Anniversary Weekend Rundown

As I mentioned, Mark has very little free time these days.  Being the dedicated man he is, though, he skipped a couple weekend meetings and spent a lot of time on the phone on the way to Petoskey, and was able to get away to celebrate our second wedding anniversary (despite making a whole lot of work to come back to for him).  He's the best!

We arrived to the Terrace Inn on Friday around 5pm and were greeted by the nice staff and the chef's CUTE dog, of which was hanging out in the back with no leash to keep her there.  I'd been thinking about how much I missed the girls, only to be able to instantly pet another pup!

We climbed the grandiose staircase to our queen whirlpool suite, unpacked, then went for a walk to check out the neighborhood:

We walked down to the beach (where, on Sunday, we hunted for - and found! - Petoskey Stones) and enjoyed the beautiful sky:

Later, we had dinner at the Inn's wonderful restaurant (oooooomg, it was so good), then rushed down to the shore to capture a few pictures of the amazing sunset before it nestled into the other side of the Earth for the night:

We even got a picture of the two of us, which is always hard to do when you're traveling alone:

The next day, we got up early, ate breakfast and went into town to shop for a bit before heading back to the Inn for our in-room massages (aaaaahhhh).  We walked past the most whimsical tree (which reminded me of the candlestick guy in 'Beauty and the Beast' and had me singing "Be Our Guest" for two days):

Then we bought a couple of presents for Chickpea - our first real purchases for the little one, besides some books I've been collecting over the years:

'Harper the Hippo'...could this be any cuter?!

This little pull toy was too much - I couldn't resist!

We went back to get our massages, then took a GLORIOUS nap before getting ready to go into town for a nice dinner.  Do you see a trend here?  Shop, eat, sleep.  Isn't that what trips away are all about, though?  LOVE.

The next day, we got up early, had breakfast, then headed to Traverse City and went to a couple of wineries so Mark could do some wine-tasting (we went here and here - the latter was the clear favorite, according to Mark):

It was my idea to go tasting, and while I was so happy Mark got to try some yummy wines, I'm not going to lie: it was a wee bit awkward being pregnant in that setting!  It was also quite hard to not take a sip or two (OK...so I did take a sip of one that we later bought a couple bottles of so I could enjoy it after Chickpea is here!).

We then drove into downtown T.C. and did some shopping after having a pizza lunch under the sun.  My favorite shop was the hat store!  I even got Mark to try a couple on...

And I totally ROCKED this Alice in Wonderland one, if I do say so myself:

Mark even put one on (but was a bit O-V-E-R the whole thing by this point; can you tell?):

Overall, it was a great weekend with my sweetie.  We talked and laughed so much.  On the way back, I was excited to get home to see Molly and Lucy, but also quite wistful that it meant I wouldn't have 24 hours a day to spend with Mark anymore.  He's just so fun to be with, and makes me grin in a way very few people or things can.  I can't wait to get away with him again, although I'm almost positive it won't be until after the baby is here.  What a year we have ahead of us!