Ed's Birthday Surprise Day 2

Happy Birthday Ed!!!! After a restful night's sleep in the cabin, we awoke on Sunday morning to sunshine and birthday gifts!! Ed was a good boy this year and managed to NOT open gifts that arrived in the mail from friends and family until his actual birthday. He dove right in and got himself some awesome loot that included many a Best Buy gift card (courtesy of Joe and Sue), the PlayStation 3 Move console (from yours truly), a game for this new game console (thank you John and Adriana) and a book that he asked for. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he actually asked for a book. :) It helped that along with this book, there was some cash to put towards his MacBook Pro (thanks Mom M.)!

In addition to his birthday gifts were 2 more clues meant to reveal the day's activity. Sorry there are no pics - was too excited to unveil the surprise that I simply forgot! The clues were this...


...and this.After much speculating about going to a water park, I came clean and revealed that we were going tubing down the Shenandoah River!!! This made him very happy ~ I think he immediately put his water shoes on at that moment!

Before hitting the river we needed some grub so we headed back to Uncle Buck's for a country breakfast. Well...not so much country, but it was mighty fine eats! It was then off to the home of the Down River Canoe Company to pick up our tubes and floating cooler for our lazy river ride. More amazing views ensued on the drive there!

All I have to say was that the day was AWESOME!!! The sun was shining and the river water was nice and cool - it was the perfect afternoon. :) I'd show you the photos of our experience, but they are being held hostage by the Walgreen's Photo Technician until next week so you will have to wait. For the moment...pretend this is us:


The only real difference was that our tubes were yellow, we did not have a child with us and that we lugged a big red floating cooler for all the snacks and beverages I packed. The whole experience took about 3 hours ~ and I can tell you we enjoyed every minute of it. Well, except for the last 30 minutes where we were being attacked by swarms of gnats...but other than that it was great. I will have more details about our river trip once the photos are in my hand.

After cleaning up and changing out of our wet bathing suits we headed into town for some lunch at Artisan's Grill and then back to the cabin to rest and relaxation before heading out to dinner later that night. Remember when I said that we technically had birthday dinner the night before at the Local Chop & Grill House since they were closed on Sunday? Well, a lot of things are closed on Sunday when you are in the country. And if they are not closed, then they are quite dead around 8 pm which was about the time we landed at Sonny's Place Restaurant & Pub for dinner. This is what it looked like when we arrived:


This places was listed 3rd best restaurant in the area on Urban Spoon (Uncle Buck's is #1, Artisan's Grill is #2) so I figured we would give it a try. They are known for their BBQ and I have to say, Sonny's DELIVERED! I ordered the baby back ribs and Ed had the Brisket sandwich and both were REALLY good. I wanted to take a bath in the BBQ sauce that drenched the ribs! You can tell that everything was home made from the mac and cheese to the brownie in the birthday sundae we had after dinner. All in all, dinner was a success.


After dinner we headed back to the cabin, caught the latest episode of "The Killing" on AMC (great show BTW!) and hit the sack. Another good day was had by all in the Shenandoah Valley!