Adventures in Wilmington

 Now for the most exciting adventure yet! Thursday we went to Wilmington, NC to be tourists and to do our trash the dress (here  after refered to as TTD) shoot with David from David's Wedding Photography. I was pretty excited about this as afterall it was a road trip with Jim and I had serious ideas about these TTD pictures and how they would be displayed in my home (They would of course be amazing!). If you don't already know I am not a big fan of "tradition" and "norms" and didn't really mind the idea of getting my dress a bit dirty, wet, or covered in sand (my future daughter will probably be just as opinionated as I am and want her very own dress).                                                                                                                  The road trip started off in our usual fashion me harassing Jim by snapping pictures of him as he drives and Jim shuffling through his ipod and doing his own little dances to keep me entertained. Unfortunately I missed

 snapping a shot of the Welcome to North Carolina sign. :( I was trying to find

out where to go once we got to Wilmington (there wasn't any preplan for this trip except we knew we were meeting up with David to do the TTD shoot. It actually was not a painfully long ride or difficult to find our way around Wilmington (much better experience than the Charleston trip). There wasn't even time enough for me to start the "Are we there yet?" impatient questions.  Just driving in town we saw so many beautiful buildings, statues, and fountains. I LOVE the old beautiful buildings and churches.

    We made our way to the Cape Fear Museum on Market Street (by the way a great place to start if you haven't researched your trip to Wilmington). When we arrived we were informed that due to some recent updating their largest exhibit would not be opening until the following day so we could look around at no charge! The very nice woman explained the open exhibits and gave us a few "coins" to put in the jukebox upstairs. We were unfortunately there at the same time as a large group of middle school students and decided to make our way in the opposite direction in an effort to be able to look at the displays at our own pace. They had great displays of local ecosystems. There were also displays following local history, from the civil war,WWII, progress relating to segregation, to history of local buildings and events. The best part however was the huge prehistoric sloth  that was discovered just down the road from the museum. This thing had foot long claws! He probably needed them as he couldn't move very fast and is a little large to hide in/behind/ or under many things.

    Next we headed down to the River Walk where they have a lot of little art shops and coffee and tea houses. From here you could see across the river to see the Battleship North Carolina. We decided to take a walk around since we had been unable to find the Serpent and Reptile museum and had an hour still till it was time to meet David. When we made our way around the block we found the museum we had been looking for! Inside there were alligators, snakes, and lizards... oh my! (In my personal opinion worse than lions, tigers, and bears.... you do not see these on cute little kids clothes).  There were alligators that looked fake except that we could see his tounge move as he was breathing, snakes longer than school buses, and lizards. One in particular I was ready to take home as he really seemed to want out of his "cage" and the sign said they weren't dangerous to humans. (I could have talked Jim into it had it been an option, how do you think we ened up with Tucker & Scarlet?!)

     Now it was time for the best part of the day! I got to wear my dress again and take pictures all over again! We started out in down town Wilmington walking around with our own personal paparatzzi, I'm not going to lie at first I was a little uncomfortable with people staring but after a few people made nice comments I relaxed a bit more. We stopped by the River Room and met a few of David's fellow photographers. They have a great facility for having small events that overlooks the river. One of the guys even offered to let us pose with his really great car! We stopped to listen to a guy play his guitar and sing while his friend played the drums on a bucket (the guitar and singing= good, could have done without the bucket drums). We noticed that the fence was covered in all these hanging keys and debated on their purpose for being there, our only guess is it had something to do with the brand new construction going on there. If anyone does know the real meaning behind it please let us know! We did debate  that it would be a nice idea to hang your spare key there and memorize it's placement if you lived nearby, could be handy... or dangerous. Next we stopped to have some coffee or in my case a smoothie and chatted with David a bit. Then we walked down by the river walk where Jim ATTACKED me in a display of public affection! All those years of not being allowed to display affection have left a lasting impression, having an audience didn't make it any easier.  We then headed to the Wrightsville beach to take the big plunge. The water was cold but not nearly as bad as I was prepared for, although I guess Jim and David disagree (there was a comment I wasn't privy to until just yesterday relating to when the boys would no longer be able to tolerate the water temperature, nice honey). It was fun though and there are some really great pictures! My favorite part was sitting in the sand cuddling together! Jim is such a comfy body pillow! :)  We cannot say enough great things about David and couldn't be more happy with the pictures we have seen so far!