July 13

For those of you who don't know our little July 13 story, let me tell ya...

On July 13, 2007, I logged into my MySpace account after dropping Miss Sarah Anne off at pre-school. I had a few notifications, two of them being both a message and a friend request from some guy named Mark who was wearing a suit in his profile picture. Hmmmm. I didn't know any Marks, and certainly none of the guys I did know wore suits; but I was curious, so I opened his message and read it. He thought I had a nice smile and was hoping I was having a nice day. I wrote back that I was having a very nice day since I was getting off work a little early and would be getting a manicure in just a few short hours. He wrote back not long after asking how I would be getting my nails done. I replied, "A french manicure". He replied, "Simple and pretty, just like you." That was it. Friend Request Accepted. Ha ha!

Fast forward to July 13, 2009, two years later. After what Mark insists is "forever" and "the most excruciating time", I finally agree to a first date. He was positive I wanted nothing to do with him beyond our platonic friendship. In reality, I was crazy for him and my fears of it not working out hindered my ability to express it, I guess. In other words - I wanted him in my life, even if it meant we would spend our entire lifetime just being friends. I was nervous a relationship would ruin our friendship. Eventually, I felt confident in his persistence and we met up for our first date, where he presented me with the First White Rose. Little did we know that night that the white rose would become such a significant tradition for our relationship. I now receive one single white rose each July 13, and he purchases each rose from the same florist. Here is this year's rose:

Each rose (I now have four) are enjoyed for a bit before I press them, saving them forever. Eventually, I want to display them. They are each marked by the date and how we celebrated:

July 13, 2009 - Our First Date

Uno's Restaurant, Kirkwood Mo.

July 13, 2010 - Our First Anniversary

Cannoli's Restaurant, Florissant Mo.

Snuggled up to Gone With the Wind at home

July 13, 2011 - Our Second Anniversary

The Zoo & The Boathouse, St. Louis Mo.

Saint Charles Cinema for The Zookeeper

July 13, 2012 - Our Third Anniversary

Cannoli's Restaurant, Florissant Mo.

St. Andrew's Cinema for The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Snuggled up to Friday the 13th at home

We couldn't help but watch Friday the 13th since our anniversary this year did fall on Friday, the 13th. Fortunately for us, it was not an unlucky day :)

I was a bit intrigued when I woke up that morning (we both took the day off work) and Mark informed me "What I really wanted to get you for our anniversary didn't work out, but don't worry, I've got you something nice." Hmmmmm. A million little thoughts ran through my head. Of course, the first question I asked was "Well, am I still getting what you really wanted to get me?" "Yes." "When?" "Soon." And that was enough to suffice me :) What I did get for our anniversary was presented to me at the restaurant. A very lovely 6mm genuine amethyst pendant. It is just beautiful. I spent half our meal just moving it in all different angles and admiring the brilliant cut of it. I have no idea how last minute this gift was, since Mark is leaving me absolutely clueless and completely curious about what his first gift was, but whenever Mark picked out this little beauty he definitely scored major points. I love it :) For him I had matching tumblers engraved with our initials and date, to be used as our July 13 glasses when we toast our relationship each year. Okay, so that meant his gift was a little bit for me too, but he loved them just the same and thought it was a great idea. We filled the glasses with Diet Bubba Cola - an inside joke.

With the anniversary this year celebrated and over, we're back to the grindstone with work. Lots and lots of work. Mark and I are really excited about the next few months, and I look forward to blogging all about it!

The Rockcliffe Mansion

Hello, y'all! If I didn't mention before how much I absolutely loved the bed and breakfast we stayed at for our little trip last week... I think this is the most GORGEOUS house I have ever been in :) Just a note, these pictures do not even come remotely close to how lovely this house is. You simply have to see it for yourself...

The Rockcliffe Mansion

There is TOO MUCH for me to say about this house to write in one blog. I felt like a five year old in Disney World :) The above picture doesn't even begin to capture the robust nature of this beauty! I'll try to post as many interior photos as I can with a little narration before I run out of time/get tired of doing so/fall asleep... nearly half of the photos from our trip are of the home interior, so I highly doubt I'll get through all of these pictures to post. I do hope y'all enjoy what you do get to see, though! If you're ever in the Hannibal area, definitely stay there!! They do tours also!

Our Room

We stayed in The Rose Room. It was heavenly :) We had an amazing pre-Civil War era canopy bed, walk-in closet with floor to ceiling cabinetry, huge private bath, and AMAZING views of the town and river. At check-out, the lady who does the tours asked if anything happened during our stay. "What do you mean?" She wanted to know if we heard anything at 2 a.m. or if I had felt anyone touching my hair. "No. Nothing." She found this odd. I found it odd that she was asking. Then, the stories spewed out of her. Supposedly, the house is haunted. Right. I am SCARED TO DEATH of anything even remotely close to the word "haunted". I felt nothing. I heard nothing. I sensed nothing. If this place was haunted, my easily freaked out nerves would not have allowed me to walk through the front door. Ask anyone who knows me. Sometimes, I don't even like walking around my own house in the dark. Though the scary stories were kind of fun to hear - and partly, I am sure, because we were checking out and I wouldn't be sleeping there that night - I didn't believe a word I was being told.

This is a hazy picture, but I'm posting it because it was a sweet moment from our trip. Mark woke me up just to show me the sunrise through our bedroom window :) Awwww! It's stuff like that that makes me melt.

A better picture of the "sitting area" in our room, once the sun was completely risen.

The view from the walk-in closet.

Originally, the bathroom did not have a shower; only a tub. The shower was installed when a movie director and his wife stayed at the home for a few months while doing a film. The director kept slipping in the tub and requested the shower. 

I wanted to take this sink home!!!

... and these little bottles that sat on the bathroom windowsill, too!

This is the view of the upstairs "hall" from our room door.

The Staircase

A staircase is a staircase, right? WRONG! I'm way into staircases. They can make or break the beauty of a home, especially in a southern-style home. I've always dreamed of having an elaborate staircase in my home. Something a lot like this...

The staircase viewed from the front door/main hall as you walk in.

The staircase view from the side hall, entering from the Carriage Canopy door.

The staircase landing, looking up into the Upstairs Hall.

The staircase landing, looking down into the Main Hall. (Mark Twain made a 1.5 hour long speech on the third step during his last visit to Hannibal.)

And, of course, me at the staircase!

The Main Floor

The Receiving Room, where guests were directed once they entered the home. There they would sit until they found out if they wanted to be seen or not. If not, they would leave their "calling card". 

The Music Room. The original owners were a lumber mill owner and a concert pianist. They were rich.

This book was sitting on the table in the music room. It's called A Square Deal For Every Man. I opened it up and this is what was on the page. I started goofing with Mark, reading it out loud and telling him he might want to take a gander at it himself. He did. Hint given. Hint received. ;)

The Lady's Visiting Room. Back in the day, women were not "allowed" to discuss money or politics. It was common knowledge that every inch of drapery that gathered at the floor stood for $1 million dollars of worth. The C's (I remember the name, don't remember the spelling, and am too tired - it's actually 4:02 a.m. at this very moment, and my second attempt at finishing this blog post - to look it up.) had 11 inches of drapery gathered at the floor.

The corner of the Lady's Visiting Room, looks into the Receiving Room and the Main Hall with the Gentleman's Visiting Room beyond.

The Gentleman's Visiting Room. REALLY loved the colors in this one :) The fireplace is cracked because Mr. C made the fire too hot and cracked the marble. Oops.

These booze was brought up from Mr. C's collection, found in tact in the basement cellar.

The Dining Room (complete with our breakfast still on the table! ha ha)

The Second Floor

There is an abundance of bedrooms and bathrooms on this floor. I'm NOT going to post the pictures of them all... only a mere few. The room we stayed in is one of them. This is a picture of the Upstairs Hall. I really loved how there was no real hallway. Instead, everything comes off this room. This is only a corner of it.

When Mr. C died, Mrs. C left everything in the house and moved out. She didn't take ANYTHING and the how was left as it was for the next 40-something years, when a few families in town came together and bought the property. TONS of the family's belongings were found and all in good condition. These monogrammed towels hang in Mr. C's bathroom.

We kind of played around a bit with their stuff. Hope those ghosts didn't mind!!

On the third floor there is a ballroom, dressing room, sewing room, nursery, and school room. Of course, I took pictures of it all. Really, though, y'all probably have something you need to do and posting any more photos on this blog would not be good for either of us. Bottom line - We loved this house :) Though, we both admit, all that wallpaper would have to go if it was ours. Oh, and since we were the only visitors during our stay and no one else was in the house, I was TOTALLY pretending it was ours. HA HA

A girl can dream...

A Few More...

As promised, I have a few more pictures from my birthday party to post. My beautiful sister took a good deal of snappies for me :) Here's a few of my fav moments from the party (that I haven't already posted...)

This is my FAVORITE picture of all :) If only Jerm didn't miss the party, it would have been ALL of us!

We look pretty cute when we "Hawaiian Up"!

Obviously, David and I were being captured by two cameras at once...

Told ya my sister is beautiful. My brother ain't too bad lookin' himself. They must take after their big sister ;)

Mama and I. My first ever best friend :)

I'm still such a kid on my birthday... I LOVE IT when everyone sings "Happy Birthday" to me!

Ellie helped me open all of my gifts. She pulled this jewelry stand out of the bag and exclaimed with 3-year-old giddy excitement "It's a....THING!" and I immediately started cracking up! It was too funny!

Ellie liked one of my new necklaces so much, we opened it twice!!

Our "Hannibal" Trip

We took a total of over 400 pictures during our trip to Hannibal, Missouri this past week. Don't worry, I won't be posting them all here... only a few! Phew!!

Our "Hannibal" Trip actually included the towns of Florida and Lousianna as well. We have a habit of doing that. For instance, our "Pilot Knob" trip also included Ironton and Lesterville... and our "Fayette" trip included Rocheporte and Glasgow. 

Our first stop during Our "Hannibal" Trip was Florida, Missouri. It is about 45 minutes west of Hannibal and just so happens to be the birth place of Missouri's own Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain. There is a museum there that is pretty wonderful. The cabin in which he was born and spent his earliest childhood years living in is actually placed inside the museum. Originally situated less than a mile down the road from the museum, it was picked up and moved in full to the museum and built around to keep it in the best condition... and it is in very fabulous condition. Here's a photo of it:

It's kinda crazy that this house is in such great condition. You can't go inside it, but you can look through it and see how they lived. Also in the museum are many artifacts from Mark Twain's Connecticut home. His furniture was pretty lovely and of course I wanted it all. We came across a giant boat wheel and couldn't resist those typical tourist photos!

I thought they turned out pretty cute!

I had to kneel on a stool because I'm so short! After the museum, we went to Mark Twain Lake and found Clara's View Outlook. Let me tell ya, I wasn't expecting much. It was stinking hot and I was not looking forward to the walk to the lake. BUT, once we got to the water and the cool breeze from the lake hit me in the face I was all "Ahhhhhhh! I love this place!" ha ha It really was beautiful, and COOL!!! And considering it was a degree of 105, breeze was my kind of attraction. I was just standing there letting my hair blow in the wind coming off the water when Mark snapped this shot of me:

It turned out pretty good, considering I didn't even know it was being taken! Then, though, I had to do one smiling... of course...

After having our fill of the lake (sorta, we probably could have stayed there all day), and going by the original location of Mark Twain's childhood cabin, we drove into Hannibal.

The last time I was in Hannibal I was a fifth grader on a school field trip. At the last minute, the teachers informed us we didn't have enough parent volunteers to take the trip so I called my Nana to see if she could come. She couldn't because the priest was going to be visiting that day, so someone else got their parent or some other to come and THEY got to be the one to save the day. Ah, the downfall of being an Irish Catholic... ha ha... but seriously, that's what I remember most from that field trip. That, and when they turned the lights out in the cave... another story for another time. Anyways, Hannibal is waaaaayyyyy different when you are a kid. I was expecting a completely different place.

Hannibal is a sweet little town, and MUCH more than just Hill Street (the area where Samuel Clemens home is, and, I note, the only thing I thought existed in Hannibal when I was 10 years old). We settled down for a meal at The Brick Oven where we thoroughly enjoyed super yummy pizzas made in, of course, a brick oven. Let me tell ya, if you ever go there you must order the chicken alfredo pizza. Yummy! 

Oh! Our bed and breakfast! O.M.Geeee!! I knew that Mark had gotten us a really romantic place to stay, but I had no idea how incredibly fabulous it was until we checked in. Seriously. This place was a dream! It is called The Rockcliffe Mansion and it sits atop a limestone bluff that overlooks the entire town and the Mississippi River. It is 28,000 square feet of GORGEOUS. I'll post pictures of it later, because I took so many that I can't even decide yet which ones I want to post on here!

You can't go the Hannibal without doing the Mark Twain's Boyhood Home & Museum Tour. So we did. Here's a picture of Mark inside the Huck Finn house:

Granted, this house does not look like much. It's pretty bare. Really, though, Huck Finn wasn't a real person and so this house wasn't a real home. It was built merely as a tourist attraction. Huck was, though, based highly off of one of Sam's childhood friends and stories about him and his friendship with Sam are on plaques all over the walls. So were many other characters from his books. That was fun to learn :)

We also went on two Riverboat Cruises! First was the dinner cruise. This was FUN! We had a little table for two reserved right next to the dance floor and after we ate we went up to the top deck and took in the sights. It was absolutely lovely and so much fun :)

The second cruise we went on was the Fireworks Cruise. It was definitely a new experience and a pretty sweet way to spend the 4th of July!

After walking and walking and walking all around Hannibal in degrees over 100, the cave was a very welcomed experience. At a brisk 55 degrees, we could not have been more thrilled to be touring the cave. You'll have to excuse the quality of the photos, of which I am only posting 2 out of the many many many that we took. It's a bit difficult in the moist dullness of the cave to get anything of quality while at the same time trying to keep up with the tour guide... who obviously didn't understand the importance of a good photograph and the fact that we, and the rest of our tour group, weren't in a hurry anyway; it was over 100 outside!

We went into a massive amount of shops during our trip, but sadly we didn't find much of anything. We wanted to buy a copy of our favorite Norman Rockwell painting from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer collection that he did, but they didn't have any to buy! The nerve! So, we opted for a cheap post card copy of it instead and called it a day. Although there is an overwhelming supply of Huckleberry products for purchase from chocolates to lip balm (which I found absolutely repulsive... just gross) Hannibal doesn't earn points in my book for quality souvenirs. The antique stores are pretty great though, and every person we talked to was super nice. 

On the way home we stopped in Louisiana. Mark has been talking about taking me here for the last 5 years to show me this house he likes. The only thing was that he wasn't sure exactly where the house was once we got to town, so we drove around a bit until we found it. Once we did, and after talking a bit with a nice old farmer at his fruit and vegetable stand, he wanted to take me somewhere special. We drove around a bit more and he found the spot - a little park that overlooks the Mississippi River. The last time he was there he was with his dad, who passed away three years ago. We spent some time there, talking, resting, trying to talk ourselves into going home and ending our trip. It's a quiet spot with a beautiful view, a view that I probably took far too many photographs of. Here is our favorite photograph from that spot, though, and the last we took of our trip. It doesn't really cover the view, but it does capture the important part :)

After that, we got back into the car, cranked up the AC, and finished our trip with the lovely drive down 79. We did make a pit stop in Winfield, where his brother drove into town and met us for a nice dinner. It's not often that Michael is "on the way" when we are heading somewhere, so we thought a call to see if he could meet us in town was in order :)

Though the trip was great, and the house we stayed in was just the most amazing house we've ever been in, it is always good to be back home in your own bed. With the trip over and fond memories made, we fell asleep that night completely at peace to be home, healthy, and happy in love. There is really not much more one could ask for.

Up next for our exciting life: Our Anniversary later this week!!