Young Married Couples Retreat

Last weekend we had the chance to get away with other young married couples from Journey. It was so nice to not be the unmarried couple on the trip! This was the first time we were able to go as a married couple and we had a wonderful time hanging out with friends and learning a little more about what God has to say about marriage.

Matt and I took Friday off and headed down to Wilmington early. There, we met our friends, Jennifer and Russell. We headed off to the...

where we saw many animals of the sea, even an albino alligator. After the aquarium, we found a Priddy Boys to eat at for lunch. This is one of our favorite places to get sandwiches, and since the one in Raleigh has been shut down, it's been a long time since we've been able to enjoy this for lunch! After lunch, we checked in to the hotel and got settled, but didn't wait too long to head out again. We were on a mission to find...

in downtown Wilmington. Compared to the Cupcake Shoppe in Raleigh, this place was much smaller and had less to offer, but I was the odd ball out that liked the cream cheese frosting better. Either way, we had a good time and enjoyed this simple pleasure that the four of us are pretty fond of.

We grabbed dinner at Wild Wing Cafe and then joined up with the rest of the group Friday evening for some fun and games. We were even able to catch a little bit of the ACC Tournament in between activities! During the day on Saturday, we had sessions about what a Biblical marriage looks like. Although a lot of the information remains the same, there was so much diversity among the group that it brought some new excitment to the discussions. Our only assignment for the weekend was a date night on Saturday night. For me, that is what I was looking forward to the most. It was so nice to get away from Raleigh, away from a schedule or list of things to do on the weekend, and just focus on each other and being together.

The weather was...

so we played...

Once we were finished with that, we headed in to get cleaned up and to decide on where to eat dinner. Although I had researched some places before we left Raleigh, it was pretty easy to decide that we wanted to go somewhere close to the beach. The Oceanic had been recommended by our leaders as the place to go. After looking over the menu, and realizing that if we hurried we might catch the sunset on the beach, we made that our destination of choice. We arrived in time for a little bit of rain to shower down leaving a rainbow in its wake. We were seated fairly quickly since it was still so early and this was the view from our table...

We had a wonderful time, saw a few others from our group and enjoyed watching a handful of surfers riding the waves during the last hours of daylight.

We spent time after dinner watching TV and turning in fairly early...moving the clocks ahead certainly was not on our side! Overall, the weekend was a great escape from every day life. It was a sweet time of fellowship and refreshment. We look forward to more weekends like these in the future!