Blue Ridge Anniversary

So, this past Memorial Day weekend was our One Year Anniversary. YAY….. Wow, it doesn’t even seem like it has been that long. But, we made it through our first year. They say the first is the hardest…. but it didn’t really seem that hard. I guess that’s a good sign!
I know it’s a little strange to take family vacation for your anniversary, but my family goes on a vacation Memorial Day weekend every year since I can remember. Alex and I kind of ruined it for them last year when we decided to get married on that weekend. :( So, this year they invited us and we went to the Blue Ridge Mountains and stayed in a Cabin. It was a really nice cabin, three bedrooms - two stories with a basement, so we all basically had our own little space. My family left Thursday afternoon, and we left on Thursday night after work and made it there around nine. We spent the evening hanging out, watching TV, and enjoying our surroundings.
Friday was a pretty low key day. We went and checked out Downtown Blue Ridge - and walked through the little shops for a few hours and then went to the grocery store. Then we had to get back to the cabin to start dinner. That night we enjoyed some delicious barbeque!! But, we had to be careful not to leave anything outside… or else the neighborhood bear might have paid us a little visit!! Yes, there was a bear…. We didn’t actually see him, but we did see his claw marks all over the chained up garbage cans and pictures of him in the cabin information book!! That night we played games and enjoyed eachothers company. They had a pool table downstairs and we played a lot of that; my sister also brought her playstation and we played Buzz - which is kind of like a game show, and SingStar - which is a karaoke game. It was so much fun - even though we couldn't convince Alex or my dad to sing!!

on Saturday, everyone except me and my mom went white water rafting. My mom and I went back to downtown Blue Ridge because they had this art festival on Saturday and Sunday. It was pretty cool, kind of like the fall festival that they have in Watkinsville - but, mostly sort of artsy stuff like paintings and woodwork. Most everything was way out of our price range, but we did get these really cool wind chimes that were made out of old wine bottles!! I was really excited because I've been wanting a wind chime for our porch, but I haven't been able to find one that I really like at a reasonable price. These were awesome, and not expensive at all!! After walking around for such a long time, our feet were SO tired. We decided to go and get some lunch. ~ That night, we were all so tired that we just decided to eat left overs and play games and be lazy!

On Sunday, it was mine and Alex's anniversary and my parents wanted to do something that'd be fun for us since I couldn't go rafting the day before. It came down to us all taking a canoe ride down the river. We called a couple of places that were closed, but finally we found a fairly new place that looked like it might be promising. We got there, and got everything in order for our trip and they talked us into taking kayaks instead of canoes. Alex and I were stoked about kayaking, and my dad and sister decided to try one too. So, we paid, parked our car at the finishing point and the guys dropped us into the river upstream. Kayaking was So much fun!!!! ...Until we flipped out of our kayak! Actually, flipping out the first time was pretty fun; the water was insanely cold, but it was so hot outside it felt good. After Alex and I flipped out the first time we got back in and tried to get back on course... but we were off balance, a good current came and BAM we were in the water again!! My dad and sister were getting a kick out of us falling out of our boat and they kept telling us they got the one that was "tip proof" - NOT!! ~~ It was probably a good thing we were traveling separately, because when one of our boats tipped we would loose everything and the other boat would have to collect belongings!! :) so... basically we all kept falling out of our kayaks and collecting eachothers stuff! We couldnt figure out why this was happening.... the guys kept yelling at us, we yelled back - and it seemed like we might have been doomed from the start. Before long, we realized that we were retaining water in the inside of our boats and we had to pull over and drain them!!! After the draining process, we all got back inside and we started going really good. Alex and I felt like we were back in the groove!! My dad and sister were coming along behind us; but soon we realized that they were stopped... ~~ We were to about the half way mark and we had already been in the water for about three hours on a trip that is supposed to take about two - all the way down. We figured out that my dad and sister's boat was taking in even more water; so, we all decided to just stop there and have the guys come and pick us up. Turns out, both the boats we had rented had holes in the bottom - it would have only gotten worse if we had kept going!! Needless to say, my dad made sure we all got our money back.. ... Even though, it was a terrible trip down a very low river - we shared some laughs on behalf of eachothers mishaps, we all got wet, I got a good story for my blog, Alex and I decided we want a kayak (free of any holes!), and all in all it was fun!!

That night, we went out to dinner at a Longhorns in town and had a really nice time together. It was our last night at the Cabin and we decided to have a pool tournament - kind of. After such an exciting day, Alex and I were pretty much dead the second our heads hit our pillows!! Monday we drove two hours home and spent the rest of our day laying on the couch watching TV. :)

Even though Alex and I spent our anniversary weekend with family - it turned out to be a really good time! Thanks, mom and dad,



** I'll add pictures as soon as I get them!