The State of Our Union

Kyle and I went away for the weekend this past weekend. Just us. We were celebrating our anniversary a week early because this coming weekend is Jack's birthday and, well, we've never had an anniversary trip and thought it might be nice. And it was. We went to The Grand Hotel in Fairhope, Alabama. This place is fantastic. We'd been there before on a weekend trip with my family, right before I had Sam, and since it's only a couple of hours away we thought it would be a good place to go. Far enough to justify spending a couple of nights, but close enough that we could hurry home if there was a need to.

Our room this time looked out over the marina:

I love boats. I really love boats of any kind. They speak to me. But what I truly love, are sailboats. I love everything about a sailboat, from the teak decks to the sails tucked neatly in place. And I love the clang, clang...clang, clang of metal hitting the masts. It soothes me.

I could honestly sit and look at boats for hours. Just look at them. Softly bobbing up and down. So, when I walked into our room and threw back the curtains of our floor-to-ceiling windows (they were actually doors to a fake balcony), I was psyched to see we were facing the marina.

This is what it looked like each night:

Anyway, enough about the boats. We had a fantastic weekend. We drove down there in the Porche, which I drove because another thing I absolutely love is driving a stick shift and when you have kids, it's kinda hard to find kid-friendly cars in stick shifts. As soon as we got to Fairhope, the top was off and we purred our way into the resort. Once on the resort grounds, we spent a little time at the pool and then decided to stick around the resort for dinner because we were just so happy to be there and didn't want to get back into the car.

The resort itself is really cool. And really old. It served as a hospital during the Civil War and as training grounds during World War II. One of the rituals they have each afternoon is the firing of the cannons at 4 p.m.

First, the drummers march across the resort. Here they are marching past our room on Saturday:

Then, they reach the cannons by the main building and they are fired in honor of our armed forces. Pretty. Freaking. Awesome.

I didn't take a lot of pictures this past weekend because I was too busy eating, sleeping, laughing, reading, hanging out by the pool, and just enjoying being with Kyle. We talked a lot. We talked about the kids and our marriage and upcoming events and books we'd like to read.

We really enjoyed our time alone, but at the same time, we did really miss the kids. While we know it's important for us to have some alone time, we really do enjoy our children and the next time we go to the Grand Hotel, we're taking them along.