The Birthday Trip

WARNING: TOO MANY PICTURES!

It's quiet here at the moment, so I'll try to get this post up.

I mentioned to Brian back in February that Kenny Chesney was going to be launching his Flip Flop Summer Tour and that very observant man remembered and bought tickets to the nearest city the day they went on sale, snagging balcony tickets. Very interesting experience. We'd never been to a large secular concert before, only Christian, classical, Riverdance kind of stuff. We learned a few things. First, there are no scan buttons at a concert. You're stuck with whatever is playing. Loudly. And with terrible acoustics at this particular place at least. So you can't understand what they're saying - unless you already knew the song. Weird. Second, some people do not drink in moderation.

It's kind of like the movies, you have to do a background check to be sure you're not going to see something you don't want to see. So it wasn't terrible, in fact, a lot of the Kenny Chesney performance was loads of fun, but I don't think we'll try that again. Unless maybe it's Rascall Flatts. And then I'll make sure that we know who else is coming with them.

So we had a great ride up with me not knowing where we were going until we were over half way there. I'd actually done a search for concerts on that date the night before and it was the only one I'd found, and I thought, maybe?... But I was so surprised that he really did that. Brian is terrible at keeping secrets from me. It makes him crazy. But I think he had even more fun making me crazy. We checked in at our hotel, changed, and had a nice dinner at Ruby Tuesday's (great crab cakes!), then headed to the concert. Oh, and I had to share this pic from our motel room's ceiling - it cracked us up!

The next day was garden day. Three botanical gardens in a row. With a delightful lunch in between. (If you've never had a sweet potato biscuit before - mmm, heavenly!) Unfortunately, Brian started a sinus infection too, but refused to let it slow him down. My new camera was great fun! I'm so glad that he insisted I buy it before we went. I took hundreds of pictures, but I tried to narrow it down.

We got everyone that passed us to take a picture of us

together. A lesson I learned from my honeymoon

pictures - we only had one together!

This camera has lots of cool features to try out.

Brian is my hero.

He was a very good sport about being

my favorite subject.

Some cute dogs we met.

By the end of the day, I was feeling like a

budding wildlife photographer! :^)