A Tenth and Some Firsts

So, are you dying to know how we spent our 10th Anniversary in Myrtle Beach?

{No?  Well, I'm going to tell you anyway!}

We had a fun, busy day and believe it or not, it was full of a lot of "firsts" for both of us!

We started by having breakfast at Starbucks...yes, friends, I hear you chuckling and saying "THAT'S not a first!...and doing a little mini-photo shoot at Anderson Park on 20th street.  It's not our first beach photo shoot either, but it was my first time wearing my new sweater that I bought at Express {thanks for the gift card, Mom L.!}

 I love that handsome hubby!

After that, we visited the Burroughs-Chapin Art Museum

and saw the work of local artists Brian Rutenberg, Clay Rice, and Glen Miller/John Fowler for the first time.

When we got back to the hotel, we did one of our favorite things and took a looong walk on the beach...our first without Little Crafter in four years.

That afternoon, we got dressed up and headed to a two hour dance lesson at a studio called Let's Dance.  Not only was it our first lesson together in over five years {after I became an instructor, we started training separately...usually with me teaching hubs}, we learned a brand new dance!  Neither of us had ever done the Carolina Shag, and we thought it would be fun to try something new together and add it to our repertoire!  We had a blast!

 Right after our lesson, we went to our favorite MB restaurant, Thoroughbreds, where I tried my first grits!  I ordered the shrimp and grits entree, which was blackened shrimp over gouda cheese grits in a lobster cream sauce.  All I have to say about it is YUM!

You can't go wrong with lobster cream sauce.

The restaurant was beautifully decorated for the holidays, and our oh-so-kind waitress told us that we must've gotten married at age twelve if we'd been together ten years.  Nice.

They also surprised us with a complimentary slice of cheesecake to celebrate our anniversary.  Since hubs is lactose-intolerant, that translates: I got a free piece of really good cheesecake all to myself!  Sorry, honey.

We wrapped up our evening with our mutual first trip to a club.  Yes, we live under a rock.  Neither of us are drinkers, and we don't smoke, so the whole atmosphere of a club isn't particularly appealing to us.  We do our dancing in ballroom settings, at studios' open dances and such, but since there's nothing like that at the beach, we resolved to try our new dance moves at Fat Harold's Beach Club.

It's "THE" place to shag in MB, so we had to see what it was all about.  They had a live band, and we did indeed get to practice our new steps...the nice lady sitting next to us even got some proof for you:

Here we are, doing the Carolina shag!  My favorite part was that people kept coming up to us to say how good we were and asking if we were professionals, which made me laugh since we'd had a total of 2 hours to learn a few steps.  Fooled ya, Fat Harold!

Now I can say I've been there, done that, got the T-Shirt.

Literally.

I made hubs buy me one that says "We Shag Standing Up at Fat Harold's."  Because it makes me laugh, and it's a good memento of our big 1-0...pardon the suitcase wrinkles...

After we were danced out, we headed back to the hotel, and, well...that's the last of our 'firsts.'

Thanks for letting me share with you!  And those of you who are local, you know where to come if you want to learn to dance some shag! 

PS - If you watch the video, that's not us!  Our instructors actually showed us pieces of this video before our lesson.