Mother-Daughter Time and My Guilty Pleasure

Today’s Workout: 4 miles (treadmill) @ 38:25, Fartleks

Hello all! Sorry if I’ve been MIA for a couple of days…I’m on deadline at work and have been inundated with millions dozens of pages of editorial to bring home and read on a nightly basis. I figured that the ZYM giveaway would keep you occupied for a little while, until I made it out of the piles of pages.

If you haven’t entered yet, there’s still time to let me know what flavor ZYM you’d like to try. The contest closes at midnight on Tuesday, February 11, 2013.

I thought I’d deviate from discussing running today and share a little bit about my weekend. Yes, I sometimes do have a life that doesn’t just revolve around work and running, it’s just very rare that this happens.

This past Christmas, I bought my mom and sister tickets to go to the Lady Antebellum Concert at Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, CT (I always thought that was such a strange name for a town!). Naturally, I purchased a ticket for myself, too.

Unfortunately, my sister was unable to come at the last minute because she had major surgery on her arm about a month ago, and is still in severe pain. Lots of pain + a big crowd to get jostled around in = a not so good idea. 😦

Although my mom and I were both sad she wouldn’t be able to make it, we were both excited to get to spend some quality mother-daughter time together. Neither of us are big gamblers (I won’t even play a scratch ticket unless it’s a gift from someone!), so the main attraction of going to the casino for us was to see the concert. However, there are some cool features to Mohegan Sun…some that I got to see, while others that I didn’t get to explore, but wouldn’t mind doing in the future…

A view of the casino’s hotel from the outside. I saw it driving in at night (which is how most people probably would see it), but they didn’t have any evening images on the casino’s media site.

First off, the casino is not just a casino. It has shopping, a hotel, spa, restaurants, and yes, gambling, too. Mohegan Sun is about an hour’s drive from my house, and is pretty easy to access from the highway. The concert was at 7:00 at night, but my mom and I were planning on getting dinner beforehand so she picked me up at my house at 4:00. We hadn’t done much research on the restaurant offerings there until the ride there when I started looking things up on my phone. Turns out, both Bobby Flay and Michael Jordan have restaurants there…who knew?!

Unfortunately, once we got there, parked, and got a lay of the land, it was already 5:30. And then we found out it was at least an hour to an hour and a half wait at most of the restaurants.

Bye, bye Bobby Flay’s Bar Americain. When can I see you again?

We ended up eating at a deli instead, and I wasn’t too impressed. It was more like fast food than restaurant style, which isn’t quite what we had in mind for dinner. My mom got latkes and I got a Reuben, and neither of us finished our food. My sandwich was just a little too greasy for my liking.

There was still plenty of time for us to wander around after we threw our food out finished eating, so we decided to take a look and see what type of shopping the casino had to offer.

A view of the shopping area within the casino.

The shopping had some upscale stores like Tiffany’s and Cache, as well as Godiva Chocolatier and Swarovski, and some other stores I can’t remember…and…Krispy Kreme! I know that some of you have Krispy Kreme doughnuts on every corner, but they are few and far between here in New England (this may actually be the only Krispy Kreme within New England now), so when we find one, we pounce on it! We decided then and there that once the concert got out we’d have to make a return trip to get a dozen doughnuts.

There were also just some really cool sights to see within the casino, like this funky looking fake tree in the middle of a fountain.

My mother’s failed attempt at mastering the skill of iPhone photography. Sorry, mom!

I also thought that the Taughannick Falls were pretty cool. If you’ve ever seen Mohegan Sun’s commercials, you’d recognize this waterfall from them.

People can actually dine next to the waterfall!

After we saw everything there was to view, we got in line to enter the Arena…this is where the real excitement began! Lady A is my mom’s all-time favorite country band, and I love them, too, so it was super exciting to get to see them together. I had bought her concert tickets to see them at the DCU Center a couple years ago, but there’s another story to go along with how I managed to acquire them, which ended up putting us in the nose-bleed section. I was so happy that this time around, we’d have decent seats!

Mother-daughter selfie.

A photo of the stage as they set up for Kip Moore…

And…(drum roll, please)…

…Lady A opened right in front of us!

I didn’t know they were going to come up on stage right in front of us, but it was a great surprise! I heard my mom gasp next to me, she was so excited. This was the best Christmas present I’ve ever given anyone, even if she did have to wait for the day of the concert to arrive!

I’m not sure if I’m getting a little old for concerts, though, because although Lady A was amazing, the acoustics were ridiculously loud, and I ended up getting a major headache from how loud it was. I don’t remember ever going to a concert as loud as this one! But all in all, we had a great time, the evening went by really quickly, and we waited in line to get Krispy Kreme for about an hour after the concert was over (so worth the wait!). So there you have it…I threw out a greasy sandwich earlier in the evening, but didn’t mind stuffing my face with a doughnut…or two…or three…that was equally as bad for me later on that night. I would say I have no regrets (I did run 12 miles on Sunday), but I did wake up with a severe Krispy Kreme hangover the next morning.

What’s your all-time favorite musician and/or music group?

What is something special you enjoy doing to spend quality time with your mom?

Advertisement