Birthday Surprise!

My parents & Rod conspired to give me the best birthday present I've had: a weekend at The Grand in Fairhope, AL. My parents drove up from Thomasville to watch the kids while Rod & I spent two nights at the resort. I felt like we'd escaped to a different country! The hotel is really gorgeous, and the employees there were some of the nicest people. We got settled in & right away went down to borrow some of their bikes for a ride. We headed down the main stretch & stopped at a pub (sounds so much better than 'bar', right?) to have a snack. After our super-healthy hot wings, we headed back to have afternoon tea in the lobby & then explored a little more. The next day we went horseback riding at a nearby farm, which was a lot of fun. I rode Trigger, who was much more polite than Rod's horse, who apparently had just finished a huge breakfast. He wasn't at all shy about dropping gifts wherever he wanted, which was especially charming since I was directly behind them in line. Nice! It was still a very enjoyable morning.

We spent some time downtown & ate at the famous Panini Pete's. Then it was back to the resort to go kayaking. We had a nice dinner & spent some time on the swings afterwards. It was strange not having the kids with us, but we scoped out the pool and took lots of pictures to show them to get them excited about coming with us next time. And my parents were awesome about taking great care of the kids and taking Ben to his first soccer practice on Saturday, then on to a local kids' museum. They swam several times at home & did lots of playing. And my parents were still peppy when we came home on Sunday! Amazing. The kids really enjoyed having them here and missed them terribly when they first left. We were so glad to be able to enjoy being away, knowing they would be taken care of so well.
Thank you so much Rod, Mom & Dad for planning this! It was wonderful.