Tennessee Trip

All summer long Aunt Becky and I have been trying to plan a way for the kids and I to come to Tennessee during the summer! Nehemiah has been extra busy over the past few months and just hired a full time employee so he wasn't able to make the trip with us this time. And traveling alone with 3 kids ALL THE WAY to Tennessee sounded pretty intimidating soooooooo in stepped the BEST Great Aunt of ALL TIME... Aunt Nelwyn! The kids and I headed to her house in Homer, LA a couple of weeks ago after church on Sunday morning and picked her up and we drove to Little Rock, AR that night! There's pretty much nothing between Homer and Little Rock so we were ECSTATIC to find this amazing Sonic that had a playground and sand volleyball court right next to our hotel!! We ate dinner and let the kids play for a long time! 

The next morning we got up and got dressed for the second leg of our trip... Next Stop: NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE! We went down and ate breakfast and headed back to our room to get our bags and then the most dramatic part of our trip happened. 
The kids were standing on this luggage cart as we waited for the elevator. The elevator seemed to be taking a while so we had been standing there for a few minutes when I turned around and noticed Ella's hand was on the fire alarm and she had pulled it down. She had NO idea what she was doing or what was about to happen. When I saw her hand on it, I gasped and said "ELLA!" and then Aunt Nelwyn and I just looked at each other with huge eyes and in my head I was thinking "well maybe the alarm isn't going to go off since it's not happening yet......" and before I finished that thought... THE ALARM STARTED BLARING. It was LOUD and Ella started crying INSTANTLY. Aunt Nelwyn stayed with the girls while Luke and I RAN downstairs to tell the staff what had happened. (We never even considered that they probably saw it all on camera! lol) So Luke and I took off running to the nearest set of stairs and when I got to the bottom of them WE WERE OUTSIDE... hahaha. I just assumed that the stairs would lead to the lobby but they led to side of the hotel. So once I figured out WHERE WE WERE we ran all the way around the building to the lobby and the staff already knew about our little firefighter who planned a sneak attack fire drill for the entire hotel. lol
The staff was SO nice and helpful. I said "It was one of our kids on the third floor!"  and the lady just said "Don't worry, we're taking care of it!" So sweet! Anyway, AS SOON AS they got the alarm turned off and the elevator started working again, Aunt Nelwyn brought our luggage down and checked us out and apologized for our eventful morning... while the kids and I escaped down the stairs and avoided the lobby like the plague! haha SO EVENTFUL. We laughed and laughed and laughed about it! Ella had NO idea what she was doing and when she was standing on that cart she was literally EYE TO EYE with the fire alarm... but we did talk to her A LOT about the fact that we do not touch or pull fire alarms and what their  purpose is. I'm pretty sure she will NEVER touch or even look at another fire alarm again. She was TERRIFIED. You live and learn. lol

This is a video of the fire alarm going off and you can hear Ella crying.  It's sad but OH MY GOODNESS how loud is it!! I thought I was going deaf!

After a quick and easy (sarcasm)  5 hour drive... We made it to NASHVILLE! Aunt Becky found us THE CUTEST 3 story house to stay in for the night! I should have taken pictures of it because it was ADORABLE. The girls were pretty exhausted when we got there so they were relaxing in the tv room watching Trolls, their latest obsession, while we waited for Ray, Aunt Becky, and Mrs. Candy to get to Nashville!

Luke on the balcony with Ray and Aunt Nelwyn!

After everyone made it to the house, we didn't waste any time! We headed to Blake Shelton's restaurant, Ole Red, for dinner! You can sit on the rooftop so we walked up to get a view of Nashville! I mean, is there a cooler city?!

Ella with Ole Red!

The kids were all pretty tired from our 2 days of traveling so eating with them at the restaurant at their bedtime, was SO FUN. (sarcasm) lol They literally moved around the entire time. Thank goodness it was a loud and laid back restaurant. And where the heck was Blake?!

The light was doing some crazy stuff to our faces in these pictures!

Ok, so we didn't spot Blake, BUT when we walked in to the restaurant there was a band playing and I immediately recognized the guitar player!! Austin Hughes! SOOOOO cool seeing him playing in Nashville and just seeing him in general!!!! I remember him playing in the praise band at church in high school!!! It was so fun catching up with him for a little while!!! You rock, Austin!!

After dinner we went in search for some ice cream but the line was pretty darn long so I told the kids we would get some the next day! haha So we walked around for just a bit and took some pictures!

The next morning we got up and started our quick day in Nashville! We took this picture at the house we stayed at, HOW CUTE?!

For breakfast we headed to the best breakfast spot, The Pancake Pantry!

Cora with her "polka dot" pancakes!

Ella with her "bears in the snow" pancakes!

After we stuffed ourselves at breakfast we headed to Five Daughters Bakery! We were all SO full from breakfast that we couldn't even taste a donut. Aunt Becky grabbed some so we could have some for dessert that night! They were HUGE. And spoiler alert: they are delicious, but extremely rich!
We stayed for a little while and let the kids play at the adorable little play area! I mean, can this be my backyard?!?

Ella and Cora were being photographers and took these pictures of us!

I LOVE THESE UMBRELLA PICTURES!

Oh I forgot Luke had a taste of the one of the donuts before we left! LOL

Our last stop in Nashville was the Red Bicycle coffee shop! We wanted to go to this coffee shop because Aunt Nelwyn and I are fans of the Bachelor and Bachelorette and one of my personal favorites Jojo & Jordan had something to do with this coffee shop! We knew they wouldn't be there but still had to go! When we walked in to the shop Aunt Nelwyn told the baristas that we were there to see Jojo and Jordan and they looked at us like we had 2 heads. hahahaha They said very unenthusiastically  "They don't live here." And we were like WE KNOW. lol Anyway, the coffee shop is ADORABLE and we enjoyed going! After that we headed to Aunt Becky's house!!!

I took too many pictures so I'm breaking up our trip into a couple posts! More coming soon...