Roketa Dumas

In my case, I haven’t been trying to correct bad credit, I’ve been trying to establish good credit and there are a few things I’ve done during the pandemic to help keep me on track. It would be easy to no longer use my credit card, and simply pay with cash or use my debit card, but my lack of credit cards was actually an issue the Realtor mentioned. Losing out on the cashback rewards my credit card offers and losing out on continuing to show the card company I’m still a good credit risk. and I didn’t want to risk my credit card limit decreasing or the card being closed altogether with no usage.

We typically stay at the Hilton Grand Vacation property that’s conveniently nestled inside of the Embassy Suites and right on the outskirts of Georgetown where you can easily walk or hop a $1 DC Circular that will also lead you into Rosslyn, VA. There’s a restaurant upstairs but we just stayed down in the café area in a cozy little table by the window where we could pretend we were in France for the amount of time it took us to enjoy our food. We went to Martin’s Tavern, which felt like Christmas on steroids with all the decorations covering every surface possible. We weren’t hungry but you had to spend a certain amount, so we tried a few things on the menu hoping we’d like a couple but no cigar.

The sounds of Vince Guaraldi playing the jazz classics of ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’, the actual ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ cartoon classic, and for us in 2017, Carowinds Winterfest where we got to stroll through Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree lot. Traditionally, Carowinds has closed after it’s annual Scarowinds event, but in 2017, they began staying open until the start of winter for a new event – Carowinds Winterfest. Very Merry Christmas Party, except with Charlie Brown and the gang in place of Mickey and friends … also without the Disney price tag (yay) or complementary snickerdoodle cookies and hot chocolate at various locations throughout the park (bummer). I have a really bad habit of comparing Carowinds to Disney (see above for proof) and I wondered if I was going to be as excited and filled with wonder as I was when I’d taken my kids to Mickey’s party.

That was followed by that 1993 version with Macaulay Culkin, when I saw it in a theater type setting (at home) for the first time. I’ve stuck to that, then the Charlotte Ballet went and made it extra special a few years ago when they started Night at the Nutcracker. Night at the Nutcracker is a one night only event put on by the Charlotte Ballet where they transform the Belk Theater into The Land of the Sweets for a night of food, activities, and a complete performance of The Nutcracker. I just liked walking around with a little reminder of the night after Christmas had gone and we’d entered into a new year to await the next one.