Galena Getaway

Galena, Illinois - a place one hour from my parents' house, 30 minutes from where I went to college, and up until a few weekends ago, I had only been there for a grade-school field trip, a Ross family get-together, and dinner at an Irish Pub.  When we lived 'close' by, it didn't seem like the place to go.  The suburbs and the big city were the hot spots.  Ironically, now that we've relocated to the suburbs, it seems like everyone goes to Galena for their getaways!  

Long story short, we had our friends, Jake and Andrea MacNamara, over early this Fall after not seeing them all Summer, they told us about a Groupon at Eagle Ridge Resort, and we booked a weekend for early December.  

We arrived at the resort Friday evening and went downtown.  The stores were mostly closed, except for a candy shop, so we had to try it out.  We also got some appetizers at Benjamin's... Let's just say Andrea was laughing so hard she was crying by the time we got our check ;)  It was an interesting experience.

The next morning, we went to breakfast in the resort restaurant.  It doesn't get much better than breakfast buffet's in my opinion.  Omelettes made to order, crepes, oatmeal, fresh fruit, bacon, pancakes, you name it!  We decided to fill up and hopefully last until dinner.  After breakfast, we dropped the boys off at the golf course.  We originally planned for this to be a ski trip, but the weather was calling for 50-60 degrees!  They thought it'd be pretty sweet to golf in December.  Unfortunately, it didn't get much over 40 and it rained a little bit.  Thank goodness the hot-chocolate cart came around ;)  

Andrea and I treated ourselves to a manicure at the spa while they golfed.  Then we headed to the cute shops downtown.

The best part - the samples!  We sampled fudge, popcorn, and several different kinds of dips.  No wonder we weren't hungry for lunch ;)  We headed back to the hotel, picked up the boys and went to town again for dinner.  First, we stopped at Poopsie's where we found an AWESOME tractor book for Parker.
 

Dinner was at a cute Italian restaurant, Vinny Venucci's.  The food was soooo good.

So was the peanut butter cheesecake for dessert.

We felt a little lame getting back to our hotel at 8:30.  We picked up two movies, and I think I fell asleep an hour later.  We could've found something else to do, but to be honest, it was really nice to go away for a weekend, have fun, relax, and sleep!  We had lunch in town the next day and went home feeling re-energized.  Thanks for a great weekend, Jake and Andrea!  We are truly blessed to have friends like you.