a little getaway

Yesterday was my hubby's 39th birthday. 39!! How in the world did we get so old? We still feel like we are 23. Well, kinda like 23. We celebrated his birthday this weekend in his favorite manner - a quick getaway with no kids. Thanks to my sister, who kept the girls, and his mom, who kept Nathan, we took a road trip to Branson. Now Branson is not usually our favorite place, but we had the best time this weekend. We took our time driving some unusal backroads (I wish I had taken a pic of the one lane, wooden bridge we found our selves driving over) and ate at some really fun places. We spent some time exploring Big Cedar Lodge. It's huge, beautiful, and has so much to do. We are definitely planning to bring the kids back for a few days. Seriously, they have fishing, the lake (and toys for the lake), smores by the campfire every night, horseback riding, cooking classes, night time movies at the pool, lazy river, etc. Our kids would love it. Just maybe not when it's 110 degrees outside.

We had a champagne brunch there on Sunday morning and it was such a fun meal. Where else can you have such an amazing view while eating rack of lamb and crab legs for breakfast? It was the perfect place for no kids.

After brunch we went to Dogwood Canyon for the day. I'm not sure how we have lived in the area this long and never really heard about this place. It is a beautiful nature center filled with waterfalls, springs, and trout. They offer biking, walking, and hiking trails, along with horseback riding, ATV tours, private jeep excursions, a 2 hour tram tour and trout fishing. We did the adventure package which included the biking, tram and trout fishing for $40 each. Turned out to be a pretty reasonable deal since we were there for 6 hours. It's hard to describe this place without seeing it, but my favorite was the bike ride. You ride over covered bridges and can stop along the way at all of the waterfalls and springs you want to look at. I only had my phone camera with me, so these pics aren't the best, but they are better than nothing.

The best part of the tram ride was riding through the pasture to feed the elk and bison that are free roaming. They were beautiful and so close!

We truly had the best time. It was good to get away from the kids and just have fun with each other for a day!