My Epic Weekend In Pictures: Happy 4 Year Anniversary! Some Yummy Food, Too

While these Epic Weekend In Pictures don't involve as many traveling adventures as we used to have, we still try to make every second of the our weekend count. Sunday was mine and Awesome Girlfriend Megan's four year anniversary! I couldn't even post anything meaningful on social media. I honestly just kept pinching myself that 4 years ago Sunday, I was taking her out to Mohawk House in Sparta for our first ever date. So many things had to happen right. I first met her while she and middle Awesome Daughter Hailey were volunteering for OSCAR, randomly getting selected to bring me my Pets Of The Week. I believe that happened in February or March four years ago. Many ask if it was love at first sight, to which Meg and I always laugh and say "absolutely not!" We were led to believe that Meg and Hailey would be bringing me four cute kittens for my Pet Of The Week. In reality, out came four full grown cats who weren't even nice and friendly. We were all horrified. In May that year, Meg and I re-met and reconnected at my one and only 5K that I ran for OSCAR. Meg and I were joking about how we were all so surprised to get 4 full grown cats instead of the little kittens we were led to believe. We had a good laugh. Awesome Girlfriend Megan was a volunteer at that 5K on a cold, gray rainy May Saturday morning. She was even laughing at me because I took the paper cup of water from her, then turned around and handed it back to her instead of throwing it on the ground like most runners do. Our mutual friend Kathy reached out to me later that night to set us up. I was reluctant at first, in fact I said NO. I said "Kathy, Meg appears to be a single mom of three teenage daughters, and lives almost an hour away from me. She's clearly been through enough. We don't need to add my mess to her world!" Kathy Haig insisted saying "Please give it a chance, you are two of the nicest people I know."

We then gave it a chance at Mohawk House on May 17th that year, and the rest is history. Do I owe Kathy a drink or what? She was the first person I sent a picture of Meg's engagement ring to last summer. We are so thankful for her.

Friday night was low key. Meg alerted me that Crystal Springs is now doing BBQ takeout, and I was immediately intrigued. Meg came up with our game plan for the weekend which ended up working quite nicely. Saturday morning we would meet at White Lake Park in Sparta for our weekly walk that we enjoy so much. Everyone we do see in Sparta on our walks, always maintain social distancing so well. We are thankful for this. We would be so sad if we didn't have this beautiful option for walking. It's like that perfect balance of nature and walking. ie, no wildlife out there that might eat me (knock on wood.)

Sunday morning I woke up early and fell back asleep, a rarity for me. Awesome Girlfriend Megan texted me that she was on her way to my place from Hackettstown to Vernon. I had just gotten dressed in time for her to arrive. She tried opening my door, which was locked. I'm sorry I lock my door at night! Meg was joking that instead of surprising her for our four year anniversary, I locked her out of my place. Things did not get much better on my end after that. We had a simple, scaled back anniversary plan. Mimosas at my place. Done. Easy enough, right? We've done this tons of times. I failed repeatedly at opening the bottle of Korbel champagne. I have done this zillions of times. I failed in front of Meg in my kitchen, then I took it outside to my deck to really tug at it. Awesome Girlfriend Megan was heckling me and cracking up as everything kept going wrong. She knows I'm fiercely competitive and tend to overstrategize things, so she cracked up knowing how miserable I likely was to repeatedly fail for her. She then took out one of my oven mitts that had a grip to it, and was able to open the bottle of champagne with that thank goodness. Even though she accidentally emasculated me, we will take the victory as the mimosas were delicious. We were relaxing on my deck, enjoying the gorgeous Sunday morning weather. We were very happy to be together.

I then had us do a pizza party to go from our friends at The Irish Cottage Inn. On a normal anniversary, I would take Awesome Girlfriend Megan out somewhere. Actually technically, our anniversary date tends to be perfect timing for me. Every year, our anniversary is within days of Atlantic Health System Newton Medical Center's Wine & Roses Event. It's a beautiful fancy dress up event, that's just the perfect night out for our anniversary. That's been postponed to August this year of course. As with everyone else, we are just trying to be creative with the situations we have. That's why Meg and I came up with the idea to great her and the kids to lunch at The Cottage. But that wouldn't be my only meal of the day.

I wolfed down a half a rack of ribs from Crystal Springs. I went Saturday, they were already sold out on the ribs. They were able to let me order in advance, and had them ready to go for me Sunday at 1pm. This is the first rack of ribs I have had in YEARS, and they were so good. I told Meg that I might need to shower after the ribs with the way the BBQ sauce gets all over your face. At one point I almost shaved off my quarantine beard. I wolfed down one half of the rack of ribs, and the food coma hit immediately. That was basically my Sunday. I had an afternoon nap, woke up and watched my beloved Bar Rescue Marathon and it was a nice little Sunday.

Overall, we had a wonderful weekend. I hope you had a terrific weekend too. Thank you so much for taking the time to read my Epic Weekend In Pictures. Time to start planning next weekend!