There's so much to do here!

K and I didn't do anything crazy for our anniversary. I guess we're still so excited about finally living together (we're going on 3 months now!) that just having a "normal" night in still feels pretty special. K got me a cute little card, and we cooked some pasta and had wine with dinner. Then, we went to the gym, which has unfortunately become an abnormal event for us. Last night was our third night in a row, which is more times than we've been to the gym in weeks. Heck, it's probably more times than we went to the gym for the whole month of July (and we didn't do much better than that in August). It feels great to be getting back on track -- finally.

Part of the reason we were OK staying home on Tuesday night was that we'd done some special things in the days before.

On Saturday, we went to VA Beach for an Italian festival. There was a strolling musician and of course delicious Italian food and wine. We got to crush grapes with our feet, which was something I never thought I'd do! It's definitely a slippery job, and the grapes stick to your feet a bit when you get out.

And of course, we had to eat some delicious Italian dessert.

K was kicking himself for forgetting to wear his "Kiss me, I'm half-Italian" shirt. At least he chose wisely if he wasn't going to wear that one.

Plus, our shirts resulted in an unexpected change: As we were walking to the oceanfront, a passenger in an oncoming car leaned out the window and yelled, "BOOMER!" to us (the awesome call of Sooner fans. The initial yell is, "BOOMER!" The response is "SOONER!"). Our new friend was also sporting Sooner gear in the form of an OU hat. I was so excited by the pleasant surprise that I was jumping up and down. (I'm a dork like that.)

I love lighthouses, and K's boss had told us about one near VA Beach, so we checked it out. There were actually two. They were so neat! The brown bricked lighthouse is Old Cape Henry. It was completed in 1789 and established in 1792. It was the first lighthouse built by the federal government! It's one of only 9 lighthouses to be registered as a National Historic Landmark.

You can actually go inside the lighthouse! You have to climb quite a few stairs and even a ladder, but it's worth the view.

The black and white lighthouse stands only feet from the historic lighthouse. It opened in December of 1881 and is called New Cape Henry. It's beautiful!

Then, on Monday night, K and I went to a concert. We saw After Midnight Project, who we didn't know before the concert; Halestorm, who we'd just seen Sept. 11 in Richmond; and Chevelle. The concert itself was great. K and I both loved AMP, and Halestorm was just as impressive as they were 9 days earlier (that girl can wail!). Chevelle sounded exactly as they do in their albums, which was awesome to see (and hear).

K and I saw a few concerts in Dallas and even some in Louisiana in the last year. They were all in big venues, and a couple were even outdoors. A few of the concerts were hard rock, so there were crowd surfing and moshing going on. You could jump, and you could definitely move if you wanted to. The two concerts we've seen in VA have been in pretty small venue. They don't allow moshing (which is fine with us) or crowd surfing (that one is a little of a bummer, since K and I have both tried it, but whatever). Somehow, though, prohibiting those actions makes everyone just stand around the whole time. K and I decided by their second song that AMP was awesome. We wanted to jump around and enjoy ourselves (not moshing, but moving to the music), but the girl next to us kept looking at K like he was crazy. Oh, well. She just wasn't as fun as we are. :)

One of the perks about a small venue, though, is that we got to meet everyone after the show. That actually made me a bigger fan of Halestorm. They're so fun, and they're really down to earth. The drummer is my favorite. (He's on the left in the second picture.)

This weekend, we're back to traveling. We leave at 5 something tomorrow morning to fly to Boston. We'll drive from there to NH for a wedding, and then we'll be staying overnight in Maine. Hopefully I can see another lighthouse or two while we're there -- I've already looked into the ones nearby!