365 Days of Amazing

Last year at about this time Ryan and I were sitting in the Charlotte airport grabbing a quick dinner before we boarded our plane to Brazil.  Yep, in case you weren't keeping track (I know, most of you probably weren't), today is our 1 year anniversary.  Yep, 365 days ago we were doing this:

A far cry from how we spent this weekend:

Ha!! Yep, that's exactly where we spent our anniversary weekend.  Go ahead and judge, but we loved every moment of it.  I'll give you that our campsite was far from ideal, but we made the most of it and were both very excited to try out our camper for the very first time. 

Looking back I miss every single part of our wedding day.  I know everyone says it, but it really does go by far too fast.  I wish I could sort of bottle up every moment of that day and relive it whenever I'd like, but I have to admit that as much fun as we had on our wedding day, the last 365 have been just as much fun and I'm excited to see what the next 18,250 days have in store for us (for those of you searching for a calculator, that's 50 years). 

But, back to the weekend.  Ry and I decided that we wanted to have dinner on Saturday night at Eno Vino.  It's a wine bar in Madison, WI that serves tapas type dishes.  Ryan is usually pretty iffy on tapas, saying that he never feels full, but I pulled that "anniversary" card and he'd be the first to admit that he couldn't eat one single bite more as we walked out of the restaurant.  It's an amazing restaurant and if you are ever in the Madison area you should definitely plan a stop, even if it is just for a glass of wine. 

We ordered a bottle of wine and some bacon/paramsean french fries to start with.  After that we got Day Boat Seered Scallops (drenched in truffle butter).  I'd literally lay down in front of a bus for this butter.  I'd take a bullet for it.  I'd surrender my first born.  It was amazing.  I took every piece of bread we had left on our table to soak up the extra butter.  But, that was just the beginning of the amazing dishes.  After the scallops we had foie gras.  Yep, the stuff the banned in Chicago.  Before you start googling, it's duck liver and is a controversial dish in some areas.  I ordered it because I'd never had it, and I wanted to be able to say that I had.  It was good, don't get me wrong, but it was probably our least favorite of the dishes.  It sort of reminded me of puppy breath.  I know that doesn't make sense to most people, but some of you will know exactly what I mean by that. 

Anyways, after the foie gras, they brought out braised pork belly.   Let me be the first to say, when they brought this dish out i was skeptical.  Very skeptical.  Picture a jelly filled biscuit, topped with pork belly, topped with a fried egg, all drizzled with some sort of pink jam looking sauce.  I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like it, but it was Ryan's favorite dish of the night and my second, only because I want to be buried with truffle butter.  I want it to be my final meal.  I could literally take a bath in the stuff.  Ok, enough obsessing....back to the pork belly.  It was seriously amazing.  I had my doubts.  I don't like things being sweet when they are supposed to be savory.  But the sauce wasn't sweet at all.  It was 7 kinds of amazing, and the only things that gets 8 kinds of amazing are Ryan (I'm biased) and truffle butter (I know, I said I was done, but give me credit for putting Ryan first in that list).

Alright, bored of me talking about food yet??  I'm sure you are, so I'll go back to how we spent the rest of our weekend.  We left Friday night after work and got to our campsite around 9pm.  We were both pretty sleepy by the time we got camp all set up and didn't have any firewood so we basically set up camp, read for a bit and then called it a night.  We sure know how to party it up!

Saturday we woke up and made breakfast and decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather with a hike.  On our wedding day it was sunny and probably 85 degrees.  Dad promised me good weather on this weekend and two years in a row he didn't disappoint!!  This weekend was amazing both years.  Warm, sunny and beautiful with all the fall colors.  So, we leashed up the dogs and set out for a nice long hike.

Pretty right?? 

We walked for probably 5 miles and just spent the time enjoying the weather and each other's company.  The dogs were good and we even managed to capture a few illusive pictures of us with them!

See, not bad right?  This is usually how dog pictures turn out:

Ha!!

Ok, enough dog pictures.  After our walk we made lunch over the campfire and spent some time relaxing.  I MAY have even squeezed in a nap! Then, we drove to downtown Madison to walk around and do some window shopping.  We didn't buy anything but had a great time people watching.  Actually, that's a lie, we bought some ice cream at a local ice cream store and a beer at Capital Brewery.  But, we knew we had a delicious dinner in store for us so we didn't want to get too full. 

Of course I managed to forget my camera back at the camper so I don't have any pictures from dinner.  Sorry guys...but, like I said, it was amazing, and if you have a chance, take my word and try it out for yourself.  After dinner we went back to the campsite and enjoyed a fire for awhile before turning in for the night.

Sunday morning Ryan surprised me with a couples massage.  AMAZING!  I was talking about the massage, but I also mean Ryan of course.  It was sweet of him to plan something special for me.  We had decided to forgo gifts and spend the money on our amazing dinner so I was extra surprised when he told me what he had planned.  We each got an hour long massage and I couldn't think of a better end to our weekend!

Finally, we stopped in Freeport on our way home to have dinner with Mom and Dad and drop off the camper by their house.  We are storing it out in Freeport for the winter so we can have our garage back.  We figure next spring we will pick it back up again so we can start our next camping season. 

Ok, the Packers are playing and I'm sure you all are getting bored of reading about our weekend so I'm going to wrap this thing up.  I just want to take one more second to wish my amazing husband a Happy Anniversary and to tell him how much I love him. 

To happily ever after......