Category: 25th anniversary

henry horton state park; date #8, a hike through a cedar glade

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 so, we are trying to keep up with the dates and are definitely running a little behind.  we had a nice warm afternoon together and decided to head to a park we had never visited before.  this area has several cedar glades and we chose to visit the one in the henry horton state park located in chapel hill.  there are 3 trails to hike but the hickory ridge loop runs around a cedar glade.  if it looks this beautiful in january, imagine what it will be like in the spring when the native wildflowers begin to bloom.  we plan to go back to see that for ourselves.

 we actually left the trail and walked down to the bottom of this crevice.  the temperature immediately dropped about 10-15 degrees and it was incredible to look at up close.  amazing what water can do!

 peek-a-boo…a natural hole/tunnel in the rocks 
 ferns growing in the moss on the rocks

 lichen-they just rest on the ground, no roots to attach them
 close up of the moss and lichen
 a cedar tree growing in the rocks
 cactus? we found a bunch of them

 what the trail looked like

 we weren’t the only ones hiking the trails-deer were following the path too!  we also came across a flock of wild turkey.

 we followed these yellow paint marks to make our loop on the trail.  it took us about an hour since we stopped a lot.  afterwards, we went for lunch at martins bbq in nolensville.

 pulled pork sammiches!  fresh cut fries, mmmm…..
little piggy at the door of martins bbq

date night-thrift stores and korean food

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cell phone photo alert…sorry, i do not like to take a camera into a restaurant and if i take photos during a meal, it is always with cell phone.

darry and i decided to make a date of our afternoon together. when i arrived home from work and the basketball game he was watching ended, we headed over to the west side of town. along charlotte avenue is a group of thrift stores. we visited unique thrift store, southern thrift, goodwill and salvation army. darry had the only purchase of the day-a vintage islanders stanley cup hat. i was in search of vintage table ware or pie dishes as well as any kind of stuff that i could work into the decor of our house. needless to say, i came up empty handed. after a couple hours of mindless browsing and lots of giggling over the stuff that was for sale, we headed east towards home. we stopped of to fuel up at portland brew and then landed in our own backyard. after a much needed trip to the grocery store, we bickered about dinner and decided if this was a real date, it required a dinner out.
our choice, tofu house on antioch pike.

the little plates of condiments delivered before our soup arrived. we had (from 12 o’clock) green beans or sea weed salad, bean sprouts, cucumbers, traditional cabbage kim chi, eggs for the soup, a sauce for the shrimps i ordered, potatoes and a spicy daikon.
i ordered mushroom tofu soup. it had noodles, oyster mushrooms and lots of tofu.
darry ordered kim chi tofu soup
entrees are delivered with the soup and i chose shrimp with scallops
darry ordered the braised short ribs
all in all, the food was good and we ate all that we could. the soup comes to the table at a full boil and stays hot for a long time. tofu soup looks as if it wouldn’t be filling but you will be surprised at just how filling it is. if you are not a fan of spicy foods, this isn’t the place for you-even though i ordered my soup mild, it still had a bite to it and i used some of the rice served with it to take the edge off.
so, 7 down and plenty more to go in order to hit 25 dates in a year. we had a fun afternoon/evening and i look forward to the next date.

celebrating the year-25 dates for 25 years

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for those of you out there that might be thinking that i have given up on the 25 dates for 25 years, think again. we work in a field that does not let us enjoy a leisurely holiday season. it is very stressful and busy that we generally look back on it and wonder if it even happened. so in honor of that fact, i am calling this holiday season, date #3 & 4, officially, we blinked and missed it…actually, we did have a chance to do a few things together. we spent time cooking together and watching movies and hiking with the dog
here is something else we did, we went on a real date, #5 was a trip to bell buckle for a day of browsing in antique shops and lunch in the bell buckle cafe.



if you go to bell buckle, be sure to go by phillips general store. billy phillips does an amazing job with the windows.
the other window to the store. check out the store too-it is so jam packed that you could spend a week in it and not see a fraction of what is in there. be sure to visit the bluebird antiques and ice cream shop owned by his parents around the corner from the general store-it is just as jam packed and they are a nice bunch of folks to visit with!
date #4 was a holiday movie festival at our house. we watched so many but these are a few of what we enjoyed together.




there are three movies on this disk-we watched them all
date #3 was a collection of hikes we took with the dog-sometimes just around the block and other times over at the ag center, see the photos of one over here. we have some catching up to do if we will make it to 25 by september. we’ll make it!

25 dates for 25 years

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asa & yehosafat, 2000 by boaz vaadia
hard to believe but it is true none the less, the husband and i have been married for 25 years. i simply cannot believe that i am old enough to have been married for that many years. at least i don’t feel that old, one look in the mirror and i can see the proof. we had planned on taking a long weekend to lounge on the beach but the flood and all of the repairs to the house put an end to that plan. we have moved on to plan b; over the next year (our anniversary was 9/14 to 9/13 of 2011) we plan to do 25 things that we normally wouldn’t do as a means of celebrating. a celebratory bucket list of sorts and today we went on our first date.

dale chihuly is an amazing glass artist and there are two exhibits running simultaneously in nashville right now. there is an outdoor exhibit at cheekwood that has the option of visiting it after dark because it is all illuminated and the frist museum also has an exhibit of his work. to start the celebration, we went to the frist museum today. did you know that today was museum day? the smithsonium has a program that provides free tickets to selected museums all around the country and the frist was on the list. we would never have known about it if it wasn’t for ms. cheap’s column in the tennessean.
we walked through the exhibit and admired all of the glass and paintings too. there was a video of mr. chihuly teaching a master class and it showed how some of the pieces were created and it was amazing to watch. since we were in a museum, i couldn’t take pictures so be sure to click on the links to get an idea of what we saw. we rounded out the afternoon with a trip down 12 south for a cup of coffee at portland brew. be sure to visit here and see what we do to celebrate this long incarceration i mean marriage…