My sweet friend Marci turns 40 next week and her amazing husband planned out a trip to surprise her. Her favorite place is Jackson Hole. She loves the mountains and the snow and the outdoors. So he planned all the details and we just had to keep it a secret for 3 months. Which was EXCRUCIATING!
Our original plan was for him to tell her the day before that she was going on a trip with just our friend Kerry. And that the rest of us couldn't go for various reasons. We were going to all surprise her at the airport. Well, he told her on Monday and she was so sad about the rest of us not going that he texted us and said "SOS.....we have to tell her now". So we surprised her through Marco Polo telling her we were all going! I was so glad to not have to keep the secret any longer!
We left our houses around 5 a.m. to get to the airport. Can you tell we are so excited?
We flew into Dallas and met our friend Maegan there.
We were finally all together and ready to go! These two wore the cutest Lululemon pants several times on the trip and they have convinced me I need them. As soon as I sell a kidney. Just kidding. They are the cutest pants I may need for summer and Disney.
The Jackson Hole airport is one of the prettiest airports I have ever seen. I was in love as soon as we got off the plane. And it was snowing when we got there! It had been in the high 80s in NWA the day before we left. I was kind of relieved to be going somewhere cold.
We were all so happy to be together and in snow!
Rachel is the cutest!
We got our rental car and headed to town. We were ready to find somewhere to eat lunch!
We headed to the Merry Piglets. This was our favorite place on the trip. It was SO good. The cowgirl dip is to DIE for!
I got street tacos and they were amazing!
Jackson Hole is so little and charming. It reminded me of the Bentonville town square - except with the antler arches. It's full of cute stores and restaurants. We LOVED it!
After lunch we walked the square and hit a few stores.
Gosh it was just so pretty!
We headed to our condo and got refreshed and hung out a while. We had a great condo that had three bedrooms. We paired off and settled in!
We headed back to the square to eat dinner. We were there during off season. A lot of restaurants were closed for the off season. Actually a LOT of things were closed - skiing and most of the parks. But the trade off was the town was practically empty and it was like we had the town to ourselves. We walked into Teton Pizza at 6 and we were the only ones there. It was AMAZING!
The pizza was delicious! I highly recommend!
We were all tired after getting up at 4 a.m. so we headed back to the condo, got in our comfy clothes and talked until we were ready to go to bed. It was just so nice to not have to cook or hear "mom" for a few days - I'm just being honest. We LOVE our kids - we have 16 between us. But it's a gift to get recharged!
OF COURSE - when we all could sleep late - we were all up by 4:30 a.m. It was the craziest thing. I woke up wide awake at 4 and then I heard voices and everyone was up.
We moved slowly and got ready and headed to Persephone Bakery. It was a FAVORITE!
I HIGHLY recommend. I didn't eat any of the amazing pastries they had but I did nibble on the nutella banana bread and it was amazing!
Kerry and I both got these Salmon/avacado/cucumber/lentil bowls and they were amazing!!!
Marci and Kerry are so cute!
We all had coffee and were ready to roll!
It was just so darling inside!
We had on our snow boots and we were ready to roll. We jumped in the car and headed toward Yellowstone!
We stopped often to take pictures. It was just all so breath taking! Here is our birthday girl!
Even though it was cold and snowing most of the time we were there - I was never that cold. We spent a lot of time in our car driving around and I would get warm with the heat running so when we got out for pictures I rarely had a coat on. The cold air just felt great!
These girls are a blessing to me.
We had to try hard to get pictures. I had figured out right before we went that I could use my apple watch to take pictures remotely on my phone. So we were propping up my phone on the car and rocks and snow drifts. :-)
This is pretty much how we all felt about our morning. Yellowstone was closed but we still got to drive and see a lot.
We ended up back in town and ate lunch at Cafe Genevieve. Kerry and I had Pig Candy Salads - they had this candied bacon on them. They were delicious. Some of the others didn't love their food so it wasn't our favorite place but I still thought it was good.
Stay tuned for part 2............
