We hadn't done anything to celebrate except a quick dinner here in town since our 1st anniversary. Back in 2008 we spent a weekend at the coast, so we decided to do that again this year. We wanted to check out the River House Inn in Florence because it's right at the end of Old Town, so we could walk everywhere except the beach.
On Saturday morning we got ourselves and our boys ready to go to Mima's house, where we'd drop them off and our car so she could come back to our place for naps and the rest of our time away. Ben stopped for gas in the other car and met me there. I got Kai + Des all settled, chatted with my mom and joked with my dad about forgetting to leave them my car keys (and then I forgot to leave them my car keys...and they had to go to our house to get the other set, sorry guys!).
When we left Ben told me he had called the hotel to see if they do any free upgrades, as some do when they have openings. They don't...but he upgraded our room to the river view one anyway. It was such a lovely surprise!
When we got into town the first thing we did was run out onto the beach. Then we hurried to meet our dear friends, Michael and Megan, for a long overdue lunch in Old Town. We spent some time catching up and resolving to not let so much time go by before we see them again. We couldn't NOT see them while we were there, they live a block away from where we were staying!
Afterwards we checked into our room and I went straight to the balcony to take in our view.
$40 well spent. The other rooms had a view of the parking lot and the walk way. No thanks.
We had a few hours before our dinner reservations at the Waterfront Depot (where we ate 4 years earlier), so we decided to go for a walk.
{so blessed that this handsome man is mine}
We still had plenty of time to kill so we watched some HGtv (a channel we love but do not have) and enjoyed the quiet, uninterrupted time to ourselves.
Once we were ready for dinner, I wanted to take a photo but didn't have the tripod. We tried a number of ways to prop the camera up and ultimately dared to put it on the balcony ledge. I love this photo so much, it's my profile picture on facebook right now, but that version is cropped. Here is the full version,
This one makes me laugh because you can clearly tell the camera is balanced atop something, and our room is a disaster after on a few hours. We laughed about how "freeing" it was to leave our stuff lying around and not have to worry about one of our kids getting into it. We're wild ones, I tell ya, living on the edge!
We had a fantastic dinner and went for another walk afterwards. Ben suggested we walk along the river, after about 30 feet I got stuck in the mucky sand and we had to climb our way out. It wasn't pleasant at the time, but we were laughing hysterically anyway.
The next day we slept in (SLEPT IN!!!), and took our time getting up for breakfast. We grabbed coffee and wandered Old Town again. Along the way we picked up prizes for our boys, and my parents as a thank you for enduring a sleepless night. We found some goodies at the dollar store that I was obnoxiously excited about, went to the beach again, had sushi for lunch, and grabbed ice cream at BJ's for the ride home.
It was so much fun to spend time just the two of us and re-energize ourselves by taking some time away from the kids. Now that we've done it once, I'm looking forward to the next opportunity to do it again although it may be a while. Our boys were so excited to see us and it was such a joy to bring them a little something from our trip. Malakai still calls the magnifying glass that Ben picked out his "surprise".
Happy Anniversary my love, each and every day as your wife is pure joy. Parenting with you is a dream come true. I love our life together and count myself blessed every moment.
