive up there, I was worried there really wasn't snow in Vermont. There was more snow in Jersey -- maybe we could have rented a horse-driven sleigh down King Street. But the miracle happened, just as we were 30 minutes outside of Waitsfield, VT it began to snow -- magical snow. I'm not talking Jersey-snow. I'm talking about snow that looks like feathers floating down from the sky. I'm talking about being able to make out the incredible shape of an individual snowflake. It nearly brought me to tears. After we got settled in the room, we started making phone calls to book this thing. Wally left a lot of messages and got one response, "maybe tomorrow, there still isn't enough snow." My dreams were yet again squashed.

The next morning after a perfect evening with my husband, I woke up to a winter wonderland. The snow was coming down and had covered the entire meadow. I got in Wally's face (who was still sleeping...oops) to say, "IT IS SNOWING!" Wally was like, "that's great Jenn. I need some more sleep." "No Wally you need to get downstairs and start calling a few places to get me that ride!" Why did Wally have to go downstairs and make a call because - 1. Our cells didn't get service in the area 2. There were no phones or TVs in the rooms. Wally eventually got up and made a few calls. Believe it or not, the news wasn't very good. Apparently, the snow was too "light". I can get into the number of reasons but it just aggravates me to think about it. Not giving up, we had our breakfast and packed and headed towards Stowe, VT. They, reportedly, had gotten more "packed" snow then the area that we were staying in because they were on the other side of the mountain. With fingers crossed, I called Gentle Giants Sleigh Rides and I got the news I was looking for, "yes, of course, we have sleigh rides happening today when do you want to come?" We made our appointment for 11:30 am and arrived about ten minutes early. The snow had just fallen and the sun had started to shine on the freshly fallen snow. There was a covered bride and a beautiful meadow -- this was it -- what I had dreamed of!!

Our horse was Justin, a Belgian and the biggest horse on the lot weighing in at 2200 pounds, and our driver was Ted, a man who had lived in Vermont his whole life on a farm except for a few years when the farm couldn't support two families him and his wife toured the country running out of money in Tahoe. From riding under a covered bridged to trotting through a meadow to "laughing all the way, ha, ha, ha", the 25 minute ride was everything I had every dreamed it would be and more. On the ride, we both realized we would need to come back and do it again not because we wanted to experience it again but because we knew that Benjamin would have loved it. We knew it was time to go home and see our boy. Thank you Wally for making my Anniversary dream come true. You are a prince.