21 Years!

This past weekend, The Man of the House and I celebrated our 21st anniversary. 
Our actual anniversary is on the 21st, so this was a special year.
21 years! 
I have to say, I feel rather proud of that accomplishment...particularly in this day and age.

Years ago, we dreamed of the future and what extravagant, adventurous  vacations we would take on our 20th or 21st or 25th anniversaries.  Hawaii?  Europe?  Australia? 

The reality of it is, our life in itself has been an adventure.  We've lived in five different states and have traveled throughout half of the US.   We've been raising our children, working hard and having lots of fun amidst the trials of life.  
We've really been living.

For this anniversary, we knew we wanted to take a few days for ourselves...alone, without children.    (Yes, in the past we have spent a few anniversaries on trips with the kiddos...and it was great!)


However, we recently had to pay for a new roof for our home:

 

 

So we needed to do something inexpensive. 

We opted for Colorado Springs,  which is only an hour or so from where we live.
I have to say, we had SUCH a great time.

We ate out, we slept in, we saw the sights ...and just enjoyed the freedom of no schedule.
Oh, how we enjoyed that!




Colorado Springs is a neat place- and there is plenty to see and do.  
Tons of history in a beautiful setting.

One fun thing we did was visit the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.
Now, I have been to many zoos in my life-  the zoos in Portland, OR, Albuquerque, NM, Boise, ID, San Diego, CA, and Denver, CO to name most of the larger ones.   Of those, I'd have to say that Albuquerque has always been my favorite.
However, I think Cheyenne Mountain has taken that spot.

The setting is beautiful and you could spend all day there just looking at the scenery and enjoying a picnic lunch.  

We loved that the animals were more accessible than the average zoo.   They even have the tigers and monkeys trained for demonstrations of their abilities/breed features. 
(Trained for treats, not like the circus!)


One of the highlights was feeding and petting giraffes.

We got a kick out of the baby nursing on his momma...

...and big brother or sister getting in on the share.

There's a tram you can ride up over the zoo.  The view is beautiful!

We stopped for a picture.  You do things like that on anniversary trips.

A few more pictures from the day at the zoo:

I'll post more later on another wonderful place we visited!