Anniversary Trip

Mike and I took a trip to Nashville by ourselves to celebrate our 10th anniversary. (Hannah and Will went camping with Dad and Joan while Andrew stayed with Melanie.) It was sooo nice being by ourselves. It's been a LLLOOONNNGGG time. We stayed at the Sheraton Music City Hotel in a beautiful room. The rates for this hotel run around $169/night. I got a great deal through Priceline.com and paid only $55/night. It was close to the things we wanted to do and see and was fairly easy to get to. At first, I was concerned because it was close to the airport. But, then I realized that we live close to an airport and hear planes all the time. To be honest, I rarely heard any flying over except on occasion while we were walking to the van.

We arrived close to 10 and got settled into our room. The next morning, we didn't wake up until after 9 a.m. It's been a really long time for us BOTH of us to sleep that late (usually one of us is up with the kids while the other sleeps a bit longer). After eating a late breakfast/early lunch at Shoney's, Mike and I toured the Hermitage, President Andrew Jackson's home. The brochure recommends you allow about two hours to do the tour. We spent 3 1/2 hours looking around and didn't see everything. They have a wilderness trail that is about 3/4 mile long that we decided to skip. I was tired, hot and thirsty and didn't feel like walking any further. After cooling off in the hotel room for a bit, we enjoyed a late dinner at the Santa Fe Cattle Co. The food was great and it reminded us of a Lone Star or Texas Roadhouse restaurant.

Since the Opryland Hotel was close by, I wanted to show Mike just how awesome this place was. We were really disappointed to find out that they charge you $18 just to park your car in self-parking (they also have valet parking which I knew would be even more expensive). So, since visiting the hotel was out of the question, we drove over to the Opry Mills Mall. But, the parking lot was extremely crowed so we left and went back to the hotel.

Sunday morning we woke up early and had a short workout in the Fitness Center. Mike and I ate breakfast in the restaurant then loaded up the van and checked out. We went back to the Mall and looked around. The Bass Pro Shop there is huge. We spent most of our time looking around it then went through the rest of the mall. We met Dad and Joan on the way home and picked up the kids then went Mel's and got Andrew. Everyone had a blast!!

Tomorrow I'll try to post some of the kids' adventures and the fun Melanie and Andrew had (Nathan went camping with Hannah and Will).