Since it’s my first week of Midwest Mountainess postings, I decided to do my duty as an American and absolutely torture and wear out my readers using the word ‘firsts’.  Hence…Firsts x2.  It’s as creative as I could be at 12:30a.m. after several glasses of wine, a martini, and no carbs for 7 days.  I’m essentially brain dead.  Not to mention TOTALLY high on like a million (…20) hits on Facebook.

So I realize this is going to come as a COMPLETE surprise, but after my Christmas recap post I’m going to do a New Years recap post!  I’ll give you a moment to contain your excitement.

Ahem.

So the firsts thing again.  It wasn’t mine, but it WAS my husbands first trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  This is the part where I make you all jealous because he’s so thoughtful and spontaneous and giving and don’t you just hate both of us.  But before you get to all that jealousy, let me first tell you…I despise New Years Eve.

EVERY SINGLE YEAR it’s the huge conversation that starts shortly after Thanksgiving.  I had four completely different groups of people asking me “what are we doing this year”, “let’s actually plan ahead this time”, “I don’t care what we do as long as there are sparkles” blah blah blah.  It’s lame.  Let’s allllll buy new outfits and alllllll spend WAY more at restaurants that only jack the prices up because it’s December 31st and we’re all suckers.  The reality for a majority of people I know goes something like this:

It’s New Years Eve and they STILL cant decide what to do at which point they throw their hands up and get a LAST minute dinner reservation at the 34th restaurant they call.  They fight the crowds, eat an average and overpriced meal, and eventually end up at a club. This is fun for about 6 seconds because inevitably somebody pukes on their cute sparkly heels they bought at Target that morning in a half size too big because it’s all that was left.  Luckily said puker misses the sparkly dress they already have buyers remorse over and are hoping to return tomorrow.  Following this is epic/freezing cold battle for a cab to take home after the boy that was flirting with them all night disappears as did most of their friends.  They wake up to a pounding hangover, a painful realization of how much money they spent and call everyone they know for a ride downtown to get their car which is waiting with a bright yellow parking ticket under the windshield wiper.

Gross.

So my husband being the romantic genius that he is calls me at work 2 nights before New Years Eve after we’ve already committed ourselves to a party (sorry Elly) and says he’s booked a non-refundable hotel room for 2 nights in Santa Fe.  So me being the secretly thrilled but dutifully reprimanding wife tells him he’s nuts, scolds him for forcing us to to bail on my friends party that we had committed to and packs her bag in 2.5 seconds.

We had an amazingly relaxed and low key weekend in a bustling and artistic city.

Jon the steadfast Minnesota trained winter driving expert.

So you’ll notice in the above photo that there’s snow.  We have seen snow ONCE in 2011/2012 winter.  Understand we live in a MOUNTAIN city and although the snow melts immediately after it falls, we still usually get snow.  Well we’ve been so spoiled with weather lately that Jon and I blindly set out on our 6 hour road trip envisioning sunny skies, smooth roads, sweet tunes and snacks.  What we did NOT anticipate were wet slushy mountain backroads, zero visibility, and who could live without…IDIOT DRIVERS.

This photo is from my cozy  makeshift bed in the backseat of the Aviator of the absolute BS happening outside.  Luckily it only lasted the (tense) car ride to Sante Fe and the rest of the weekend was sunny and gorgeous. I have proof.

The thing about Santa Fe is that it’s dripping in colors, patterns and architecture which for a girl with a brand new camera is absolute heaven!  I had a great time breaking my camera in, and Jon didn’t seem too traumatized by traveling with the ultimate tourist all weekend.

We had one ‘not so great’ dinner (NYE…go figure) but other than that the food in Santa Fe is wonderful!  New Years Day we went to a very busy/popular local breakfast spot and brunched to our hearts content.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the entire city, went to the MUST SEE Georgia O’Keefe museum (my second time), got a couple of history lessons and of course watched some football over the most amazing margs and guac of all time.

Even the sugar's are more colorful in Santa Fe!

That evening we decided to give dining out another try.  We made reservations at the restaurant inside our hotel and it was DELICIOUS!

This beef was aged for some insane amount of time and Jon thought it was the best steak he'd ever had!

Our last day there we decided we needed to bring home a piece of art from the city of artists.  I chose this:

It was priced at a mere $28,000 so I decided to go with a lovely print from a lovely local artist instead.

All in all it truly was a perfect weekend getaway with some much needed quality time.

We started off 2012 with resolutions in hand and lots to look forward to – and lots for Jon to think about (see above).

And nobody got puke on their shoes.