Sometimes, just because I have this blog thing, really cool stuff happens. Last week, that cool stuff was a special press event at Foxwoods to help celebrate Oktoberfest.

Even better than being invited was getting to tell my husband that we were going to drink free beer all afternoon. Plus bowling! Because who doesn’t love bowling?!

There was a beer expert to tell us about what we were tasting. He said they went out of their way to find cool, rare and probably unheard of beers for us to taste. I have to say, they did a great job with “unusual”. There was one beer that they described as “sour”, which was the biggest understatement ever. It was like drinking pickle juice. Luckily, I’ve considered drinking pickle juice in the past so I mostly liked it? Mostly. The beer expert also told us it was made in a brewery that is literally never cleaned. Never. They don’t sweep or dust or shoo away the spiders, so you get all that great dirt and spider parts in your tasty sour beer.

Like I said, “unusual” = accomplished.

This one was extremely normal and fine and I liked it.

Gueuze was the sour pickle one

Social media-ers gotta soical media, even while eating pretzels

This one was FANTASTIC. It was beer mixed with cherry liquor and tasted exactly like a cherry coke.

I would like to state for the record I had nothing to do with that. Especially because 10 seconds later it fell over. Bloggers + 6 glasses of beer = poor choices.

After the drinking they encouraged us to “explore”, which to us obviously meant “play some blackjack”. We…did not win, but one of the other bloggers got $1,000 off a slot machine! Then we wandered around and checked out the updates. I hadn’t actually been to parts of Foxwoods in a couple years (Even though we saw the show a few weeks ago and I took the kids to the outlets earlier this month). It’s a HUGE place. They’ve updated the main shopping drag completely – it used to be very Vegasy with fake storefronts and cobblestones. Now it is all modern glass and wood and angles and soooooo fancy.

E and I walked over to Fox Tower to check out the new tattoo parlor, but before we made it he got a work call and stopped walking and talked about work stuff instead of paying attention to me. So I took his picture. This is his work call face.

And this is one of the views out the window. The leaves are about 2 weeks away from peak color right now, it’s going to be STUNNING.

Then we headed over to High Rollers, the bowling lanes. I knew in theory that they were there. I’ve definitely thought about going in the past. But for some reason we’ve never actually made it down there.

It is FANCY. I really really really wish there had been a place like this open pre-kids because I would have been a regular. It’s basically the opposite of every other bowling alley I’ve ever been in. It did not smell like smoke, it wasn’t dirty or old, the service was incredible. What kind of bowling alley has chandeliers, big screen tvs, and kale pancetta salads on their menu? High Rollers.

That is a TERRIBLE picture of me, but I felt I needed to include my squinty bowling face for accuracy. I am willing the pins to all fall over. AND IT WORKS – I won a prize for being the first person to roll a strike. BOOYAH.

After bowling, we went back to Cedar’s Steakhouse for our Oktoberfest-inspired dinner and deli meats. German food is meats, meats and more meats, so obviously our meal featured some classics. And more beer. Of course. (For the record, even though I was the invited media person – SO FANCY – and E was my +1, he did 90% of the drinking. Because I am a nice wife who knows he likes beer more than I do.)

I never get tired of being called “press”, not matter now untrue it is.

This was my favorite part. That mustard was on our pretzels during the beer tasting too, and it was SO good.

I love being reminded that Foxwoods is RIGHT THERE, 10 minutes from the house, and a great spot for date night. I love date night. I do not go on enough date nights and I think we should fix that. It helps that we found a great babysitter my kids love and who swears Lincoln wasn’t a disaster at all while we were gone. I think she’s lying but lying is almost as good as him not being a disaster, so…. See you again soon, Foxwoods!

Disclaimer: I was invited to this special press event at Foxwoods that included beer, bowling, food and a $50 gift card to do some shopping (I spent it at the toy store buying Legos for Evan and coloring books for Caroline, because even at a fancy press event I am still a mom). No other compensation was provided and no one told me I had to write this post. In fact, you can’t even go to Foxwoods and order that beer because it was just for our fancy thing, so I’m…not really sure why they invited me?! Hey, I’m not going to question it too much. It was super fun and I hope they invite me to more things.