Down By the River... Almost

Well my in-laws, (otherwise known as Judge and Baba to my nephews and now us) spent the weekend with us. We started dreaming up plans for them to come to Fayetteville for their anniversary back in April. They have been married for 40 years this year and wanted to spend it with us... how sweet! Baba decided she wanted to do something "outdoorsy" and thought that floating would be fun. We decided that the Buffalo would be too slow and hot in July and hoped to float the Elk River in Southwest Missouri instead. It's only about an hour or so drive North of Fayetteville. They were going to stay in a nice hotel in Rogers and we would float on Saturday... nice dinner Sat night followed by a card game... church Sunday... the works! Weelllll..... then we started getting reports about how the Elk River was frequented by we will say, "shirtless hillbillies." Evidently at one point on the river ladies have the opportunity to gain Mardi Gras beads and this act is done so often. After discussing with my husband, then he with his mother, we all decided that seeing some toothless female removing her swimsuit for a $.10 strand of beads was not our idea of a good time. That topped with an unexpected funeral that the MIL and FIL needed to attend meant...

 Dinner at Mermaids, then coffee drinks at Arsaga's with the in-laws.

Then a private tour of Adam's company, Acumen Brands. The in-laws hadn't seen the building since it had been completed. Here are Adam and I on the giant bean bags in the break room. Its seriously one of the neatest companies I've ever heard of. They have an equally as neat new office space!

Then... I had this genius idea to check out our local Botanical Garden. We have never been before and I kept hearing about the "Firefly Festival" going on so we headed on over there on Friday night. It was kind of neat to walk around and see different kinds of flowers and plants and just spend time together... the boys were NOT impressed.

 You sweated just by breathing and there were a million people... mostly kids.  Supposedly there was a great show on the stage at dusk so we encouraged them to be patient until then (we had just paid $30+ to get in!) So we waited....and waited.... and sweated... and waited for the show to start. When it did we expected a million fireflies to be released or something spectacular. Instead.... there was a puppet show. One of those shadow puppet shows.... the boys were done. We left and laughed all the way to the car about how dorky it was.  We WERE spending time together and that is what was important!

On Sunday we went to church, then had brunch at Greenhouse Grill, one of our new fav restaurants in town. We then did a little shopping. I was SO exhausted from a week of traveling and little sleep so I went home and crashed after that. We had such a great weekend! No matter what we do... we always have a good time with our parents when they come to town!

J&B- I'm sorry it wasnt the weekend we had originally planned, but we really enjoyed seeing you guys! We were thrilled that you decided to celebrate your anniversary with us. We love you!