Hold on for Picturama! (This might take a minute to load)

Hurrah! Say it with me: FINALLY. Yes, I am finally taking the time (so far it's taken 2 hours) to put some photos on the blog. (2 hours - this is why I usually need wine to do this).

So to start off with, our wedding reception/par-tay held at my mom's in NC. It was a very nice event - lots of family & friends came. Of course, typically, I have no pictures of anyone else. Mom does. Of course, I guess it makes sense - everyone was trying to either get pictures (1) of us, or (2) with us. So it's hard to photog properly when one is the center of the universe (you'd think I'd be used to that by now - just kidding. I haven't had wine. Also I'm on a diet, so work with me here.)

Mom ordered these pretty napkins with our names embossed on them.

She also ordered us some little petit fours (because I had said I didn't want a cake). So I didn't get a cake. I got 60 little tiny cakes!

Oh wait - my cousin got me a cake anyway. Is this not the cutest, tiniest wedding cake ever? It's like a Barbie wedding cake! And it was REALLY tasty. YUM. (So were the petit fours!)

Here we are cutting our monster cake. Joe decided to go with a nice shirt his Mom gave him several years ago, for a more casual affair. I got to wear my wedding dress again - good! It was a lot of work! Might as well wear the hell out of it. Also I plan to wear it when we go to Germany next time (Keine Ueberraschung jetzt, Edeltraud und Sigrid!)

Is that not an adorable wedding cake? And also an adorable groom? :)

So in the spirit of love and peace and matrimonial serenity and all that following a weekend celebrating our nuptials, we move on to our next relationship activity:

Target shooting. Oh yeah.

Be afraid.

(Also, please note the hilariously ironic and yet somehow appropriate choice of hat - My brother-in-law managed to find the only camouflage Duke hat ever made. HA! (Also, in case you thought I was tough, I was concerned the whole time about breaking my ridiculously long fingernails - visible on the hand holding the ammo magazine - I am perhaps still a stupid girly-girl).

Now for those of you who think this an odd choice of activity with one's newly-minted spouse, let me remind you that in Chatham County, Georgia, you get your marriage license and your gun license at the same desk. NICE. One stop shopping for all those potentially violent marriages! Convenient!

A few weeks ago we got free dinner tickets to a riverboat cruise on the Savannah River. Neat boat, huh? (Also please note I'm wearing a sweater I made for the San Diego trip, from Stefanie Japel's Fitted Knits - even though it was eleventy thousand degrees out that day. One must suffer for one's knitted fashion).

Joe took these lovely photos of Savannah and the Talmadge Bridge at sunset, from the deck of the riverboat:

And for fans of my particular type of photography: yes, a photo of Thing In Sky.

Last weekend, on Saturday, we lounged around the house. Joe did woodworking and I did sewing/quilting/knitting/crocheting and research on a proposal for the AAOHN conference next year (to be held in Orlando - not really exotic when you live 2 hours from Florida, but I'll take it).

On Sunday though, I felt restless. Joe humored me by finding something to see that neither of us had ever visited: Fort Sumter, South Carolina.

For those non-Southerners who might be reading this, Fort Sumter is...a fort. Right outside of Charleston, SC, and is the location of the first shots of the Civil War. See, the Northern Aggressors (aka Yankees, for those not in-the-know), were holed up at Fort Sumter. It was the last Union stronghold in the area. At the time, Charleston was the biggest port in the South and one of the major ports for the country. Through a series of legal moves designed to limit slave ownership in the new states (being formed out of the Louisiana Purchase), South Carolina got...well, pissed off. They didn't like it, they didn't want federal involvement in states' rights, and they decided they had had ENOUGH. So early one morning they decided to take decisive action, and fired on the Northerners at Fort Sumter. The Yankees were eventually driven out and peace prevailed. Ha. Just kidding. They left, but ended up blowing the crap out of the fort later on when the South was losing the war badly. The South fell, Sherman burned everything (except Savannah), Confederate money was useless, and rednecks everywhere started forming Sons of Confederate Veterans in order to keep the crusade on everyone's minds. And then the North introduced bagels, and that spelled the end of Southern culture.

Lesson over.

Here are some photos from Fort Sumter. I got a bit artsy-fartsy on some of these. Must've been the heat stroke.

This shows the tracks where they could swing the cannons around to aim them in different directions. I think they're a neat shape.

This is part of the inside of the fort, and I loved this crooked little pathway.

This is a gun port (Wait - that's on a ship. Is that what they call it on land?) Anyway, this is the little hole they stick the cannon out of. Isn't the brickwork lovely?

And here are some cannon. You can see the wheels on the bottom where they'd move on those rounded tracks.

And here's a neat little doorway. The architecture was quite charming, for a fortress of war. :)

And for those of you interested in such things, here is my quilt so far. It's pinned down to a light piece of fabric, so that white in between the pieces won't be there in the finished piece. It's darker on the outsides with a lighter section in the middle. I wanted it to look like calm water. I think it's working:

I'm really enjoying learning how to quilt so far. Now I have to sew the whole thing together. More pictures to come!

Now it's time to crochet a bit more and get offline. Hope you have a lovely evening!