fresh weekend

this was a jam-packed weekend for me and chris. i had to work saturday morning for the 4th annual rubber duck race benefiting boys & girls clubs of the midlands. even though it was work, i had a good time. we released 250,000 rubber ducks into the river to race about 1 mile (i think). i worked a booth giving out sun glasses and potato chips to kids. since i forgot my camera i have no pictures of this.

following the rubber duck race i cashed in on one of my birthday presents and got an awesome hot stone massage at urban nirvana. it was bliss but the massage was over too quickly. luckily i have more on the gift card so i can go back again for more.

then saturday night chris and i went out for our 4th anniversary (by the way, thanks everyone for all the well-wishes). we had dinner and dessert at terra. this restaurant tries to get ingredients from local sources and buys its vegetables daily from a farmers market. despite lack of vegetarian items, the meal was wonderful and our waiter was really good. to start, chris and i both had delicious salads (chris's had a home-made goat cheese ball deep fried!). i had a wonderful veggie plate for an entree and chris had a pear and escarole pizza. then we both had dessert (espresso cheese cake and pistachio creme brulle (sp?)). it was all so good but we definitely overate!

sunday we had our first harvest from the garden.



i wasn't sure how to tell that the broccoli was ready for picking, because it was not very large (this picture is of 3 heads combined). but i read up a few links on the web and discovered that if i didn't pick them now it'd be too late. so i picked this broccoli and an onion (just to see if it was done--it was) and we had them in a salad for dinner on sunday.

sunday afternoon chris and i picked up our little somali friends, kadijah, ikra and mohammud and took them strawberry picking.



there were so many good strawberries, we couldn't get the kids to stop eating and picking them. we filled out 2 buckets in like 15 minutes and then spent the rest of the time catching up with mohammud, who had filled his t-shirt with about 1/2 bucket's worth of strawberries.

since the kids weren't ready to go home, we decided to take them to congaree national park, which was just a few miles down the road.
we took about a 1 mile walk to weston lake where we looked at turtles and fish in the water. then we raced back through the forest as chris and mohammud raced me, ikra, and kadijah. it was such a good time and the kids were so well-behaved!