Oh hey! I disappeared, but I’m back again! I actually spent the past several days driving across the eastern US from Houston to Nashville, TN! Yes, I said driving. We left Wednesday evening and drove to Shreveport, LA where we spent the night! It was Chloe’s first time outside of the state of Texas and her first night in a hotel.
Before this journey, her longest time in the car was 4 hours on our drive up to Dallas. Because of traffic, it took about 5 1/2 hours for us to get to Shreveport. Ali, Chloe and I went to bed, while the girls and mom went down to the casino to have a little fun with the penny slots before hitting the hay.
Thursday morning we woke up and took our sweet time. We were in no rush and just wanted to enjoy a good breakfast and then hit the casino for 30 minutes since I didn’t play at all the night before. What can I say? I’m a sucker for lights, sounds and fun fish games.
We were back on the road by about 11:30am with a full day’s drive ahead of us. We didn’t get to Nashville until about 9:30pm due to traffic and pit stops. I’ll save you the boring details of the drive, but I have to brag about Chloe because she was such a trooper!
Friday we had another low key morning. After we had breakfast, we headed into downtown to go to the Country Music Hall of Fame!
The Hall of Fame was amazing! We spent several hours there and it was well worth our $25!
We saw Taylor Swift’s rhinestone guitar, Elvis Presley’s 24K gold piano and walls and walls of gold and platinum records!
Chloe was a hoot! She walked around with Emily and very intently looked at everything that she was looking at. Almost as if she was interested in what she was seeing. She didn’t fuss one little bit and eventually fell asleep snuggling her Auntie Em.
My favorite part of the CMHoF was the Taylor Swift Educational Area! We were able to sign up and do a bunch of activities like recording a song and mixing it, creating a CD cover, mad libing lyrics and figuring out what our role on the musical team would be! I would be the tour manager in case you’re wondering.
I had to have a picture with Tay’s “tour bus.” Duh. Here’s my awesome mad libbed song. It’s all about being bedazzled.
We ended up at Merchants which had great variety like barbecue, salads, cheese grits and awesome grilled cheese sandwiches. Everyone loved their meals and clearly I had grilled cheese. Yum!
Chloe was hilarious at lunch. She has started to find her voice and was chatting away while we were there. We were in a corner booth so I propped her up in the corner which she clearly loved. There is nothing better than baby chatter and smiles.
While sitting in Chloe’s corner, she may have had a pretty serious pooslosion. It was intense and got all over her adorable turkey outfit! Luckily it happened at the end of our meal, so I cleaned her up and we went back to the car to change her clothes. It was also time for us to meet up with the guys! My mom dropped us off at their hotel and took Chloe with her to go visit her brother!
The guys arrived shortly after we were dropped off. They drove up from New Orleans that morning and they were ready to get out and going. First stop, Hattie B’s Hot Chicken. Ali and I shared a kids meal since we weren’t too hungry from our late lunch, but we had to try this Nashville favorite! Then we headed back to Broadway to go honky-tonkin’!
There were so many Aggies in Nashville that is was like a reunion. We literally took over the city and it was AWESOME. Ali and I were trying to stay up long enough to make it to midnight yell. Since we got to the bars around 8pm, we had a while to go. I’m proud to say that we did it! But we didn’t technically make it to midnight yell. It was packed! The bar filled up and the line was blocks long! All the girls decided to grab a cab and head back to our hotel since there wasn’t a chance we’d get in the bad and we’d been bar hopping for 4 hours. Apparently, everyone did the yells from outside and the cops came because they didn’t understand why there were so many people yelling! Kind of awesome and it makes me so proud to be an aggie!
Saturday morning, Mom, Emily, Chloe and I went to visit with my Uncle JD, Aunt Anne and our cousins Kimmie and Rhonda! We had breakfast and coffee with them and spent a couple of hours catching up! Their dogs absolutely loved Chloe and were always concerned with every sound and movement she made.
It was a quick visit, but I’m glad we were able to squeeze it in while we were in town.
Then we had to head back to the hotel to get ready for game day and grab lunch before heading back downtown to meet up with the guys to tailgate!
Chloe was super lovey while at lunch and I had to share these pictures. She recently started giving kisses and nuzzling into my shoulder. So. In. Love!
I think she knew her momma was going to leave again because she was very clingy which was fine with me.
Once downtown, we started at a bar called Jed’s since it was cold and rainy. We had a few drinks and waited out the rain before heading to our friends’ tailgate across the street! I got to see tons of my college friends and we even made a few new friends! A organization called Warrior Events was tailgating in the same area. They bring soldiers and firefighters that were wounded in action to children’s hospitals and do charity work and fundraisers for them. Of course, they find a way to couple the children’s events with some sort of spotting event! It was awesome to talk to these heroes and hear their stories.
As always, tailgating was a success, but this is one of the coldest game days I’ve ever experienced. The wind was whipping around about about 10-20 mph and temps we 35-40 degrees. By the end of the game it was 35 but felt like 28!
Luckily we were all bundled up, but let’s be honest, it didn’t stop us from freezing our butts off and complaining…a bit. The Aggies ended up shutting out Vanderbilt 25-0 and we stayed until the bitter end! We sang the war hymn at the end of the game with the team and were on our way back to the hotel to get warm! The boys and Shannon decided to go out, but since I was so cold and had my alarm set for 5:00am, I wasn’t ready to tackle another night on the town.
We made it to bed around 11:30pm and before I knew it my alarm was going off. I had to get up earlier since it took me way longer to get ready. I had to pump, feed Chloe, get both of us ready and then finish packing up the rest of our bags before we hit the road.
I’m so proud of us because we managed to get 6 women and an infant loaded and started driving at 6:30am! We had another LONG day of driving ahead of us. 14 hours and about 4 stops later, we made it back to my parents house in Sugar Land.
It was a fairly quick, busy and overwhelming trip, but so worth it! I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to in Nashville, so it looks like I’ll have to go back again. Next time, you better believe we’re flying!
Have you been to Nashville?
What are your favorite things to do, places to see or restaurants to eat at?
