a couple days ago, christen and i celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. it’s hard to talk about anniversaries without instantly sounding cliché or resorting to your standard fare summations of your love for your spouse. so, trying to avoid that as much as possible, i can truly say that i love christen much more now than i did 6 years ago. it’s a different love, but it’s certainly much deeper and much more connective. today, she’s my wife, my best friend, the mother of my children, my confidant, my partner in ministry and the person who keeps me in line.

i could go on and on, but i’ll spare you all the gory details. 🙂

for said anniversary, in spite of our utter brokeness (no, seriously…), i really wanted to get away, if nothing more than a single night. so, i decided to surprise christen with a quick overnight trip to eureka springs. she literally didn’t know where we were going until we were 20 miles outside eureka springs, so it was exciting to actually be able to pull off a surprise (most of the time i either break down and tell her or she figures it out due to my bone-headed job of planning).

i decided that it just made sense to stay at either the famous crescent or basin hotel. as great as the crescent is, i just thought it would make more sense for us to stay at the basin due to the fact that it’s in the heart of downtown. being that we are broke, i was excited to find on the basin website a “name your price” option. so, i gave it a shot. i put a bid in for $75 and within 12 hours, they sent an acceptance and confirmation for a room reservation for $75 (after taxes, which is even better). much to my surprise, when i checked in, the guy at the front counter looked curiously at the computer and told me, “i’m not sure why, but someone upgraded you from a regular room to a jacuzzi suite.” wow. so that was pretty incredible, but then he added, “you know, there’s a better room available, so i’ll go ahead and just give you that room since it’s bigger and has a better view.” so, we got double upgraded and still paid $75. if i looked at the rates correctly, we paid $75 for a $213/night room. amazing.

so, the hotel was incredible and we had a great time in eureka springs. unfortunately, we literally only had 24 hours, but we really made the most of it and it was a good (and much-needed) break from life.

i took some pictures with my iphone that were just of random, interesting things, so i thought i’d share them here.

before i get to the photos, though, i thought i would share—thanks to my recently jailbroken iphone—a little video i shot of my favorite experience of our trip. in basin park, a lot of street musicians (read: hippies), set up and play. when we first arrived, there was a single old man playing violin. this man was dirty and painfully socially awkward-looking. quite frankly, he looked like someone straight off the streets of little rock, which seemed even more compelling and endearing to me. he sat on a bench just playing his slightly out-of-tune violin. it was honestly one of the most beautiful things i’ve heard in a very long time. some of you who know my musical tastes know that i’m an emotional sucker for strings. a deep, emotive string part can move me like nothing else musically. so, his playing along with his compelling visual were simply beautiful. whereas this crappy phone camera doesn’t do any kind of justice, i thought this would at least give you a feel for it.

alright, on to the pictures (by the way, these are straight off my iphone. there’s nothing done to them, so they’re a little iffy on quality…).