12th Anniversary Getaway: Our Anniversary Adventures

 

It’s been just over a week since our actual anniversary, and we had the most lovely, low-stress day. (Much like our wedding day! Only much colder.) We had breakfast at our hotel, and then we exchanged our gifts!

            The gift themes for 12 years, as I think I mentioned earlier, were silk and pearls, so it was rough for me. Ryan wasn’t really interested in either. I did know he really liked the art print I had purchased for my desk and wanted one for his office at work, so that’s exactly what I got him!

            He gave me a coffee themed gift! A really cool pottery pour-over set, a manual grinder that I had on my wish list, and some little jars for storing coffee beans. Loved them!

            After such ridiculously cold and blustery days, we were excited to have sunshine and a tiny bit warmer day. I had researched a park where we could go for our annual pictures that we recreate, and we punched in the address on the GPS. LOOK AT WHERE IT TOOK US!

            We laughed and laughed. Apparently, this was on the backside of the park, so after driving around a little, we found the actual spot I intended, which was an old mill with tons of character. There weren’t many people out and about in this park at 10 a.m. on a Monday morning, so we easily had the place to ourselves for pictures.

            I will show those to you after I make the collages, but after we were done with our photos, we headed out to explore more of the park and found this really cool little waterfall and some stone bridges and stairs – and a lock bridge!

            (We didn't add a lock, but I took a picture of this one since it had a heart.)

            Our lunch plan was to drive about a half hour into New Jersey and have BBQ – and grab a picture in yet another new-to-us state. We drove over to this tiny little town of Phillipsburg, which was cute and quaint and kind of reminded us of our visit to Wetumpka, Alabama, in how it was situated by a river on a hill.

            Apparently visitors entering on the “little” bridge do not get a Welcome-to-New-Jersey sign, so just imagine one here.

            (On our way out, we found this sign pointing us to the interstate, so it will have to suffice for the scrapbook.)

            The town was little and cute, and here is the picture we took for our map. (We almost got in trouble for it, but the guy relented and let us continue.)

            We had lunch at a BBQ place run by the nicest guy – and we were the only ones eating there at that time. Great food and service!

            Then…back to Pennsylvania we went!

            We went back to downtown Bethlehem and visited the Moravian Book Shop again. We purchased a souvenir, but that was it.

            Then we went to Bitty and Beau’s, which is a coffee shop that employs those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Bitty and Beau are the children of the founders of this chain – and both have Down’s Syndrome. This coffee shop was big, bright, clean, and the coffee was delicious! The employees were also fantastic. I loved their system for calling drink orders. Rather than messing with names, they use playing cards to call orders!

            We sat for the longest time, talking and enjoying our date. And then Ryan put a pin in the map to record our visit!

            We went back to the hotel to rest for a little and then returned to the Live Advent Calendar for the second night. This night, a local shop was in charge of the entertainment, and some of their employees are in a band, so they sang.

            We planned to go out for pizza, but you can probably guess the outcome of that before I tell you, can’t you? #closed.

            We found a pizza place right by our hotel, so we placed our order, went back to the hotel to leave our car, and then walked back over to get our food! Ryan ordered stromboli, which was HUGE, and I got a salad.

            We finished the evening by reading our letters written on our last anniversary and writing new ones for next year! (We didn’t get to watch our video this year because we didn’t have a way to connect a DVD player to the hotel TV. I really need to get our video switched to a different, more portable format!)