Valentine's Day

We celebrated Valentine's Day the day before Valentine's Day. I got off early that day for a doctor's appointment, and so we decided to go to dinner after. We'd decided not to exchange gifts, so imagine my surprise when I walked in to flowers, macarons, a travel neck pillow (trust me, I'd been wanting one) and a card.

We got ready and went to a place in Collegetown called Centrale. 

We started out with risotto bites, and they were delicious. 

I had Chicken Parmesan, and Carson had a meatball dish. 

The place was cute, and pretty empty.

We thought about a fancy dessert, but ended up getting slushes at Sonic instead. 

And we closed out the evening by brushing the dog. Very romantic.

On actual Valentine's Day, we went to Publix for something, and Carson found frozen foods on clearance so we bought fancy flavored fish sticks (ew)

And we finished off real Valentine's Day on the couch.  

Thanksgiving 2017

We went to Beaufort for Thanksgiving this year and spent the weekend with my family!

Here is what we did:

Tuck met other dogs, and wasn't much of a fan of the experience.

We went geocaching with my parents

(this is when we told them I was pregnant... I'm editing this later to add that)

Tuck sort of kind of got along with other dogs

Tuck met "Uncle Scott"

The family came to my parents' house for Thanksgiving.

Carson was pooped from all the merriment

It was a gloomy Thanksgiving.

We took family pictures, with a decent amount of effort. 

Not the whole family - one of our smallest Norman gatherings in a few years.

We bought a new Christmas tree (and some other things) on Black Friday

I went out to lunch downtown with Morgan the day after Thanksgiving

Everyone came to Grandmama's house for the annual family Oyster Roast (Carson helped get the oysters this year)

We celebrated Uncle Mike's retirement

And we learned to share.

Labor Day

For Labor Day, we decided to head on over to the beach! It had been a rather gloomy weekend, but the sun came out bright and early on Monday morning, which is coincidentally when we set out. We decided to go to Panama City, because we like the clear blue water and the bright white sand. It's in Central Time zone, so we gained an hour on the way there.

We brought watermelon and popcorn to snack on. I'd thought about bringing sandwiches too, but neither of us are fans of sandwich bread enough to keep it on hand all the time, so I just grabbed what we had. Carson is reading the Iliad here - the perfect beachy read!

It was a lovely day, and we ended it by picking up hot dogs on the way home to grill on our tiny new $9 gas grill we picked up at Walmart recently. It's small but the perfect size, and a lot faster than the charcoal grill we had been using! All in all, we spent Labor Day the way you're "supposed" to spend it - on the beach and with the grill. We were still in bed pretty early that night ready to enter the real world again the next day :)