As you know, it finally came to an end on February 28th, and the night of March 1st I arrived home.
Since then Amanda and I have stayed busy and wanted to catch folks up on what we’ve been up to.
Weekend 1:
9 Round:
Amanda I have signed up for 9 Round, a 30 minute kickboxing / personal training circuit gym where you spend 3 minutes at each round. We’ve been pretty steadily going 3 times a week unless we do something crazy on the weekend, like climb a mountain.
It is only two miles away, which I love because I get to run home most days afterwards.
Shopping, Cooking, Cleaning, Laundry, and Forming Other Norms:
Now that we finally live together we’ve been working on getting into routines. Planning meals has been a big focus, as we try to identify things we can prepare on the weekend and eat during the week. We’ve had some excellent crock pot BBQ, whole roasted chicken, stuffed peppers, and Frittatas many mornings.
Shockingly, Amanda has higher standards of cleanliness than I employed as a bachelor. As such, she’s assigned me some low skill chores that I can handle weekly. I have cleaning the hardwood floors and dusting.
Surprise:
Amanda arranged a surprise party for me a few weeks after returning home. A day expected to be spent meeting two friends at The Community Tap turned into an afternoon of catching up with friends and family while enjoying some excellent BBQ and beer, two things I’d been missing greatly in The Kingdom.
I’ve got to hand it to Amanda, until about 5 seconds before the big reveal I had no clue what was going on. She’d been acting a bit funny that morning, but I had attributed to a womanly moment of craziness.
Family Time:
The last weekend in March, Amanda and I took our niece and nephew, Kaitlin and Kagen, to the upstate children’s museum. It was a great chance to spend 6 hours with elementary school aged children!!! They actually took it easy on us and were really well behaved.
Easter Sunday we did Church in Greenville before driving down to Atlanta to have an Easter luncheon with my grandparents. We got to catch up with family we hadn’t seen since the wedding. We always enjoy seeing my grandparents together, they’ve been married 60 years and still have a marriage filled with love and caring, they are a great example for us.
Hiking:
The past two weekends we have gone hiking, last weekend as a bit of a warm up, this weekend we did something a bit more intense.
The day before Easter we took a quick trip to Paris Mountain park in Greenville to hike their Sulphur Springs trail, a quick 3.6 mile loop that climbs up the old Greenville reservoir dam. We extended our hike by including the northern loop of the park’s Kanuga, North Lake, Pipissewa, and Brissy Ridge trails to about double the total length.
Other Greenville Adventures:
Small Plate Crawl:
At dinner one night a waitor told us that their restaurant would be participating in a Small Plate Crawl. Local restaurants would be creating new mini plates or scaling down the size some of their signature dishes and encouraging people to stop in and try their restaurant. Each restaurant you went to had a barcode scanner that you could scan on your phone to get entered to win prizes. In two nights we got to visit 15 restaurants and won a gift certificate for a cooking class at Charleston Cooks in Greenville.
Our favorite dish was the country ham wontons at Tupelo Honey.
Just Enjoying Greenville:
We’ve really enjoyed walking around Greenville as the weather has gotten better. We’ve walked to the grocery, to the park, and to the gym since I’ve been home. We love the city so much and are so glad to be here together at last.
Spamalot:
On the way to work one day a billboard caught my eye advertising the local theater company would be doing a production of Spamalot in April. We got seats for opening night and had a great time. It’s a show I’ve always wanted to see and it did not disappoint.
One Year:
Up Next:
We’ve got a series of eventful weeks ahead including: Bob Dylan, Avery’s First Birthday, the graduations of our brothers, Steven and Matthew, and this summer we’ll be taking a Greek Cruise. We’re looking forward to posting about all of it and more.