5 Year Celebration - Part I

In my last post I mentioned that Derek had big plans for our 5 year anniversary celebration, and wow, he did not disappoint. If you've ever seen the movie You, Me and Dupree, you know how Owen Wilson's character talks about throwing "7 different kinds of smoke"? Well that's what Derek kept saying that's what he was going to do, throw seven different kinds of smoke at me, so I would never know what to expect next and always be on my toes. And I would say he succeeded at that.

Because I am not good at being concise, and I have lots of fun pictures, I'll probably break this up into a few parts. You will probably be sick of hearing about all this soon, but I want to write it all down while it's fresh in my memory, because this anniversary celebration is probably one of my favorite memories together. I felt so well loved, and I don't want to forget any of the details. So here goes part one.

The celebration started with Derek telling me I needed to be ready to go by 10 til 5 on Thursday. He told me to wear a nice dress, and that was it. I got home from work around 4:15 to get ready and our bag was already packed. He packed everything I would need for me, and told me to give him whatever toiletries I would need. I proceeded to get ready and we were out the door right on time. We were headed around New Circle Road, which is the road we take to get to the interstate, meaning we could have been going anywhere. He got off on the Leestown Road exit (not the exit you would take to get to the interstate) and started heading downtown. So I thought maybe we were going to dinner downtown somewhere. Or to the Lexington Cemetery - which while its beautiful, is kind of  a strange place to go for an anniversary. Before we got downtown he made a right turn onto a road I'd never been on. I saw flashing cop lights and then this:

We were having dinner on a dinner train! Derek was so excited and said, "We're going to be like Harry Potter!" Apparently this dinner train usually starts in Bardstown (several hours away) but this was the first time they left out of Lexington, and it was a special 3 hour ride, with a 6 course meal featuring several different wines. When we got there they had appetizers for us and there was a musician playing guitar as well. We spent some time snacking and checking out the train.

We boarded the train and this is what we saw:

And here is our table:

And we got champagne when we boarded:

I didn't start taking pictures of our food til the 3rd course but here are some pictures of some of the delicious food. Our salad:

Lobster Bisque (this was so good!)

Entrees - Derek got the prime rib, and I got chicken.

And finally dessert!

We rode the train through the country and got to see some horse farms. Here are some of the views:

Another fun part about the train ride was the people we sat with. There was a family of 5 that joined us, 2 at our table, 3 at the table next to us. They had twin sons who were celebrating their 21st birthdays, and a daughter who was a couple years younger than me, who studied civil engineering at UK around the same time as me and she worked at the church Derek works at, while she was in college. It was fun getting to know the family we ate with and celebrating with them.

The train ride was 3 hours long, and was lots of fun since I had never really done anything like it. When we got off the train I had no idea what was next, but I'll save that for the next post :)