New post!

I always feel like I should have pictures when I'm about to write a new post, oh wait...I do have pics yay! I almost forgot that I do indeed have pictures from out CT trip. I have additional pictures from the wedding we went to a couple weekends ago, but I keep forgetting to charge my camera so I can upload to my computer.

Some time has passed since I last posted. We had a great trip to NYC and Connecticut. S loved my family and they loved him right back. I can't help but wonder if he had a little chat with my pops, but I guess I'll leave that as a surprise. Speaking of my parents, they just bought a condo in Port St. Lucie, Fl, which I am very excited about because I will have free reign (and a key) to visit any time I want! I am planning on spending a week there with them in September, can't wait! It's also nice because since it's only 8 hours away, we can drive instead of having to buy two plane tickets. You would never think it would be SO expensive to fly from Charleston to pretty much anywhere in Florida. Crazy.

Hmm, what else is new...

I posted a little while back about how S and I started attending Seacoast Church here in Charleston, I really love it, however, S is a little on the fence because it's such a big church. He said that no one ever talks to us. My response is that we never stick around long enough to meet/talk to anyone! A couple weeks ago, I saw on the church's email newsletter that a couple about our age was starting a 20/30-something life group and I thought, that is just what we need! It was the most perfect thing and great timing. It is just a casual almost social group that gets together every week at the couple's house. We went last night for the first time and I really enjoyed it. We got to meet about four or five other couples and a couple singles as well :) Everyone was very friendly and I'm looking forward to getting to know each person there. The group isn't very structured; there is no required reading or workbooks or anything like that. Just a group of peeps who are around the same stages in their lives who can get together and hang out and maybe chat once in a while if there is anything heavy on their hearts. I'm looking forward to many more gatherings and now S will finally have some people he knows to stop and talk to at church.

The next big exciting thing, not sure if I already mentioned it, but S and I are taking that next BIG step and moving in together. I am currently living with a roommate and his brother just moved out of his apartment, leaving plenty of space for all my things! It doesn't make any sense financially for us to both pay rent. We are both 30 years old and we know that we will be married in the very near future so I don't see anything wrong with is (and I don't think anyone else should.) I have been soliciting everyone at work for all their boxes so I can get packing this weekend. I can't wait!

I just realized that I never really posted any pics from our Kentucky trip from earlier in May so here we go!

While in Kentucky, we hiked at Red River Gorge up the Natural Bridge, it was pretty awesome. As you'll notice, we had quite a bit of rainy/overcast spring weather on both of our trips..

S's new truck that we picked up in Kentucky!

It was Military Appreciation Night at S's little brother's baseball game :)

A couple weeks after we visited KY, S's grandma and grandpa came down to Charleston to visit us. We showed them around and played tourists in our own town. Here are some pics from a carraige ride that we took them on.

The next day, we took them on the ferry out to Fort Sumter.

The weekend after the grandparents left, we hopped a plane to NYC and visited CT, too! S was dying to go to the Carnagie Deli and here is his giant sandwich, he killed that thing by the way.

Rainy day in Times Square.

My favorite bakery EVER, Crumbs. It is seriously cuppie cake heaven.



The Statue of Liberty from Battery Park.

Once in CT, we took a little trip down to the shore. We stopped at Sub Base New London and toured the submarine museum and USS Nautilus. I have no idea how S does it, but I could never spend days and days beneath the sea on one of those things!

 I promised S a trip to the casino (where he won $1200 playing blackjack!)

 And he got his lobster dinner that he couldn't stop talking about :p

On our last day in town, we visited my friends, Shay and Mike, and my goddaughter Maddie. Here she is with the little Carolina Girl t-shirt I bought her :)

I miss her, can't wait to visit again!

On my parents' doorstep, just about to leave for the airport to head back to Charleston.

Trips home always go by too fast and there is never enough time to do everything I want to do. Can't wait to get back home and visit again, but until then, I am always having fun in the sun in SC<3



Thanks to Karina over at Mr. and Mrs. Powell, I must have this!

{via Best Buy}

I can't get over the quality of pictures that it takes. I knew I shouldn't have let S talk me into that Sony even though I've always been a Canon girl! :p

Oh, and follow me on Pinterest!

Oops!

I don't know why I was thinking that I already posted about our NY/CT trip already, I guess I should look at my own blog more often :p I have lots of pics and fun things to post about, maybe later this afternoon I will have time....or tomorrow.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Getting excited for next week!

This month has been so busy and I'm kind of looking to some downtime when S and I can hit the beach or do whatever we want, whenever we want. His grandparents are arriving tomorrow and will be staying at his place until Tuesday morning so it looks like that's not going to be happening until at least the first or second weekend of June. Luckily, he is handing over his bedroom to them and will be staying two miles down the road at my place with me on those nights. At least we'll get a little quiet time in.

We are both getting very excited for our trip to CT next week. I am especially excited for him to get to meet my dad and brother and to take him to NYC since he has never been before (he's actually never been north of Virginia! On the East Coast anyway..) We are also planning a night out at Foxwoods Resort & Casino and I reserved us this room at the Great Cedar Hotel:

Fancy!

He's been dying to go to the casino, so I am taking him! I am also going to take him to Mystic Seaport and we are going to check out the Groton Sub Base and possibly tour the USS Nautilus. On top of all that fun, we will get to have din with my cousin, Amanda, and her hubby, Joe; have some drinks with friends, and cookout with extended family on Sunday. Its going to be another whirlwind of a weekend, but hey, we can't all get 30+ days of leave every year ;)

The weekend after we get back from CT is my friend Gingham and Tim's wedding. I'm really looking forward to it and this is the ABS Allen Schwartz dress that I bought for the occasion -

I'm going to wear the same great Badgley Mischka shoes that I wore for the sub ball (they match perfectly!) and remember how I said that I am awesome at finding deals? Well....This dress was originally $335, marked down to $99 on 6pm.com. I had been eyeing it for a while and was about to buy it one day when I decided to wait just another day or so. The very next day, I went online and to my surprise, it had been marked down AGAIN to $66. They have free shipping and there was no sales tax so I got a $335 dress for $66, score! It's a gorgeous, light, flowy dress in person and very well made. I need to get it hemmed, but I'm not too worried about paying for that considering how much I originally spent, couldn't have found a better deal.

I had also been shopping for a set of pearls since they are of course, all the rage in the South and what could be classier than a pretty set of pearls. I had found this set a little while back on Macys.com, but it was on backorder and I wasn't able to get it in time for the Sub Ball so I ended up borrowing some from a friend. When I knew I had time, I decided to go for it and purchase them on sale for $39 (regular price - $120) and I got a 25% off 'friends & family' discount code, which made them only $29.25. They are beautiful and I'm so excited to finally own my very own. I'm not the biggest fan of the earring, however, the bracelet and necklace match the set of Honora pearl earrings that S bought me for my birthday :D

Soo that is my life for the next couple weeks! Does anyone else have anything fun planned in the near future?

Side note: I have been thinking about starting to do some restaurant reviews and reviews of other attractions in the Charleston Area. We have so many amazing places to eat and so many fun things to do and I would love to share!

Wow, I can't believe that its been almost two weeks since I last posted! I've been thinking about it almost every day, but I had wanted to wait until I uploaded my pictures from our Kentucky trip. That's probably not going to happen for a few more days so I guess the pictures will have to come later!

S and I drove up to Richmond over Derby weekend to visit his fam. Our original plan was to actually GO to Derby, but turns out we didn't plan very well and waited too long to get tickets. There were infield tickets available still, but we wanted a good Derby experience complete with actually being able to see the races so we decided to hold off until next year. It's too bad because I had the PERFECT Lilly dress to wear, but I guess I find somewhere else to wear it ;)

The dress.



We tried not to make too many plans for our Kentucky trip because we still wanted to get in some relaxation, however, we still ended up having a pretty busy trip. We arrived in Richmond late on Wednesday night then got up Thursday morning to head over to Toyota to pick up S's brand new Tacoma. That was exciting because now we had a car to drive around in on our own, since we had driven up in his brother's car with him and his girlfriend. That is a whooooole another story...

After picking up the truck, we hung out at his family's farm until S had to leave to go to an school award ceremony for his youngest brother, Joe, with his dad. Only two people were allowed to attend and since his mom and other brother, Dan, had gone the year before; it was now S's turn to go with his pops. I stayed behind and chatted with S's mom the whole time they were gone. It was good to get in some qt with her, I feel like we are still getting to know each other sometimes and the boys are always around so we never get to get in a good girl-talk.

Friday morning, we got up kind of early and headed out to Red River Gorge to go hiking. We hiked up to the natural bridge and took lots of pictures. I wish it hadn't been so overcast and rainy that day although if the sun had been out, we probably would have been roasting! S and I are both sensitive to heights so while it was nice to get up there and see the view and take pics, I was also relieved when it was time to head back down. After an early dinner on the way back, we got cleaned up and headed out to Joe's baseball game. This kid is a 14 year old 8th-grader and is already playing on the high school baseball team. Can't wait to see what the future has to hold for him!

On Saturday, we got up early again because we had a 8am tee-time to play 18 holes with S's Uncle Greg. We played at Gibson Bay, which is probably one of the nicest courses I've played at. I was pretty happy with how I played and S had the best game of his life. He is now dying to try and replecate that game haha. Later in the day, since we didn't end up going to Derby, we decided to celebrate it at home with a cookout, complete with mint juleps, and invited S's dad's brother and sister and their families. We had a great time, it was a beautiful day and we played with the horses, played croquet and just enjoyed each other's company. That night we had a bon fire out in the backyard and watched for the Super Moon.

Sunday was our last full day in the country and we headed up to Cynthiana, which was about an hour away from the farm. On the way, S and I stopped in Lexington for our usual stop to a Kentucky pride shop so we could pick up a couple UK souveniers (not like we don't have enough already, but can you ever really have enough?) We cooked out again, but this time it was with S's mom's parents and sister and brother and their families. His aunt and uncle have the cutest house, kind of log cabin-style, but not? I wish I took a couple pictures.. Again we just chilled out in the shaded yard chatting it up and enjoying everyone's company. I was a little nervous on the way up there because that was the first time that I had met S's maternal grandparents. I knew well in advance that they HATED his ex, with good reason of course, however, this just made me that much more nervous. I have a thing about S's family liking me because of his past situation. He reminds me often that they love me and I have nothing to worry about. Come to find out just yesterday, after a conversation with his mom, S brought up again how much his mom likes me. I guess that little chit-chat had just the effect that I wanted! I was hoping that it would bring us closer together.

Soooo, that pretty much sums up our trip in a not-so-nutshell. This past weekened, my aunt and uncle came to visit and we spent some time with them on Sunday. Besides my mom, this was the first time that S got to meet some of MY family for a change. It was just a preview because in 8 days we are flying to Connecticut and S will get to meet my entireeee family. I hope he's ready!!

I do have a few pictures that I took with my phone over the weekend -

Across the street from the family farm.

Kentucky hills.

 Gibson Bay Golf Course.

 Joe!

 The horses.

 Seminole

 Tess

Heading home.

T

Submarine Birthday Ball and Kentucky-time!

Wow, I've been dying to post about this all week, but I've actually been BUSY at work and haven't had a chance! As you all know, S and I attended the 112th Submarine Birthday Ball in Charleston over the weekend; the ball was a first for both of us. I guess I didn't have any very high expectations, afterall, it was being held on an ancient aircraft carrier sitting in the harbor. It was definitely an awesome thought, but not the most elegent venue haha. Regardless, we had a great time with some great people and you can't beat open bar! Here are some of my favorite pics..

 My very favorite of the night! I just wish it was taken on my camera and not my iPhone for the sake of the picture quality =\

I think the level of alcohol consumption gets more and more obvious in each picture throughout the night! After leaving Patriot's Point and the USS Yorktown, we crossed the bridge over to downtown and enjoyed some more beverages out on the town. It was really fun getting to go out all dressed up!

The next super exciting thing on the agenda is our trip to Kentucky which commences in about 90 minutes! I am very excited to go to my old(new) Kentucky homeeee :) Its like going to my real home, only better! I adore S's parents farm and the area that he grew up in. Its just enough county, but not too far from Lexington/Louisville so we still have access to the city things that we like. I also went and did a little shopping yesterday so I would have some cute outfits to wear when I meet his maternal grandparents for the first time. We will also be attending his little (14 y/o) brother's baseball game on Friday night and since it is Military Appreciation Night, S will be wearing his service uniform. More pictures to come! My mom just eats it up lol, she just loves it when I post them on Facebook. She also relayed to me that my dad commented while looking at the pics and said, "I think I like this guy and I haven't even met him yet!" That, is hilarious. But there isn't any reason why he shouldn't, because S is a perfect gentleman (most of the time) and the sweetest, most loving guy I have ever met.

So on to Kentucky we go!

Next weekend, my aunt & uncle (they are also my godparents) will be in town from CT; the week after that, S's grandparents will be visiting Charleston; the weekend after that is Memorial Day weekend and we will be in NYC/CT where S will get to meet my entire family and all my friends from home for the first time; and lastly, the weekend after that (first weekend in June), we will be attending my first Charleston wedding for my friends Gingham and Tim. Busy busy busy!! Spring and Fall are always such busy times in Charleston, but I absolutely LOVE every second of it.