Double Stephs’ One-Year Anniversary!

I’m just a couple weeks late posting this, especially since I didn’t post anything last week, so I have a bit of catching up to do. Plus, I wanted to delay to take a picture of our gifts, but I’ll have to upload and edit those in later because we didn’t finish making our gifts for one another yet, oops.

The Saturday before our anniversary, we went to AutoZone to have my car battery checked. Luckily, I don’t need a new one yet, but I’m still keeping an eye on it if it doesn’t start, then I’ll have to cave and buy a new battery. After we got my car checked, we went to Home Depot so Stephen could get some supplies to make my gift. I stayed in the car since I didn’t want to wander around in the store to not see what he was buying.

After Home Depot, we then headed to Michael’s to buy the other gift components. It’s so easy to just get lost in the store with all the cute little knick knacks and crafts to make something! Once we went back to the apartment, Stephen holed himself up in our room upstairs to assemble the gift. I was watching an overly dramatic Korean drama that I loved in high school, Boys Over Flowers. It’s so ridiculous but I can’t help but love it.

On our actual anniversary on Sunday, I made us breakfast consisting of pancakes, toast, and bacon. At the time, Stephen partially made me an origami plant — minus the paper orchids he’s in the process of making. As of now, there are two purple ones. So, it’s essentially a flower stem in a pot, haha. It’s a cute idea, so I’ll upload once it’s finished.

I bought him a stepping stone to symbolize a milestone of our life so far — because I’m corny like that — but I didn’t want to make it without him since it’s one you make as a craft project. We’ll have to dedicate a couple of hours to make it.

Stephen also made reservations to eat at this fancy restaurant in Germantown called, Rolf and Daughters. We scheduled it for 5:45 PM. It was around lunchtime when he made the reservation, so we had a few hours to kill.

We ended up going to the Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park since it was a few blocks from the restaurant. It was such a pretty day, and there’s a large food/farmers market area that we’ll have to go back and visit sometime.

Quoted from the website:

“With just a simple walk in the 19-acre park visitors can experience many facets of Tennessee’s history including a 200-foot granite map of the state, a World War II Memorial, a 95-Bell Carillon, a Pathway of History and the Rivers of Tennessee Fountains.”

I took a few pictures of what’s mentioned and it was such a cool place to take a walk! it’s also where I put tripod to use, haha. You didn’t think we’d go to the park and have strangers take pictures of us, did you? That’s always made me feel more self-conscious, so we now can avoid that!

Fun little tidbit about me: I cannot for the life of me say, “World War,” without getting tongue-tied. I sound like I’m saying “whirl-whirl” or something along those words. If I do manage to say it, it’s because I have to say the word extremely slow, haha.

These are the towers with the bells inside that chime every hour.

Weird encounter while we were in the park: There was a man that walked past us and said to me that iPhones are bad and not to use them.

The tripod has a little remote that you can press for your phone to take a picture, and it can take pictures up to 30 feet away. Definitely glad I bought it.

Anyways, it was such a beautiful day, and the view of the city was breathtaking!

My favorite time of the day has arrived. The sun sets around 4:30 PM [so early!] and it gets dark so quickly, but it’s lovely to see.

These pictures were just a few minutes apart, how crazy nature changes!

Just within a few minutes, the sky looks angry, or has some pent up anger, haha.

As mentioned in the quote above, there’s a 200-foot granite map of the Tennessee, which was so cool! I found my hometown, Kingsport, and just had to have a picture with it! Also, it had my area of where I grew up, so that was even cooler to see!

Then to show our progression of where we are now, we took a picture of us in Nashville.

Around 5:00 PM, we headed back to where our car was parked to hang out for a few minutes before dinner. It was a short walk to the restaurant, so we warmed up in the car.

You just know a restaurant is fancy if you Googled the menu items before you get there so it doesn’t seem like you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t you? Of course! I mean, doesn’t everyone? Haha.

We started off with the Dry aged beef tartare, tonnato, daikon as our appetizer. Stephen thought this was one of the best things that he’s ever eaten. It was absolutely wonderful! So many flavors and the crunch of it was even better. I’ve never had beef tartare, but I must order it whenever I see it again!

Stephen ordered the Aged lamb, pumpkin, ramp, celery. I snagged a small bite and it and it was really tender to eat.

As for mine, it was a popular dish called, Rigatoni, heritage pork ragout, sarvecchio. Your guess was just as good as mine of what it was before I looked it up and decided on it. It had a nice subtle cheese taste to it and I can see how it’s a popular dish.

I just have to mention since it’s comical, but since we had a late breakfast, we didn’t eat a proper lunch before dinner, so we were still hungry but didn’t want to pay for another meal, so we headed to KFC to get a small chicken meal to hold us over! Haha. Stephen’s decided that he doesn’t like chicken with bones in it, but he was somewhat full after our second meal.

We’ll definitely be going back to try different entrees for a special occasion, and splurge a tad bit more to really enjoy such a lovely meal! They change their menu frequently, so I’m curious what will be available the next time around!

I hope you all will forgive me on my slow replies. I didn’t post anything last week, so I have some catching up to do on reading new posts and replying back!

Fun question for you:

• Do you mind asking strangers to take a picture of you?
• Are there any words that you have a hard time pronouncing?
• Any cool parks in your area?

Have a wonderful start of December, friends!