An Extra Day for Fun

Here's the thing about French Lick. It is known for a very specific set of things, and if you are either disinterested in said things, or you go at the wrong time of year for those things, you're kind of out of luck for a long-term visit. And that was what happened to us.

French Lick has some pretty amazing golf courses, we've heard, but we don't golf, and also - it was freezing. It also has a huge casino, but we don't gamble. There are nice wineries, but we don't drink. There is a HUGE indoor water park, but somehow the idea of being surrounded by swarms of kids and probably germs on our anniversary getaway didn't really appeal to us. There's a big ski resort a few miles away, but it doesn't open until mid-December, so we just missed out on that. {Big sigh of relief from me and a big sigh of disappointment from Ryan.} There's also a big lake and some trails nearby, but again - December.

All that to say, our advice to you on planning your own visit to this fair city {when not under the confines of immovable dates like anniversaries} is to pay attention to the time of year you go, and you might get to participate in more than we did!

Even so, we had enough to keep us busy for two days, and part of "keeping busy" included rest, which we both sorely needed.

Saturday morning was a sleep-in-and-take-the-morning-to-be-lazy kind of day. I love that so much about a vacation. That was one of the best parts of our honeymoon, too. We didn't have so many things planned that we couldn't just relax a bunch.

When we finally did get out and about, we drove to the next town over, Paoli, which is the home of the ski resort that wasn't yet open. What was open was a little local BBQ joint, and Ryan does love local BBQ, so we stopped for lunch!

After lunch, we walked around the town square of Paoli, which I'll tell you more about in the county date post. Their town square is actually a roundabout {which I am fundamentally opposed to, but it makes for pretty architecture}.

Then we went back to French Lick in search of a Christmas ornament to commemorate our trip! This was only SLIGHTLY easier to find than the bakery. Walking back through the hotels again, seeing more of their Christmas decor, and checking out the shops was a lot of fun!

And then we went for an afternoon coffee date, and while there, Ryan tried to teach me how to play Checkers. It went like this:

After dark {which, you know, currently happens about 5 pm}, we went back through downtown to get some pictures of the pretty light displays, and we grabbed dinner to go at Subway. We took it back to our hotel and ate while we watched movies!

The next morning, we packed up to come home...but we enjoyed our stay in French Lick!

Anniversary #4!

Thought I would give you a peek into the fun we had on our ACTUAL anniversary last Friday! It was nice to not really have a schedule for the day. We could do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. We had, I thought, a great mix of just fun and relaxation combined with actual plans.

We had a nice, leisurely breakfast at the hotel, and then we ventured forth to take our annual pictures I showed you a couple of days ago. It stayed just warm enough that we could do the pictures sans coats and hats, but it was definitely a frigid day. We miss our 80 degree wedding day!

French Lick has two HUGE, historic, beautiful hotels that have quite the story and legacy. Even though we couldn't afford to stay in them, we thought it would be fun to tour them. {You do have to pay for the tours, but they're pretty affordable and interesting...and this coming from a girl who really is not a fan of history.}

So in the late morning, we reported for our tour at the French Lick Resort.

I will save some of the details for another post {this trip was a county tour, too, so I'll have a post about that}, but here are a few pictures from the inside that show the beauty of the place all decked out for the holidays!

Santa's corner...he wasn't there that day, but we did see him later in the weekend! 

 They have a huge wall of pictures of famous people {politicians, actors, singers, etc.} who have stayed there, and there was one little hole down in the corner, so someone made himself a distinguished guest.

 The same distinguished guest also joined the carolers.

 Check out the TREE!!! And the LOBBY!!!!!

 This is an ACTUAL gingerbread house, and I stood with it so you could appreciate how huge it is. Can you imagine how much time this took???

Our tour guide was really great. He knew his stuff inside and out and was interesting and engaging, and we really learned a lot from him!

When the tour was over, we were pretty hungry, so we went in search of lunch. You may have heard this story on the podcast, but we found this pizza place we thought we'd try, and we discovered they had a lunch buffet. We arrived 4 minutes before the end of the buffet, so it became the big joke that we showed up for the discounted pizza scraps on our anniversary.

When we finished lunch, we walked around the downtown part of French Lick for a while. To be fair, it's not a very big place, and there aren't a ton of shops, but it's starting to build up, and there were a few cute places to check out, so we did that. Then we went back to the hotel to rest and watch our wedding video.

We had reservations to tour the OTHER big hotel in town in the late afternoon, so we made our way to the West Baden Springs hotel, which was magnificent in a completely different way from the French Lick hotel. We had the same tour guide again, and I should mention that for both tours, we happened to luck out and had private tours. No one else signed up for one when we did!

This ATRIUM!!!! It was astounding. And just for a point of reference: the paintings on the base of the tree are way taller than even tall men. That's how huge that tree was!

Again, the tour was really interesting, and when it ended, we decided to just hang out for a bit in the atrium, listen to the live music, and relax.

I felt a little guilty hanging out in jeans in this fancy hotel, but I felt better once I started seeing a bunch of jammies! There is a train that runs through town and at this time of year, they do Polar Express train rides. So all these families had arrived, and not only were the kids in jammies, but most of the adults were, too!!

That night, we had a special treat: Ryan had arranged for us to take a carriage ride on the grounds of the West Baden Springs hotel. I had never been on one before, and I LOVED it.

The ride was simple and lovely. The carriage was covered and we had a warm blanket, so we didn't get too cold. The funniest part was when Ryan took off his gloves and laid them on my lap {I didn't know it} and then he asked me to move to the other carriage seat so he could take my picture, and in the process of moving, I threw the gloves out of the carriage! WHAT!?!? We were able to recover them, and no the horse didn't do anything on them!

We still hadn't had dinner, and we really weren't hungry, either, so after our romantic carriage ride, we went to a little sports bar/grill for appetizers and dessert. {Ryan felt bad that the only food I'd had on our anniversary was a continental hotel breakfast and pizza buffet scraps!} The place was called 33 Brick Street and had tons of Larry Bird memorabilia, because French Lick is Larry Bird's hometown.

It wasn't busy, and our waitress was AMAZING. She took really good care of us, and even brought out Larry Bird's NBA trophy and his Olympic jacket for Ryan to have photo opps with!

 We searched high and low ALL DAY for a bakery in French Lick so we could get cupcakes for our anniversary dessert. Turns out there ISN'T a bakery there {at least not an advertised one!} so we split a salted caramel cheesecake slice at the restaurant. Our waitress even drew us a smiley face, and if the cheesecake is a nose, it's true to Ryan and Bekah form, that's for SURE!

It really was a great ending to the day, and then we went back to the hotel to exchange cards, read our letters from last year, and write new letters for next year.

Thanks, Ryan, for making our anniversary so wonderful! I had the best time with you, and I'm sorry I threw your gloves out of the carriage. :)

An Anniversary Trip Down Memory Lane

Our anniversary trip is officially in the books, and it was lovely. Can't wait to tell you all about it throughout the week!

But one of my favorite parts of each anniversary is looking back at all our monthiversary pictures. It's fun to remember each month, where we were, what was happening in our lives, and what color my hair was that month. HA!

 Hey! I only repeated shirts twice! Not bad! :)

Another fun tradition we have is to recreate some of our wedding pictures on each anniversary. You can click on each one to enlarge it, since they're in a line this year and maybe harder to see.

Clearly we've never been able to replicate the amazing scenery of the wedding, but it's been fun to redo these each year. {Photo credit for our wedding photos goes to Ryan's mom, and Stephen Rudd, our wedding photographer.}

* Our first anniversary pictures were taken at a Christmas tree farm and in our backyard.

* Our second anniversary pictures were taken outside the hotel where we stayed near Chicago. The lovely tall weeds were the barrier between the hotel and the interstate. LOL!

* Our third anniversary pictures were taken in a field behind a nursing home - and all photo credit for those pictures goes to our friend Nathan Holloway. We tripod-photographed all the rest.

* This year's pictures were taken in the West Baden city park.

So much fun to redo these every year, and we were grateful that the weather held enough on our anniversary this year to take them minus coats! YAY!!!

Come back and hang out tomorrow for a virtual vacation!

Linking up with Tamar!

The Shafferland Shuffle

What a LOVELY week it has been! Thank you so much, to all of you who sent us well-wishes for our anniversary! It was a beautiful day, and I'm so excited to tell you about all our adventures. Meanwhile...here is a peek at our week!

* Because I had been sick the day after Thanksgiving, I didn't QUITE finish all the decorating of the house by Saturday night. So after church on Sunday, Ryan and I finished up the few decorations that hadn't been assembled. I was SO HAPPY when night came and the house was all twinkly with pretty lights. It was a lovely way to end a weekend/begin a week!

* On Monday, I had to stop by Ryan's work to drop off a wreath his work girls had made at our craft night. {They had left it at our house because it was raining so hard that night.} Until they needed the wreath, I hung it on Brutus, Ryan's rhino coat hook. Hilarious! Speaking of rain, Monday was a dreary, rainy day - perfect for staying inside and working, which is exactly what I did. And that night, I organized all the journals I told you about in the blog post earlier this week, and Ryan wanted a picture of me with all the journals in which I prayed over my someday-husband!

* Tuesday was the premiere of Fixer Upper, so of course I had to show my support with my #shiplap shirt! :) After it was over, I realized I didn't have all 10,000 steps in for the day, so I finished by walking the house, and Braeya did her favorite thing, which is to high-five me as I walk past the chair. It's hysterical. She does this ALL THE TIME when I finish my steps by walking the house. Must have worn her out, though, because she went to rest under the Christmas tree when that was over.

* Wednesday, I had a major Christmas-card-addressing party, which was much fun. Got them all done, and Ryan did my least favorite part which was sealing them all. {HUSBAND AWARD!!!} And even though it was early, we exchanged our anniversary gifts that day. The reasons behind that are much too long for a recap post, but I'll tell you more about it later. So here's Ryan with his anniversary pie, and here I am with my anniversary planter! :)

* Ryan worked all day Thursday, and while he did so, I packed our suitcases and the car so we could leave right away for our anniversary getaway! I can't wait to tell you all about our trip, because we had SO MUCH FUN, but here are a few highlights to get you started. Our destination was French Lick, which is a town about 3 hours south of where we live. Our trip was pretty uneventful...dinner...Starbucks...narrowly missing hitting a deer...and finally getting settled in our hotel room late that evening. {There actually were a handful of funny stories from this day, but I'll save them.}

* Friday was our actual anniversary, and we had such a fun day together. The Lord blessed us with a sunny day {although nowhere near the 82 degrees of our ACTUAL wedding day} and we had such fun touring the fancy hotels in French Lick, walking around town, doing our anniversary photo shoot, watching our wedding video, taking a carriage ride, enjoying food and coffee together, and creating some wonderful memories to last forever! Loved our day!

* Yesterday was THE most wonderful, low-key, restful day. We loved it. Sleeping in, BBQ, walks through Christmas finery, exploring town squares, coffee and checkers, movies, good talks, and just...lovely. {By the way. Bet you can't guess who lost at checkers.}