Tour de Nashville

Happy Memorial Day everyone.

I'm thankful for a day off so that we can recover from our vacation! Do you ever feel like your vacations are so busy that you need to take a few days to recover afterwards? Funny thing, isn't it, how busy we keep ourselves.

We are also all sick, all 3 of us, although my boys are much worse than me, at least for now. Good thing, because neither one of them are very pleasant when they're sick, and at least I still feel good enough to help them a little bit. Just head colds, sinus pressure kinda thing. But the whole runny nose, sore throat, headache thing is no fun. Noah's never really had a sore throat before, that I know of, but I'm pretty sure he does now, because he's doing this little "fake cough" thing, that almost sounds like he's just playing, but then he gets irritated and fussy. So I'm taking that as the sign that his throat is sore and he's just never felt it before. Poor thing. His nose is a faucet. Snot bubbles are gross. Enough of the details, back to the fun trip.

We tried our best to squeeze everyone in during our recent trip to Nashville. First, let me just say we have been looking forward to this time away SOOOOO much. Probably Matt much more than me, because of the busyness of his job, but we have been ready for time with family and good friends for a long while now. The main point of the trip began with a golf tournament, with of course time to see aunts and an uncle on the side :-)... but then the weekend turned into a reunion of sorts for Matt and his college buddies. It was so, so nice. Everything went about as smoothly as it could have and we got to see a little bit of everybody.

We flew in on Wed. morning so we could catch Aunt Jess before she left for a weekend of her own with some girls. We spent Wed. with both sides of the fam, playing around the campus of TNU (Noah LOVES the fountains and all the steps, as if that is a surprise!) and then going to dinner at Pei Wei. Yum. Then Matt left earrrrly Thurs. for the golf tournie and Noah and I stayed at TNU with Carrie/Jess. Between Thurs. and Frid., Matt got to play 90 holes of golf (I think that's 4 rounds of 18 and two rounds of 9, if you're trying to figure it out!) with his best friends in the world, and I'm not sure what he enjoyed more, the golf or the company. Noah and I went to lunch with the Aunts on Friday at a cute little sandwich place called Which Wich, then to Centennial Park and Opry Mills Mall with Carrie. After the marathon golf tournie, Matt and I met up with some of his friends for a little C & C: (Starbucks Coffee and Conversation). Carrie kept Noah, since we were out till midnight.

Sat. we met the Harveys--Matt's adoptee family while he was in college--for lunch at Chile's, then the friends at the mall (again), and then our evening culminated with a BBQ and hanging out at the Twinings. Adam and Christie were very gracious to have us all over and share their enormous collection of toys with Noah and Paul. Who, by the way, are basically the same size all the way down to the 2x wide shoes from StrideRite. I found them pretty cute together. Not that they played together--in fact, I don't think they really could have cared less about the other the whole evening. But WE know they'll one day be "Friends". Our night continued with the new Indiana Jones movie and once again we returned home after midnight, now exhausted after 2 late nights in a row. And a bit disappointed with the movie. :-(

Sunday was just as I expected it to be: we filled up a whole row at Nashville First Church and then 6 or 7 tables pushed together at the best TexMex in the Mid-East, SATCO (SanAntonioTacoCompany). I don't remember a single time in Nashville without at least A visit to SATCO. It's truely a MUST GO. After a casual hour or two of queso and conversation, we girls said our goodbyes and the fellows headed out for one more 9-hole of golf--on a count of Daniel, supposedly. But that brings us to a whopping total of 99 holes in just 4 days. That trumps the 3 trips I made to Walmart in 3 days while in TN.

As I said in the beginning, we were soooo ready for this trip, and we were not disappointed. It was a good balance of seeing friends, seeing some sights, spending times with family, and relaxing, just a bit. Noah had a BLAST with the Aunts and it was nice to finally get to introduce him to our friends and see their kids again. It appears Noah picked up a few new habits, like his new cheesy smile and sticking his finger deep into your nasal cavity. I'll leave you with one of the photos as an example, and then I'll add some when I get Carrie's photos because she has several great ones. What a little goof he is now!