Shopping and Strawberries

Shopping and strawberries-- these might just be two of my very favorite simple pleasures in life as you will soon read.  When we were planning what we wanted to do for the next few days, we were both really open to pretty much anything which can be kind of fun when there isn't an hour by hour schedule.

Now, for all of you wives out there, you know what I mean when I say it's always amazing when your husband throws in a "shopping day" even if that doesn't mean you'll buy anything; just the fact that he's even willing to walk around with you and look at anything is something to get excited about. I have to say, Nate has always been really good about that whenever we go away or take vacations- he'll always plan in a day where we can browse through stores. (secretly I think he might enjoy it just a little sometimes, just don't tell him I said that)  In all honesty, usually he 'enjoys' it far more when there is actually something that he is looking for. (which as I later found out- he had something very specific he was looking for) I'll still give him credit for taking me shopping. When he says my favorite 7 letter word, O-U-T-L-E-T-S, I'm all in!

On our way back to our hotel from the outlets, we decided to see if we could find the spot where Nate proposed to me. We knew there had been a few road changes since that time, but decided we could find it again.  Sure enough we did!  

I know this "spot" doesn't look like much, but our engagement started here at sunset and then Nate had a number of  other locations picked out that night. Nate did so many creative things when he planned our engagement, but we'll save that for another post.

At the end of our "shopping" day, we headed to 'Not your Average Joe's' for dinner, which is a fun little restaurant that some friends of ours introduced us to several years ago. If you don't go there for any other reason, you go for their bread and incredible dipping oil- which is nothing short of yummy-ness!  


The last time we ate here was the night Nate shared with me that he knew God was calling us to take the next step towards adopting. So for that reason, it will probably always hold a special place in my heart.  By this point, it was getting pretty late so we headed back to our hotel as we had a full day planned the next day.


And guess what we found when we opened up our room...

Chocolate covered strawberries, which are one of my favorites (quite honestly anything with strawberries are my favorite) and a sweet note from the hotel manager wishing us a Happy Anniversary. (and what was fun was that Nate didn't even know for sure they were going to do this-- he had just checked a box when he booked the hotel that asked the reason for your stay. We'll have to remember that one again!) 


I think the funny part about it was that we both stared at these strawberries for several minutes (ok, so maybe only I did) trying to decide if eating one was going to cost us $10 a strawberry! (yep- I will admit I wasn't convinced until the day we checked out and saw our bill and I'm relieved thrilled to say they were a nice free gift from the hotel) 


What a great start to our getaway weekend!