{Happy Anniversary}

Our anniversary (December 29th) and Christmas are so close together that I get the feeling we'll always be playing catch-up when it comes to celebrating our anniversary. Which is fine because it's just one day. I do love a celebration, but I want our marriage to be celebrated every day of the year, not just at the mile marker. This year we decided to forgo gifts and take a little trip to celebrate the holidays and our special day. As one of our anniversary gifts, Rob's family got us season passes to the Biltmore house! Essentially, the passes just get you onto the property for free whenever you want throughout the year. So for our special trip, we spent the weekend in Asheville at the Biltmore. If you've never been and you're in the NC area, I definitely recommend it. It's a beautiful property with so much history behind it. I love hearing the stories of the Vanderbuilt family and how they created this space.

We drove up Friday after work through a terrible ice storm (not really, this is only North Carolina), and what should have been a 2.5 hour trip took about 4. But we made it safely! When we got there, we found this awesome movie night care package from Rob's family and a giftcard to go to tea. It was so sweet of them to do so much for us.

This was our Saturday morning view:

So beautiful. On Saturday we went to the actual house and took a behind-the-scenes tour, which was really interesting. We were at the house in October with Rob's family, and we did the general house tour then. It was cool this time to get a special glimpse at what had to happen to make every day run smoothly in a house so big. Just thinking about all the chores makes my head hurt.

That afternoon, we thought we'd take a nice leisurely bike ride around the grounds, so we bundled up and got ready for an hour-long ride. What actually happened was the bike ride from hell. We got lost and ended up biking six miles.Well really half-biking, half-push-your-bike-up-this-huge-hill-omg. It was pretty treacherous and really the only comfort was that we had scheduled horseback riding for the next day. Our butts rejoiced!!

{seriously, this cow was the best part of the bike ride}

On Sunday we went horseback riding, which was amazing! It was super cold out, so I pretty much made every attempt at being warm. No lie, at one point I had on two pairs of socks, boots, long johns, jeans, tank top, short sleeve shirt, long sleeve shirt, two cardigans, sweatshirt, two jackets with hoods, gloves, and a scarf. I'm now a professional layer-er. 

Pancho and I had a great time together. Somehow Rob and I managed to get the two slowest horses they had, so we did a lot of kicking. We had a lot of fun, and it was definitely worth squeezing in last minute.

And finally in the last last minute, we had some tea! They have afternoon tea where you can choose from 9 different kinds of tea and eat a bunch of dainty finger foods that make you feel pretty swanky. And no lie, at the table across from us was a very proper family in proper dresses and khakies and blazers and whatnot. They were super nice, but I couldn't help laughing. Pip pip.

I was not as classy as those people. I had just gotten off a horse and hadn't showered in a while. But that doesn't make a good tea any less enjoyable!

Overall, I'm so glad we got to spend a weekend together doing things we enjoy. We're blessed with a supportive and generous family who helped make this happen, and I couldn't be more grateful!