The Start of Summer

A seven week trip across the country with 2 small children..... We have gotten two types of responses from people when they hear what we are doing. Response #1: They look at us like we are crazy and can think of nothing pleasurable that is going to come out of it. Response #2: They are very excited for us and say they wish they could go do something like that too. I am leaning in favor of response #2 and pray that by the end of the summer I am still thinking this was a good idea. "Why?", you ask would we go and do this. Well, here it is.... I don't know that we will ever get another opportunity like this. Paul just finished school and is still working from home, so he is able to take his work on the road and do it from anywhere. We don't know how much longer he will have his current job flexibility. Halie and Austin don't have any obligations this summer. And, Texas is hot in the summer time, it's a perfect time to go see other places and enjoy some cooler weather!

Friday, July 2nd, Day 1:

Today we leave for the lake house. We are stopping there and spending the night and then heading out to Tennessee tomorrow. I spend all day packing, getting everything ready and the house cleaned up. Paul gets done with work at 3pm and goes to start packing up the car and the car top carrier we borrowed from Nana and Papa. "Where are the keys to the cartop carrier?" Paul asks (I am the one who went and picked it up from the storage closet) "I don't know. I didn't know it had a key" I respond. After a trip to Nana and Papa's house in McKinney, the lost key was found!!! And 2 hrs later, the car got packed up and we are headed to the lake.

My cousin from St. Louis, Scott, his wife Jenn and their two kids, Emma and Owen were at the lake for the 4th. Halie and Emma hit it off and had a great time playing together. They were both pretty sad when it was time to go. They are a fun family to hang out with, so it was a great start to the trip!

Saturday, July 3rd- Day 2: Drive to Nashville

We got in the car around 1ish on the 3rd and headed east. We made it to Nashville by about midnight. We stopped in Memphis to have dinner. I had gotten onto Food Network to check out a good place to eat and so we were headed to Tom's BBQ, it had 5 star reviews from all who had eaten there. We plugged the address into our new gps system on our fancy new phones (I think we were the last people in the world to have flip phones!) and followed directions. Then we started to notice the scenery around us and were pretty sure that even if we made it out of the restaurant unscathed, we were 100% sure our bikes attached to the back of the car would no longer be there, so we kept driving. Eventually we found food elsewhere and made it to Nashville in one piece - the bikes did too!

Sunday, July 4th - Day 3

At our first hotel stay, we got upgraded to the executive suite, which was the size of about 4 regular hotel rooms! We told Halie not to expect this at every hotel! It was nice to have plenty of room though! The next day we went to Centennial Park in downtown and let the kids run and play. We saw the Pantheon in the center of the park, it is the only to scale, replica of the one in Greece.

That evening we went downtown for the Fourth of July celebration. They had a big festival and a concert. There were over 100,000 people there, so it was too crowded to get close to the music, but we had a good time walking around and eating ice cream! That night we saw the most incredible fireworks show ever! We weren't quite sure when the finale was, because the entire show was like most finales I have seen. It was beautiful. Again, we told Halie not to expect to see fireworks like that ever again!

Monday, July 5th - Day 4

On our way out of Nashville we stopped to see one of my friends, Deanna, who lives just outside of Nashville. We had a great visit with her and got to go see her beautiful house of 4 acres of land in the rolling hills of Tennessee.

Just a few hours down the road and we got to Chattanooga! The drive was absolutely amazing! A winding highway through the Smoky Mountains, something off of a postcard... This is a really neat town. Lots to do, pretty, nice people.

We are staying at the Choo Choo Hotel, it's an old train station they turned into a hotel. The kids like it, there are trains everywhere!

Tuesday, July 6th - Day 5
Today we went to the Aquarium and it was amazing. Halie loved it! Here is Austin at the end of the day, he was pretty worn out from all that walking!

They had a butterfly garden with tons of butterflies flying around. I think Halie thought she had found heaven!

They had an amazing display of jellyfish. I know that sounds very strange to get excited about, but they had probably about 10-15 different kinds throughout the display. It amazed me to no end at how creative God was when he created this earth. First of all, he thought to make the jelly fish, but then to come up with that many different types of them, and some that look like they are having an fluorescent light show on them! It was really amazing! (I think I have been using that word alot, sorry)

Tonight we had dinner at the Mellow Mushroom, a pizza place and went and let the kids play in this really neat water feature that runs around the entire aquarium. We had to drag them away at 9:30!

Needless to say, they both fell asleep in a matter of minutes tonight! Off to Ashville tomorrow!