Ten Years

This past weekend, my sweet hubbers of ten years and I went to Charleston to celebrate our anniversary. We always make it a point to go on a little Love Trip together for our anniversary every year. You know, it was kind of remarkable to have a breakfast conversation that didn't revolve around comments like "push your cup back or you'll spill your milk" or "no sillies at the table" or "no, we're not watching TV while we eat breakfast." Well, not that Alan and I watched TV while we ate breakfast. You get what I'm saying here.

We did talk about this little fella above, though. Both mornings we ate out in the courtyard behind the [Rutledge] house. The weather was gorgeous, and it was so relaxing to sit out there and eat leisurely. The birdies were very active and kept coming into the courtyard to find their own breakfasts. This one was checking out the remainders from another guest's bowl.
We also went to Middleton Plantation. To tell the truth, I was kind of museum-ed/learned out by that point (we went the last morning), but it really was beautiful. You know I loved the animals. Lots of sheep doing their thing in the front lawn.
Admit it: we are the cutest couple. This was our first morning at the Inn. We have a great picture of us eating breakfast in our B&B bedroom the morning after our wedding. Gracious. We look like kids in that picture. And whew - skinny!! But anyway, this picture was taken exactly ten years after the first one. And we still look like kids, right?

We took a harbor cruise out to Fort Sumter (which I don't recommend - boring) and there were lots of sailboats in the harbor. This one had flags all over, which I loved. On the cruise, we learned that there were 47 ship wrecks in the harbor. Here's the best part of my time at F.S.: I saw a small beach area and went over to look for shark's teeth. I didn't see any, but what I did find was a small piece of china...just like the kinds I kept seeing in the museums. So - and I'm not exaggerating about this - I probably found a piece of china from one of those old shipwrecks. To me, this was better than a shark's tooth.

It was wonderful just to stroll around the city and take in the sights and smells (whoa - we were at prime flowering tree time and they smelled amazing) and sounds. And lots of good food. This magnolia was at Waterfront Park.

Here's a little birdie (wren??) that we saw at breakfast our second day. I'm loving how I got the foreground and background blurry. Yay!! I kept trying to entice him over with little bits of my biscuit.

The John Rutledge House was beautiful. You can read all about it here. We were totally spoiled. And you know, there was not one honeysuckle vine to pull. Go figure!

This was one of those amazing smelling trees in the courtyard of the Inn. Wyatt, the concierge, told me the name of it (also: he runs his own B&B, he also has experience pulling honeysuckle, he is heavily into organic and vegan, and his wife loves Sue Monk Kidd, too), but I have since forgotten. Something that starts with an "l" and smells heavenly.

Very thankful for the time away with my sweet man. We have a great relationship, but it's hard to focus on that sometimes when the little rug-rats are deep into "Moby Dick" (abridged version) with their daddy and I'm exploring the wilds of the honeysuckle patch. The time away was a great re-charge for us. And fortunately, my hubbers doesn't find poison ivy too much of a turn off.