Sweet CAROLIN-A!!!

I'm back from our trip to Charlotte, NC and I have to tell you I'm not so happy about it... ;) It's nice to be back in our home with Rocky (I always miss him like crazy even if it's only a couple days) but let's be serious - the weather was BEAUTIFUL in NC this past weekend and it was wonderful to have a break from the ice, snow, and COLD! The average was around 60 but on Sunday it got up to 65 and on Monday it got up in the low 70's. We were happy campers :)

(Lake Norman)

I'm going to do a recap of our trip so that in the future I can read this and remember what all we did. I will warn you that there will be a lot of pictures! so, beware now! We had such a great Valentines day weekend together there. Here's a little of what we did....

Saturday morning Billy's cousins (who we stayed with in Huntersville) made us homemade french toast and then we scurried out the door and went to explore downtown Charlotte aka "uptown". We went to a few cute boutiques and got lunch down there. Then we went to a cute artsy area called NoDa and grabbed some coffee and walked around the area.

(the neighborhood we stayed in at Billy's cousins!)

Later on in the day, we went back to Huntersville and went to Birkdale Village to do some shopping and went to a local pub to grab some drinks. Birkdale is an outdoor shopping center but also has a golf course, movie theatre, nice restaurants, bars, condo's, and houses all within the same area. We LOVE it here!!! They always have live music outside on the weekends, too.

(Birkdale)

Saturday night we went out to dinner with my friend Michelle to a place called Killington's Restaurant & Pub. Michelle lives in Huntersville but I worked with her when she lived back here in Ohio. The food at Killington's was amazing and we had such a great time the 3 of us at dinner. In fact, Billy even got a MAN's phone number (ha ha too long of a story for this post...) After dinner, we headed to a local kareoke bar to meet up with 3 of my cousins who ALSO live in right within the area. It was so nice to be able to meet up with them while we were there. We had a few drinks and danced A LOT..it was so much fun.

(My cousin TJ, his wife Verna, my cousin Todd, Me, and Billy)

Moving on...Now Sunday was the best. My AWESOME husband had a day planned for us and he surprised me with horseback riding at Latta Plantation and a boat cruise on Lake Norman right after! So sweet he is.

'Historic Latta Plantation is located within Latta Plantation Nature Preserve, on Mountain Island Lake. The park offers hiking and horseback riding trails, and fishing permits.'

Horseback riding..no other words than to say other than I love it. I mentioned before how much I love horses so for Billy to plan this for us was so super sweet. Billy has been a couple of other times with me but he isn't too experienced and I got so many laughs from watching him on his horse. His horse was the "mean" one and had to be in the back of the line (there were only 4 of us in the group) and his horse kept wanting to stop and eat and would occasionally get mad that he was in the back and want to speed up in front of all the other horses. His horses name was "Gypsy" but Billy called her "Crazy" for the remainder of the trip. The trial that we went on went down by a river and up and down many hills so the scenery was gorgeous.

(Molly..she is 2000 lbs!)

After horseback riding, we rushed to get to our next date which was the boat cruise. It was an hour and a half sightseeing cruise on Lake Norman and they also served us lunch on it (surprisingly, the food was good...yummy BBQ pork sandwiches) Billy is a huge boat lover and we love doing activities like this. We saw many million dollar homes on the lake and also learned some history on it. Billy sipped on some beers while my choice is drink was their special Bloody Mary :) yummy!

my handsome hubby.

4.5 million dollar home

<3

Captain "Boots" even let me drive the boat for a bit...we hung out up front with him and talked his ear off about Charlotte!

By the time Sunday night rolled around...we were so tired. Doug and Melissa made us a delicious dinner at home and I ended up falling asleep on the couch early. Much needed.

Monday morning we woke up early again and headed back out to explore some suburbs on the North side and we also found a cute condo place that had a little beach down by the lake! It was awesome. I was pretty excited to see some sand haha

We made the drive home later on in the day (made it home in just under 6 hours!) and it was pretty depressing to see the temperature go from 70 slowly to 60..to 50..and to 40. Yuck. But we know we will back again soon so we were OK with it! All in all it was a wonderful trip and we are very happy we made the decsion to getaway for a long weekend.

Billy..if you are reading..thank you so much for the surprises and for being my traveling buddy. "We make a great team" I LOVE YOU! Ps-When are we going back? ;)