Our First Home

I realized after I put up the last post that I never officially said on the blog that yes, we sold our first house, and we’re moving on to our next remodel. Even though it was somewhat of a bittersweet day (we really liked our first house and were a little sad to see it go), we were thrilled to be able to sell it to two amazing family friends who I have had the privilege of knowing for several years and traveling the world with on mission trips with our church. As we await the next adventure, I thought I’d leave you with a few pictures (some new, some old) of our first home.

Is this What it's Like to be a Gypsy?

We’ve encountered a few housing snags lately, and, as a result, our stuff is in storage and we’ve been staying at my dad’s house. Since we had been planning on most of our summer vacation being consumed by house renovations, we decided to seize this unexpected break to go on a spontaneous vacation. And by that I mean, we got home from church on Sunday and Zach said, “Let’s go to Charleston.” He’s good for me that way.

Unfortunately, our cameras are somewhere in the black hole of all of our stored stuff, so we don’t have any pictures from the trip. Instead, I thought I’d share a quick list of the highlights:

1) Walking around downtown Charleston admiring the incredible architecture and old stuff (old stuff ranks very high on my list of favorite things)
2) Beachwalker Park. I really almost didn’t include this because it’s so great and we don’t want the secret to get out. But we really like the people that read our blog so just don’t tell. Charleston was a little too crowded and city like for me, so on our second day we decided to skip Folly Beach and venture out a little further. This beach was so great! It’s a state park, so there weren’t all of the tacky hotels and buildings like most beaches, the sand was super soft, and it was far less crowded than Folly. You do have to pay $7 to get in, but it’s well worth it.
3) Freshfields Village. If you are familiar with my minor obsession with Fearrington Village in Pittsboro, you will know how great I think this place is if I tell you that it reminded me of Fearrington, just bigger. It was also fun because while we were there Zach bought me a great smelling perfume to replace the Burberry that he bought me as a Christmas present…and we later found out he was allergic to.
4) Shem Creek. Oh. Wow. This was a recommendation from a woman my dad used to work with, and I’m SO glad that we took her advice! The marina is surrounded by restaurants, so we ate at Red’s our first night and Vickory’s our second (we liked Vickory’s much better). The AMAZING part was that we saw DOLPHINS! Not just one dolphin, and not 300 yards offshore. There were about seven dolphins (including a BABY!) about 20 feet from us. I seriously contemplated jumping in. If there weren’t so many boats coming and going, or if I was my dad, I would have been in. Some seven year olds and I ran up and down the dock screaming when we saw them while the other adults looked on in more contained happiness. It was so great.

Overall, it was such a great trip and we are glad that we got to have such great, unexpected fun!