Happy 7th Anniversary!

Derek and I celebrated our 7th Anniversary this past weekend. We started the weekend out by packing up the car and heading to Aberdeen, Maryland 5:30 am on Saturday. The weather was amazing- actually a little chilly. We ran a hilly 5k with a few friends at Ripken Stadium. My childhood hero, Cal Ripken, started off the race and gave final awards out at the end of the race. One of our friends received an award from Cal himself and even got a picture with him! I told Derek, if I would have known Cal was going to be giving out the awards I would have trained much harder!

We left Aberdeen and had a hearty Bob Evans brunch on the way to Harper's Ferry. Our friends Rob and Aaron joined us for our relaxing getaway-they got to celebrate our anniversary too!

Derek surprised me with a beautiful suite at our hotel. It had a jacuzzi in the room facing the tv. That was a super treat now that we don't actually have television at home anymore!

After some much needed rest from the morning's race we decided to take a little tour of the town and grab some dinner. We ate at the Secret Six, which told us the history behind John Brown's revolt. The history was fascinating, the food was delicious, but only after an hour of waiting on it!

We got our usual "card fix" in and played some spades until midnight-only to be stomped by our "friends". We'll see if they are invited back next year!

After a good nights rest, Derek and I decided to start our Anniversary day off by going for a hilly West Virginia bike ride. We did 8 miles-one for each year of marriage and one because I didn't know better! I paid for that ride for 2 days!

We met up with the Coopers at Tri-State Baptist Church and got a very warm welcome from all of the members. The message was just what we needed.....Amen, Amen, Bring it, Come on preacher, Whoooohewww. (That's a little inside joke for the Coopers)

We then headed toward home, but stopped for the afternoon in Great Falls. We enjoyed the quiet afternoon and beautiful scenery. It really was a wonderfully relaxing weekend and well worth doing again. I believe the boys got wind of a new scheme to try it again next month- they want to ride 70 miles on their bikes along the C&O Canal and have us meet them up there. Sounds good to me-I'll be in the car!