A Year to Remember

On Sunday, Steven and I celebrated our 1st anniversary, so to commemorate this momentous occasion, we packed our bags and headed south to Wilmington, North Carolina. Neither of us had ever been there before, but I felt as though I had spent a lot of time there as a teen because my all time favorite show, Dawson's Creek, was on location there :) The weekend was absolutely fantastic!


On Friday, we checked into our hotel and used a gift card we had been saving (thank you, Sheila Osborn) to go to Longhorn. It was wonderful, as always. The next day, we slept in, which I believe was what Steven had been looking forward to the most from this much needed vacay. His work schedule keeps him pretty busy during the week, and I always have something planned for the weekends, so there isn't always much time for sleep. Anyway, we skipped breakfast, got ready, and went into downtown Wilmington for an early lunch at Reel Cafe (totally recommend this place if you make a trip, and for those of you who are interested in this sort of thing, apparently this was Joshua Jackson and James Van Der Beek's regular hangout during the first few seasons of the show...signed memorbilia everywere!).

After lunch we walked around downtown, stopped in a few shops, and made our way toward the water. Steven and I had looked up prices for Boat rides and the cheapest tickets we could find ANYWHERE was $25 dollars each for a 30 minute boat ride. I could think of a lot I would rather do with $50...Well, when we made it down to the docks to take a picture of the U.S.S. North Carolina, Steven noticed a sign that said "30 minute boat ride ONLY $4". We were stoked! As we waited in line to pay, the captain held a sign that said "Ice Cold Bottle Water ONLY $1". Talk about lucky! I looked over at Steven and said, "This is going to be the best $10 dollars we've ever spent." Boy did those words come back to bite me...The "ride" consisted of waiting 10 minutes for all the passengers to board, driving (slowly, I might add) to the dock right across the bay (literally took 4 minutes, I timed it), waiting 10 more minutes for disgruntled/misinformed passengers to get off the boat at the U.S.S. North Carolina, riding 4 minutes back across the water, and allowing the rest of the passengers to exit. An older New York man sitting next to us nailed it when he said to his wife, "Well, you get what you pay for." (My mind immediately raced back to Spring break '09 at the Widget in NY with the girls...I should have learned my lesson).

After getting off the "Oh so fun" boat ride, Steven and I found a Christmas ornament from Wilmington to add to our collection and made our way back to the hotel to relax and get cleaned up for dinner. He had made reservations for this awesome restaurant called the Little Dipper, which was again located right downtown on the water. It was hands down the most fun experience I have ever had at dinner. It is a fondue restaurant, a lot like the Melting Pot in Atlanta. The food was excellent! After we finished we walked around the boardwalk and saw some more sights.

Sunday morning, we checked out of the hotel early and visited First Baptist Church Wilmington, and wouldn't you know that the minister mentioned some great friends that had been a part of the church from Auburn University. I felt like I was in the commercial. There was a part of me that wanted to shout out, "Hey, War Eagle!" but I refrained. After grabbing a bite for lunch, we headed back to our little country home in Cove City. We each had a bite of our wedding cake, but I had to force Steven to eat it because he just knew nothing could still taste good after a year in the freezer. He was wrong...the cake was still delicious! Later, we went to Toy Story 3 in 3D (my choice), and ate at Schlotzsky's for dinner (his choice).

The weekend was wonderful, and our 1st year was a blast! Bring on year #2!