VERY productive Saturday

This Saturday Brian and I went car shopping. He is currently driving a Chevy Aveo and it is on it's last leg. We have been doing some research online for awhile now and playing with numbers but we wanted to take a day off together and see some in real life. Because of our horrendous experience with his current car and his AMAZING experience with his first Ford he has decided to buy a Ford Fusion. If Ford disappoints (it really shouldnt) later on in life I guess it is European cars for our family (which is honestly what I am used to. I come from a Volvo family that escaped once Ford bought it and I am currently driving a Honda which I love). The Fusion has had excellent reviews from real people and the techy people as well. Our plan for this car is for it to last at least eight years if not longer. Brian and I both agree that you drive your car till it is dead and a good car with proper maintenance will last years.

There are about ten Ford dealers in our area (The south sells ALOT of cars....not sure why) and we picked one in the Pawley's area and ate lunch at a great restaurant that we never get to much due to the distance. Lunch was fabulous! I had an Italian sub packed with meat on a fresh sub roll. Brian had a Pork sub and we split home made Strawberry Shortcake. This place has great lunches but the desserts/coffee is what REALLY sets them apart.

We are so glad we went to an actual dealer! We learned a lot via our research online but we would have ended up buying the wrong car and spending too much if we hadn't seen it in real life. Online, the SEL's look SOOOO much longer then the S's or SE's so if we went only on the website we would have bought the SEL (not a bad choice just a choice not made on actual fact). Turns out the SEL, S, and SE are really the same length. The only difference is underneath the hood. So we still want an SEL but our reasoning behind it is sound. We don't want a Sport because of the god awful seating/interior decoration. They use contrasting colors like you would expect on a car for racing and while that is fine for some, that is definitely not what we are looking for and the car only comes this way. We also walked in thinking we wanted a 6 cylinder. We got to drive both and after thinking about the increase in the car and the lower gas mileage on top of that we have decided against the 6 cylinder. We also walked in thinking we wanted the Sat Nav package. We would still like it but have decided that it isn't worth the 3k they were asking. So by nixing the 6 cylinder engine and the Sat Nav, it has come down to a price that we can afford now. We could afford a higher payment but we want to have a life and pay this off early so what we count as "being able to afford" varies from others. We aren't buying RIGHT NOW but maybe the end of this month? Next month?

Our only real question now is color... He wants the Tuxedo Black but there is something in that paint color that is made in Japan so it is on hold indefinitely. If it becomes available when we are ready to buy that will be the color but in the mean time...these are the two options we like:

Brian's preference via ford.com

My preference via ford.com

Which do you prefer?

While we were there we were also looking at the Edge. The Edge would be the replacement of my car. My car should last another 3-5 years or so and we are hoping that by shopping/planning now for it will help us get even more of a down payment and make the process easier later on. My big concern is I don't like tall cars. My mom has a Saturn Vue and LOVES it but I hate it. It isn't a bad car by any means...I am just sitting WAY too high. I don't like feeling like the car is going to tip. My mom on the other hand, feels more comfortable driving up high. Go figure... Anyway I just wanted to sit in one since I would know then if it was even worth looking at. I didnt want to get my hopes up on this car and then be crushed if I couldn't drive it due to height. The height seems just fine. It definitely looks like it will be on the top of our list when the time comes. It does have one big perk though....

The back end can fit one of these :)

Meet Teddy

And George :)

Parents trip

My parents came down this past weekend and Brian and I had a blast! It was SO nice to see them and so nice to be off on an actual weekend...though it did feel very weird.

Friday night we ate dinner with Caroline and Kurt at a restaurant called Travinia's. An old favorite but it definitely dropped on our "go to places" after the experience. Food was great but Kurt had to steal silverware and the band was playing WAY too loud. We could barely hear each other. They were asked to quiet down but they never did. Apparently they are doing music 4 out of 7 nights so Brian and I wont be back there for awhile but it was so much fun to get together with Kurt and Caroline! Full of laughs when we could finally hear what the other person was saying!

Saturday we woke up early and went to Charleston to look at houses for possible places for my parents to retire. We saw about 6 or 7 but only 4 really stuck out as being good possibilities. Outside of the last one where we all think my mom is nuts, Brian and Dad agreed and Mom and I agreed. It was definitely very interesting and alot of fun on our side. I hope they had fun as well. I apparently gave them great fodder for laughs when I announced (because they were teasing me for picking out rooms for nurseries) that in 18months when they are moving Brian and I will hopefully be married and trying to have a baby and a baby will have to have a place to sleep. I don't know why they found that funny...I, like my father, always plan long term (I started looking at colleges in 9th grade) and well they know I want babies!

For lunch we went to Blossoms. Food was good again for the most part. My dad got the crabcakes which did not come out as we had expected so we all kept throwing food at him since he got so little. The service was a bit lacking. They were busy and there was a woman in the next table who insisted that the waiter describe EVERY dish in great detail but it did give us a time to talk about all the houses we saw. I think that helped out alot.

On the way home from Charleston we stopped and saw a plantation called Hopsewee. This plantation is advertised in Myrtle Beach and I have always heard good things about it. Plus it was RIGHT on the way home so we decided to stop buy. I think it is safe to say we were all pretty dissappointed. A lot of the history was done with a video and when going through the house alot of the story was "there was this but I dont know what happened". I kept hearing "I dont know" which I didnt like so much. I did grab some pictures of the outside.

Saturday night we ate at our new favorite restaurant Maggie D's. It was very slow but they warned us that they were backed up as we walked into the restaurant. Food was great as usual. I have been eating my parents left overs and SO good! After that we raced back home to watch Pee Wee Hermans LIVE on Broadway show. I enjoyed it alot. My parents left saying that it was much better on Broadway, which is to be expected, but I still enjoyed it.

Sunday we met at a restaurant called Mcallister's for lunch and then said good bye :( One good thing about them looking to retire here is that if they want to by a house in around 18 months they need to be come back within a year to do more searching :)

My birthday trip to Charleston

As promised, Brian took me to Charleston on 1/21st. We woke up late so we got there late but that was okay.

We ate lunch with our friend Will at a place called O'Charlies. We got lost so by the time we got there I was starving. The place is called O'Charlies on the sign but it's address in the iPhone and GPS has it as Charlies Grill and Tavern or something like that. O'Charlies is a great restaurant in North Charleston. When we got there Will had ordered us some delicious nachos and we added onto that with some wonderful chicken fingers with great barbecue sauce. Brian got a burger, Will got the chicken fingers again, and I got a Southwestern salad. It was very good. We would go back again for sure and I wish we had one up in Myrtle Beach.

After lunch we hung out at a nearby mall  until Will had to leave for work. Brian and I continued to walk around. Their mall is no better then ours though all the stores are A LOT larger in size and would be that much better to shop in. After we got sick of the mall, Brian and I headed to Charleston.

We parked and walked down through the battery and around town trying to burn off our lunch and get hungry for our dinner at our favorite restaurant Blossoms. It was a beautiful day out, 58 degrees! I had on jeans, a nice black short sleeved shirt and my nice new Dansko Mary Jane heals. I had a leather jacket that I wore as it got cool. It was a wonderful night. Brian and I talked all throughout our walk. It was just so nice!

Soon it became 6pm and we figured we should go in an eat. We were not at all hungry as lunch was so late but we did want to get home at a decent hour and my feet were killing me! I had thought I had broken in my new shoes enough but apparently not. I had to take them off during dinner. We skipped the appetizer, something we never do, and went straight to dinner. I had steak with blue cheese butter, potato confit and creamy spinach. Brian had swordfish with a mustard sauce over fettuccine with rapini which is what I got last time. My steak arrived cut up in 5 pieces. I ate 2 of those, the spinach and a taste or two of the potato. It was VERY good, don't get me wrong I just was not hungry at all. Brian finished his swordfish and had a bite or two of the pasta and then he was done. We were just so full from lunch and we both tried to take it easy. I don't think either of us were in the mood for desert, I know I wasn't, but I think Brian felt bad as this was supposed to be our nice birthday dinner so we ordered the red velvet bread pudding. VERY good but I ate two bites and was done. That is UNHEARD of for me and desert especially when it is bread pudding. 

After dinner we drove home and watched some TV as neither of us was tired. All in all, a very good birthday trip to Charleston :)