vacation part 4: the beach!

Our ultimate destination during the epic vacation of 2010 was Topsail, NC. We met up with 5 other couples that I met in an online group for twin moms due at the same time. We met last year, just the moms, in Hot Springs, AR, but this was the first time the husbands got to meet. We had a blast! Did a whole lot of nothing and ate and drank lots and lots. It was so nice! And did I mention there were NO KIDS?!

We stayed in this little house right on the beach.



Lots of chatting, lots of sun!









The guys decided to treat us with wonderful dinners! I'm not sure if it was out of boredom or what, but it was good!



Here we all are!


Of course, we had TONS of fun and, of course, I took pics of everyone! You can see more over HERE at the Jennifer Pinkerton Photography blog.

vacation part 3: Charleston, SC

I've been to Charleston several times and just knew that we needed to make a stop there during our epic vacation. It's so charming and full of history, I knew Scott would love it.

We got there kinda late, so we headed for the bar around the corner, which just happens to be one of my family's favorite spots in Charleston! Tommy Condon's is an Irish pub and we got there just as the live music started. We made several visits to Tommy Condon's while we were there. :)



Charleston was our little splurge spot and we had a sweet little boutique hotel room at the Andrew Pinckney Inn, which is set up in some historic buildings. It occupied several buildings and our room was on the second floor of the building in the foreground on the left. Fabulous 12 ft ceilings with crown mouldings and amazing old wood floors and plantation shutters on the huge windows.




On the full day we were there, we headed out to Ft. Sumter, which is where the first shots of the Civil war were fired. My father calls it "the war of Northern aggression."



It was so hot and humid that after doing some walking around town and cooling off at our pub, we pretty much stayed in our cute room until the sun went down.



Charleston is well known for it's colorful houses. The famous section of homes is called Rainbow Row.






There was so much more to do in Charleston, but we really just enjoyed soaking in the atmosphere. Ahhhhhh....

vacation part 2: making our way through the Carolinas

Part two of our journey involved lots of driving, but it was good driving! We went up, over and through the Smoky Mountains and Blue Ridge Parkway. Such pretty mountain scenery! Our destination at this point was Charleston, SC, but along the way we stopped to meet my longtime online friend Hope and her husband before doing a little drive-by of my old house in Columbia.



We were up in the clouds!


When we stopped to visit with Hope and her hubby Carl, they took us out on their pontoon boat. It was so nice to take a moment to do something fun! We also managed to find some good Mexican food.



I took Scott by my old house in Columbia, which we lived in from about 1989-1993. I have to say, it's become kinda ghetto! It did not look good at all, but I guess that 20 years can change a place. Oh, well. The entire area had grown so much, I hardly knew where I was!



I'll leave you with a little video of the husbands going across the floating dock. Haha, I was hoping one of them would fall in! Dangit.

I've been on vacation!! yay!! part 1: the bourbon trail

Sunday night, my husband and I got home from a long, wonderful, much needed vacation withOUT kids! We were gone for about 10 days and the purpose of our trip was to meet up with 5 friends that I met online when we were all pregnant with our twins. Scott and I decided to take our vacation road-trip style, stopping along the way to soak up some new places.

The first leg of our journey led us down the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. We participated in program where you have a passport stamped at several different distilleries, earning a t-shirt if you get to all of them. It was fun to do and the countryside was just gorgeous! Scott even had to drive through a washed out road/river at one point! Gotta love back-roads.

We started out at Jim Beam. We don't drink Jim Beam, but it was a nice place!



Second stop was Heaven Hill. We hadn't even heard of it! Might have something to do with the fact that it all burned down in the 90's. lol Bourbon and fire don't get along well!


Next up was Maker's Mark. I remember visiting this distillery with my family as a child when we lived in Kentucky. The smells and heat from the huge vats of fermenting alcohol have always stayed with me. They weren't as intense as I had remembered, but it was fun to take Scott there so he could experience it too.



If you aren't familiar with bourbon, it's made from grains and corn, fermented until it's basically moonshine. Then they place it in wooden barrels that are charred on the inside, where they are aged for 6-8 years or so.

While on our trip, we became Maker's Mark ambassadors, which means we get our names on a barrel and when it's ready, we get a bottle from that barrel! You can sign up for free on their website and they send you Christmas presents and invites to events and stuff. It sounds pretty cool and we're excited!


We picked up a couple of bottles of the brand new "46" which is pretty darn good!


Next stop was Four Roses. By this time of day, the distilleries were getting pretty crowded, so we didn't stay long, but this was definitely a beautiful place!



Wild Turkey. The only whiskey/bourbon I've ever had a baaaaad experience with. lol


We saved the best for last. Woodford Reserve's distillery is the oldest and by far the best and most interesting place we visited. If you had to just pick one of these distilleries to tour, this would be the one we'd recommend. It was in a gorgeous spot too!



They use these cool copper things that no one else does, or so they told us.



We saw and sampled our way through all of these fun places and would definitely do it again! You can learn more about bourbon and the bourbon trail HERE.