Last weekend was a weekend of firsts – September 1st (Kids Day and the start of my favorite month), the first football games of the season, our first day at the beach since moving to Charleston, and our first wedding anniversary. Our anniversary/Labor Day weekend got off to a great start with the delivery of these beautiful flowers from my parents.
Happy Anniversary to us!
Phillip was overnight on Friday, but he was still up for a trip to the Charleston Farmers Market on Saturday morning. We enjoyed crepes and fresh juice for breakfast before roaming about the market and checking out all of the local vendors and fresh produce. So far, this is one of my favorite things to do in Charleston – there’s just always so much to look at. And I love the crepes. : ) After picking up a few gifts, we hit the fresh pasta booth and came home with with “Crazy Lobster” ravioli. We also got some fresh arugula, one of Phillip’s favorites, which together with the ravioli, made a delicious Saturday lunch.
I’d watched my football game on Friday night (looking better this season, Vols!), but Saturday night was the first Alabama game of the season. We enjoyed a couple of our favorite tailgate snacks while watching the Tide crush Michigan. Saturday was also Kids Day! My brother and I made up the holiday when we were kids and we (me, my brother, and Mom) still celebrate it. This year, Mom sent me some more pretty flowers!
On Sunday, Phillip and I decided to finally get out to the beach. We live so close it’s almost disgraceful that it took us this long to have a beach day. So we packed up our things and headed out early to Kiawah. There’s a public park there with a nice beach. We set up our spot and I got to work playing with my anniversary present from Phillip – a tripod and neutral density filter for my camera! I was so excited to start learning how to use them. I needed a tripod to take more landscape shots and the filter to leave my shutter open longer without flooding the camera with too much light during the day. The pictures didn’t turn out that well since I still have such a LONG way to go with learning how my camera works and how to get the shots I want (and I haven’t even really approached editing yet – can you say overwhelmed?), but it was still fun to play with the new toys.
By leaving my shutter open longer, I can capture the cool misty, fuzzy rolling water effect with the waves.
The water was a little chilly at first, but once it started warming up outside, it was very refreshing. The sand wasn’t as nice as our Gulf sand, but the water was seaweed and jellyfish free. People filled in all the blank spots so that by noon, it was actually pretty crowded. But that just makes for better people-watching, right? The beach is pet-friendly so there were dogs of all shapes and sizes chasing balls all over the beach – we saw some real swimmers chase balls out into the ocean nearly as far out as we waded! The most exciting event occurred when an unidentified object was spotted in the water. Naturally, everyone waded out to try and see what it was. Seriously, we were all just staring out at this one floating thing in the ocean. Some braver souls swam out to check it out and discovered that it was a deer, which when it eventually washed up, was immediately surrounded by people. It was an interesting observation of human curiosity.
It was always just a matter of time before Phillip and I started to burn, so once we hit splotchy, we packed up and headed home. We applied and reapplied, but both still ended up with random burn patches. Such is life for pale people.
Monday was our actual anniversary. It really doesn’t feel like it’s been a whole year. They say that the first year of marriage is the most difficult, but if that’s true, then Phillip and I can’t wait for the years to come. It really has been a wonderful year for us and I’m so happy to be able to share this life together. Despite all this wonderfulness, I am still married to a fellow and he of course had to work overnight on our anniversary. So we had anniversary lunch and then pulled out the top layer of our wedding cake. The before picture:
And the after picture:
A little worse for the wear in looks, but it was still delicious! In all fairness, it did do quite a bit of traveling over the last year. All in all, a wonderful weekend of firsts!
