4th Anniversary

Our anniversary this year fell between Carson's graduation and moving; two things that have taken up most of our attention recently. It wasn't a day we entirely forgot about, but we really didn't have time to plan anything, so everything we did was last-minute. Last year, we had all the excitement of losing my passport, and we went to two places for our anniversary (the beach and Niagara Falls), so really we were fine not doing much. 

We like to do the traditional theme gifts for anniversaries, and this year, the theme was fruit and flowers. It was nice, because the options were fairly inexpensive, but there wasn't a ton of room for creativity. 

Carson got me flowers (he said he thought the lilies [which I kind of hate] were tulips [which I love]. Oops.) and arranged fruit on a plate for me. I didn't want to get him real flowers so I was trying to exercise all the creative thinking I could muster and got an Edible Arrangement. I've always wanted one, just for the pineapple flowers, so it worked out in my favor, plus since the fruit WAS flower shaped, I killed two birds with one stone. I ordered online the night before and it was ready to pick up the next day. 

That night, we were going to go to dinner at the very fancy Pizza Hut (I know... we live large), but our friend Yann, a French exchange student from JCU, took us out to dinner at Melt. He stayed with us the few days before he went back to France and it was nice to spend one of his last evenings with him before he went home. (and by the way, as of that night we are OVER this restaurant. Too much cheese -- words I didn't think I'd ever say)

We worked as usual the next day, and then decided that it would be nice to feel like we were doing SOMETHING for our anniversary, so we stayed at a cheap little hotel that night. We got dressed up and went to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory and came back and watched House Hunters so... be a little jealous okay?

We shared a piece of cheesecake for dessert and couldn't finish it.

The next morning, Carson picked up Bob Evans breakfast. He's always wanted to try it, and now he has. And well... it wasn't great, but it was food.

We got ready for the day and headed west. We went to the book sale at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens, and found out there that admission to the gardens was free so we walked around a little.

The real reason for being in University Circle was to go to the opera! Going to see the Cleveland Orchestra has been on our bucket list for some time now (we hear it's one of the best orchestras out there!) and we know people who could get us tickets for cheap (one was free, one was $10) so we got tickets for The Cunning Little Vixen, which is a very unique opera. It had both live acting/singing and animation, with the orchestra on stage providing the music, and was a really neat first opera. The story line was a little strange and the words were all in Czech, but there was captioning so we were able to follow along.

Severance Hall was really really gorgeous and sitting in the balcony was waaaay up there but gave us a greater view of that gorgeous ceiling. We could hear and see just fine.

Carson mentioned Dairy Queen after the opera, and so we went, in the name of anniversaries, cherry dipped cones and sprinkles. 

To continue the festivities, we came home and packed for seven hours. I am impressed with the fact that we actually did that, but it meant that we were up packing until 1am. On the positive side, we got the whole upstairs done and got rid of a decent amount of stuff too. Go us!