South Carolina

Last week Colt had an interview in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Tuesday so he spent Monday/Tuesday there. As soon as he got back home, we left for two more interviews in South Carolina. He had one in Columbia and one in Charleston. Since he had a couple, I went with him and we made it a mini-vaca. Josh had both of the same interviews as well so we all flew out on Wednesday morning, December 4th. The first interview was in Columbia. As soon as we landed, we got in the car and drove a couple hours to Columbia. We ate at Pawleys Front Porch that night for dinner and all got huge pretzel bread burgers plus the guys got fried pickles. The place was on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and I will say it didn't disappoint! The guys left so stuffed they were sick though. 

Thursday morning I dropped them off early for their interviews and went back and took a short/little nap. After I checked out of the hotel, I went to the State House, drove by the Governor's Mansion and also went to the Riverwalk and killed some more time. 

It started raining a little right before I picked them up from the hospital so as soon as they were done, we headed back to Charleston. In Charleston, we stayed at the Courtyard Marriott. It was waterfront and we had a great view. 

Thursday night we went to Market Street and ate at T-Bonz for dinner. The food was great! 

Colt ordered fried pickles again. Let's just say he had a good time and some good jokes with the boom-boom sauce that came with his pickles!

After dinner, we walked around for a little while before we headed out to James Island. While we were in town they were having the Holiday Festival of Lights at James Island County Park so we went and did a 3 mile driving tour looking at Christmas lights!  

Friday interviews didn't start until lunch. We got up and made the mistake of eating breakfast at the hotel. I thought the breakfast buffet was continental. It wasn't until after I'd already filled my plate and sit down that I realized it was $13. The buffet was definitely not worth that! We could've ate a cheaper and better breakfast elsewhere! I had looked at the public beaches close to Charleston and decided that we should check out Folly Beach. After breakfast on Friday morning, we drove about 15 minutes out to the beach. We walked out on the fishing pier and then walked along the beach for a few minutes. The water was cold! There were tons of dogs on the beach and Alex would've loved it!

They didn't really care too much for having a picture taken together. 

And I think Josh got tired of taking pictures of us! 

Colt made fun of me because I kept saying how it reminded me of all my Nicholas Sparks books!

Colt didn't like my cheerleader face and made me just smile! 

After I dropped them off at their interviews downtown around lunch, I attempted to grab a Starbucks downtown but due to parking... ended up driving out of town and getting some Subway and Starbucks. Then I just went to the hotel and sat out by the pool overlooking the water and read my book for a couple of hours. It was probably one of the best parts of the trip. I even got a little sunburn in December! It was 70-80 degrees the whole time we were there so the weather was perfect! I started reading Gone Girl on the plane ride to South Carolina and finished it shortly after we got home.  It was a good book... it's a little twisted and kinda makes you angry but it definitely keeps you thinking. 

I had emailed a few gyms in Charleston about dropping in for a WOD so when I picked up the guys Friday afternoon, we ended up going to CrossFit Integrity. It was a hard workout and felt like one of the Open workouts! After the warmup we started with a lot of strict pull-ups and chin-ups. Then the WOD was 100 thrusters (95 lb/65 lb). On top of that, at the top of every minute you had to do 5 burpees until you completed all the thrusters. There was a 20 minute time cap. I did 20 thrusters the first minute and thought it would be an easy WOD but I ended up not making the time cap! I was close though!

After we recovered from the workout, we headed to dinner. We planned on just grabbing something fast like Chipotle so I pulled up directions and didn't really look at them. I just assumed they were right and ended up taking us somewhere out of the way where there was definitely no Chipotle! Wherever it took us, it wanted us to turn around and go back 20 minutes where we came from ... Colt wasn't happy with me! It worked out ok though because we ended up just eating at a BBQ place called Sticky Fingers. Saturday morning we slept in and then went and grabbed breakfast at the Hominy Grill. It was supposed to be a really good southern breakfast place, but we weren't too impressed. Maybe we just didn't order the right thing!

After breakfast, we went to Battery Park and White Point Gardens. You could see both USS Yorktown and Fort Sumter from there. 

Colt saw an envelope sitting on a bench at the park. It had a $5 Target gift card in it that someone had left! It was actually my second random act of kindness I'd received that week. Earlier that week in Forney, I had someone buy my Starbucks in the drive-thru! 

We also walked through a lot of the streets just looking at historic houses. 

The one below was the Calhoun Mansion. It's the largest residence in Charleston. 

This house was just one of my favorites.

I "might" have been taking this picture thinking it was Fort Sumter at first until the guys corrected me. Now, I think it was actually Castle Pinckney so I wasn't just taking a picture of nothing. 

Fort Sumter

We didn't have  a ton of time before our flight so we ended up just going back to the hotel and sitting around the pool until it was time to go.

Both interviews went great and we had a good mini-vacation!
While we were gone, there was a major ice storm at home where pretty much everything was shut down for a few days so it was a drastic difference when we landed in Texas on Saturday night. It was just about a 50 degree drop in temperature! We actually thought that it might delay or cancel our flight but we hit a window where our flight was only delayed about 45 minutes. I think if our flight would've been any later Saturday night, we would've probably gotten stuck in Houston. We got lucky and managed to miss most of the ice storm and the freezing weather.