A 30th in the Low Country

Let's rewind back to January... back to when I first started planning my 30th birthday. Patrick and I had an epic weekend planned in Charleston. We were going to take Friday off, head down to the low country, and do a solo day of brewery hopping before inviting my friends to join us for a Saturday of even more breweries. We had our favorite hotel in Charleston {The Venue} booked and we were ready to roll for a weekend similar to how we celebrated my 29th.

Fast-foward to my actual birthday and with a little one on board, we had to improvise just a tiny bit.

On Friday, we packed up the car and drove down to Charleston with a pitstop at the outlet stores. With a growing baby bump that's getting more and more difficult to fit into my regular clothes at 21 weeks, I was on the hunt for some bump-friendly clothes. Y'all, I'm not sure they exist. I walked out of the outlets empty handed from my search.

Our next stop was... a brewery?

But of course. We can't drive into Charleston without stopping at Holy City Brewing. Patrick enjoyed his favorite beer there and I chowed down on a basket of their incredible French fries.

Onwards to Charleston! I'm positive that I popped into every single store on King Street and tried on dozens of dresses only to walk away with one. One dress. Hours of shopping and that's all I found to wear.

Patrick had been on a guys weekend in Charleston recently, where he spent some time at Edmund's Oast Brewery. I wanted to check another brewery off my list, so we headed there next. It's tucked away in an area of Charleston that's quickly becoming a brewery neighborhood - it's the same area of town that you'll find Palmetto Brewing, Revelry Brewery, and Fatty's Beer Works, among others.

I could totally see myself hanging out at Edmund's Oast on a regular basis if we lived in Charleston! It's a cool place with plenty of indoor and outdoor seating as well as space for kids to run around. It has a very community feel to it and we wound up staying here for over an hour before making our way to Kiawah for the remainder of the weekend.

My parents took us out to dinner at Freshfields at a new-ish restaurant called Fuji Sushi Bar and Grill. I skipped straight past all of the sushi dishes and went straight for the teriyaki chicken hibachi dish.

Y'all, I might still be dreaming of my dinner from there! I love a good chicken hibachi meal and this one definitely did not disappoint.

We checked off one big thing on my bucket list Saturday morning: kayaking around Kiawah! Would y'all believe that this was my first time ever kayaking? It's something that I've been trying to do on Kiawah ever since my parents bought their house down there but had never been able to find time to do. I'll be sharing more on this later!

But hands down, my very favorite part of my 30th birthday was our doctor's appointment on Monday afternoon. It was finally time for our anatomy scan! We got to spend some quality time watching an extremely active baby girl flip and twist around while the ultra sound technician did her thing. It was unbelievably weird to see the movements on screen that I was simultaneously feeling, but kind of reassuring to know that some of those weird feelings had definitely been her somersaulting around in there.

{that's the one & only dress I found from my birthday shopping trip!}

Was it the original birthday celebration I had planned back in January? Not even close. But you know what? It was so much better.