An Anniversary

Last Thursday was James's and my fourth anniversary.  We exchanged gifts in the morning, before work.  James got me this fantastic canning book that I'm sure you'll see more of in the future.  The photographs are beautiful (which always hooks me), but the recipes are also "modern" and include things to can as well as recipes using jams, sauces, etc. that you have canned.  There are lots of recipes in it that I can't wait to try.

I prefer to follow the "traditional" anniversary gifts list, so this year was a flower theme.  Knowing James would certainly not want a bouquet, I went to the manliest flower I could think of--hops.  This was an easy gift for me to put together since James is such a big fan of beer and I knew he had been waiting for a specific book about hops to be released.  So he got that, as well as another book in the series, some hoppy beer, etc.

In keeping with the flowers theme, he also had an arrangement of the most beautiful peonies delivered to me at work.  LOVED!  I am a serious sucker for flowers and the pale pink and white blooms made my whole area at work smell amazing.  I got to enjoy them for a couple of days at the office and then moved them home for the weekend.  Really makes me wish we hadn't gone out of town later that week...

After work, we walked around The Old Mill.  We had never been to see it before, but I had always wanted to.  It was in the opening scene of Gone with the Wind!

Every anniversary, we take a self-portrait.  This is what we looked like at four years :)

We ate supper at Brave New Restaurant.  It is hard to tell from this photo, but we ate on the patio overlooking the Arkansas River.  It was beautiful and the temperature was perfect.  There were bunnies (one a baby!) that we really enjoyed watching.  We go out a lot together, but an anniversary always feels different.  Fabulous night!

The restaurant wins lots of local awards and this was the first time we'd ever been.  The staff was professional and the food was really good.

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The following Wednesday night, we loaded the car and drove a few hours northwest for the 10th Annual Wakarusa Music Festival.  WOW.  I thought I prepared myself but I clearly hadn't.  It was a totally different experience for us.  We bought tickets several months ago on a whim.  When we found out that one of my favorite bands, Of Monsters and Men, was playing this year, we decided to get tickets as our anniversary trip.  

It's a four day music and camping festival.  I won't go into a ton of details, but it basically ended up being more of a rain and mud festival.  There were around 20,000 people and we were all crammed into the camping areas with our tents, canopies, etc.  Once the rain started coming down, it got messy!

Strong winds left a lot of debris, but everyone made the best of it!

We did get a few hours of sun on Friday...luckily, surrounding the Of Monsters and Men show.  We got to the stage a few hours early so that we could score a front (non-VIP) spot.  It was an AWESOME show and made all of the bad weather (flooded tent, sleepless nights, etc.) worth it.





Wakarusa was definitely more than I had anticipated in every respect...but I'm already hoping we can make it next year!