This Weekend's Trip

This past weekend, we loaded up the car and headed up to Nashville for a family visit. A few months ago, we had been invited to join my dad, sister and brother-in-law at the Auburn-Vanderbilt game, so we planned a trip around that.

Friday night, we got to go see my sister's new house. Ashley and Jeff closed on it at the end of July, but this was the first chance I had gotten to see it. It is so cute and just perfect for the two of them. An added bonus to that night was that my parents took the kids home to put them in bed and gave us a chance to hang out with Jeff, Ashley and some of their friends who were also coming in for the game. The group was slightly diverse and to avoid making any conversation alienating to any people, we ended up playing a group version of one of those get-to-know-you emails. We had such a blast discussing our favorite cereals, our favorite sounds, would you bungee jump, do you untie your shoes when you take them off, and more of the unrelated such. We laughed, we got off subject and we got to know each other (which was helpful to Craig and I who didn't know 3 of the 5 other people there). We stayed up way late (which doesn't happen too often) and eventually headed back to my parents' house.

Saturday - Game Day!!! Craig and I are HUGE college football fans. We would love to be able to veg in front of the tv each Saturday to watch the teams go at it. We don't get to go to very many games, so we were really excited about enjoying one. We met Jeff, Ashley and their group of friends at a good parking spot and walked over to the Vandy campus and into the field. We even got there early enough to get shaker from the cheerleaders!! Unfortunately, the next few hours were very painful as we watched our team break out quickly into the lead and then collapse. Few first down, even fewer positive yards and even fewer highlights. We lost, by one point (which was a result of missed extra point). I'll give credit where credit is due - Vandy played quite a game and they were great sports as we walked in front of a few frat houses on the way back to our cars. That evening was painful, excruciatingly painful. But the visit over all was great!!

Ready for the game!!!

Kirk Herbstreit during pregame for GameDay and the kickoff

WARRRRRRRRRR EAGLE - HEY!!!!!

Auburn NOT scoring on our first drive, but then getting the first score the next time down the field

The crowd, but can you find the two smiley happy girls waving in the middle - that would be Christy and Ashley

Sunday morning, we loaded back up in the car and headed back home - didn't we just do this trip? We love the car dvd player. It is a great blessing to bring a little bit of peace and quiet to a long drive. It was fun to watch the girls watch their movies. Kalyn got scared a couple of times and would cover her eyes (kind of) while still trying to watch the movie. At one point, we looked back and saw Trinity's dog on her head. We aren't sure why, but it was there. It even fell down a couple of times and she would promptly put it back up there. Xander knew how to use his little travel pillow, but it stilled looked a little painful. Another big blessing on the way home was getting gas - we found it for only $3.34 a gallon. I just had to take a picture of it. We had been in a fairly big gas shortage right before we left, so it was great to fill up at a good price before we headed back into town (not knowing what we would encounter).

We arrived home just in time to meet my in-laws for lunch and an afternoon visit. They are in the midst of building their new home (after a tornado destroyed it in May) and they wanted to show us their new countertops, cabinets and pictures. After a yummy lunch, Xander, Kalyn and I were dropped off at home for an afternoon nap while the other 4 headed to Home Depot for some appliance shopping. That evening, Charles Ray and Glenda stayed around late enough to give them some one-on-one time with the grandkids while Craig and I headed out for Sunday night RUSH (the youth worship time that we volunteer with). It was quite a full day, a full weekend for that matter. However, it was great and we probably wouldn't have changed very much (except for that sad description of a game on Saturday night - but there's always next week, right?)