The Derby Festival Marathon last weekend was a nice mini getaway! I’m sure it was nicer for me, seeing how I didn’t run 26.2 miles! Nate finished with a time of 4:19 – a little bit outside of his goal time. He was slightly disappointed. It’s always hard for me to fathom being disappointed because I’m still really proud of myself when I run 2 miles.. on the treadmill.. slowly.. in a controlled environment. I still don’t think he gets how truly awesome he is compared to most people! I understand though because when people praise my blog in any small way I’m all, “No – I don’t think you understand how many page views a good blog gets..” We are competitive .. in different ways.. and my obsession is not benefiting my health or doing a whole lot for anyone. Fail. ;]
The Friday evening that we arrived in Louisville was pretty quiet. We walked down to Bearno’s Pizza; a pretty well known local pizza joint! We turned in early so Nate could get his rest. I say “we” but what I really mean is – I stayed up all night watching episode after episode of Hart of Dixie. I haven’t been this obsessed with a show in a while! Or, maybe I have but Nate and I are always watching together so I can’t just stay up by myself and watch 5 episodes without him. After not going to sleep until 1AM I woke up not but a few hours later with horrible stomach pain (too much pizza!) so I didn’t sleep a whole lot. A giant iced coffee was my best friend after packing up and checking out with my Mother-in-law’s help! She met me at The Galt House and we made our way down to the finish line to wait for Nate. We were pretty irritated that The Galt House (the official hotel of the marathon) decided not to tell us until two days prior to our stay that no one in the hotel could have late check out. Uh? What about all of the people who have traveled long distances to this marathon and probably need to shower afterward? Luckily Nate’s Grandparents live in Louisville so we were able to go visit with them and let him take a shower real quick. All in all, it was a nice start to a very, very busy weekend! And what a good weekend it was!

A few weekends ago Nate and I decided to spend the first truly gorgeous day of Spring out at Woodford Reserve for a distillery tour. This is the third distillery we’ve visited along the Bourbon Trail and it was by far the best tour we’ve been on yet! (You can read about our trip to Four Roses here.) There are seven stops along the “Bourbon Trail” – Woodford Reserve, Four Roses, Town Branch, Heaven Hill, Wild Turkey, Maker’s Mark, and Jim Beam. We plan to eventually tour all of them! I’m excited to finally add a Kentucky feature of sorts to my blog! We have plans to visit a lot of different locations around our state this year and I can’t wait to share!I love the history in a place like this. Woodford Reserve is the oldest of the nine bourbon distilleries currently in operation (as of 2010) and a National Historic Landmark. While the actual distillery building wasn’t built until 1838, distilling began on this site in 1780! I love to try and envision what the people would have looked like during that time and how everything would have run back then. This distillery was originally known as the Oscar Pepper Distillery, established by Elijah Pepper and passed down to his son. The property finally made it’s way into the hands of it’s current owner, Brown-Forman (for a second time) in 1993, after many years of being out of operation. It was refurbished, brought back to working operation, and the Woodford Reserve brand was introduced in 1996.We drove through such beautiful horse country on our way out to the distillery and the grounds themselves were equally gorgeous. We purchased our tickets in the welcome building and perused the gift shop a bit until it was time for our tour to begin. Once it started I was a little bit surprised! Unlike the other tours we’ve been on – this one provided headsets so that no matter where you were (front, back, or lagging behind to take pictures *cough*) you could hear every word the tour guide had to say – crystal clear! I wish I could show every aspect of the tour and every single photo that I took! I’m going to have such a rough time narrowing down which pictures to share when we go places like this. I have Nate to thank for my outfit photos, of course! He even got all of the little details – like these buttons! I didn’t even notice the little anchors until the third or fourth time I wore them!
I’ll end this post with a photo of my favorite part of tour – the tasting! It’s no surprise that a free bourbon ball would be my favorite part, right? I didn’t think so!

Outfit Details:

Lace Top: Forever 21
High-Wasited Shorts: Clothing swap with Kristie
Leopard Flats: Target
Leopard Earrings: Betsey Johnson
Leopard Sunglasses: Target
Bag: Bobbi Bucket Satchel c/o Sienna Ray & Co.

We bought tickets to see The Gaslight Anthem back in December as a Christmas present, and it’s hard to believe March 2nd came and went so fast! I really don’t think I can describe how much fun our little weekend getaway truly was. We stayed at a hotel right in downtown Indianapolis within walking distance of the venue and even though it was insanely cold and snowing- we had such a good time walking around. We stopped off at a few places on the way to grab a bite to eat and hang out a little!

I could ramble on and on about the show and how wonderful it was – but I’ll spare you because there is really only one thing you need to know (!!!) – they played my song, “Boom Boxes and Dictionaries”. I’m not sure if they’ve played it on any of their dates after ours but up until that point they had not played it all- and they opened with it! I just about lost my mind. (For those of you who don’t know – I have lyrics from this song tattooed on my arm.)

I wish we could see bands that we love every single weekend and go on mini-adventures, but then I suppose these memories just wouldn’t be quite as special! I snapped a few photos of us relaxing in the hotel room right before heading out. I just love a night or two of sleep in a giant, cushy hotel bed! Sometimes it is so much easier to relax and unwind in a hotel – nothing to clean, no distractions! We definitely had a great time overall and I can’t wait until our next trip!

I had outfit photos uploaded and all ready to edit this evening, but guess what?! I accidentally uploaded them to the iPhoto on my Time Machine at home and I’m not at home! Womp, womp. I just moved almost 130 GB of photos off of my MacBook Pro and on to my external hard drive and I suppose it thinks that’s the place to upload new photos! Good for my MBP space – bad for editing on the go! So, I decided to look through some of the pictures that happen to still be on my computer and I found a few from Nate’s iPhone that I’ve never shared! These are just a few snaps from his point of view on our trip to San Francisco. Ah, I can’t wait to go back!!