Graduation Gift Girls Getaway!!!

Here lately, I just have not been in the mood to blog and then out of no where the urge strikes me and I wanna write. I have several posts to make tonight so I hope the urge stays with me!

Graduation night, I was surprised by three of my good girlfriends with a girls getaway to Hot Springs, Arkansas. It was a fabulous gift and a much needed one at that!! Memorial Day Weekend the four of us packed up and hit the road. I will use initials to protect the innocent as I tell of our weekend travels. :) M must have been a travel agent in her past life because she can plan a trip with the best of them. She had all our stops, meals, and activities all planned out for us. In good travel agent fashion she even sent us all an email with our schedule and links to everything we needed to know about our weekend.

Our first stop was at Brown's Country Store in Benton, Arkansas. This was a cute store/buffet - think Cracker Barrel but buffet. It was really, really, really good and so much fun to shop in the two story gift shop!!

M, L, and J outside of Brown's Country Store

M, me, L, and J outside of Brown's - pardon the grainy pic, the person that we asked to take it was too busy smoking a cig to get a good shot! :)

After we were full from eating at Brown's we made our way on to Hot Springs. Once in our hotel room we settled in for the night, watched a movie and shared tons of laughs!!

Saturday morning we woke up and got ready for our day of pampering at The Arlington Hotel. M and I were scheduled for facials and paraffin mani/pedi's. L and J joined us for the facials and then they also enjoyed massages/body wraps as well.

ahhhhh - nice mud mask during my facial

As we were finished up on our facials the talk turned to the subject of ear candling and the benefits of having this process done. Ear candling is where a candle is used to clean out the ear and get rid of wax, pollen, toxins, etc. I had heard that it works wonders for sinus/allergy issues and well I suffer from awful sinus issues year round. Since they performed ear candling at the spa, I thought what the heck...

the candle is hollow in the middle and the heat causes a suction to clean out the ear

FYI......these next pics are G.R.O.S.S. but I want to show you what came out of my ears!! I bathe and clean out my ears on a regular basis, so just know that before you judge these pics!!

Ear 1

Ear 2

I told you it was DISGUSTING!!!

After we were pampered and all our ears were clean we headed out for dinner and some shopping. We ate at Picante's Mexican Grill and then walked/shopped downtown Hot Springs. I bought six pairs of fabulous earrings and wish I had shot a picture of them before I put them all in my jewelry box. I bought some owl earrings that are just to precious for words! Once we were done shopping and waiting on the hotel shuttle to pick us up for the night we decided to take a horse and carriage ride around historical Hot Springs. I just realized that M took the pictures of the carriage ride so I do not have any to share!! It was a really nice ride and we learned that several of the hotels in the city are actually haunted. YIKES!!

Sunday we had a wonderful breakfast at our hotel before we headed back to Memphis. We had a fabulous relaxing weekend and I cannot thank M, L, and J enough for the amazing graduation gift!! I love you girls!! XOXO