Nashville and Birthday Palooza number 2!

A long time ago, my brother called me.  Doesn't sound big, but he doesn't call often.   I love him, he loves me, we just don't chat on the phone.  Anywhoooooo....he called and said he wanted to try to have the whole family get together in the summer, and he thought it would work great if we met somewhere in the middle when Kendra and I made our trek home from Michigan to Texas.  My sister and her hubs LOVE Nashville, and I had wanted to go for a long time, so we decided to go there.  My mom and her husband, my sis and her fam, and Kendra and I all took off from Michigan and my brother and his fam drove up from where they live in Alabama.  We spent a long weekend together in Music City!!!!

Friday:  Erin's fam and Kendra and I actually left on Thursday and spent the night in Louisville.  Jack had "business" there, so his company picked up that tab that night.  So we arrived in Nashville just after lunch time Friday, and the rest wouldn't be there until the evening.  We got settled in at our hotel--we stayed at a Drury Inn which allowed dogs (because our hound comes with us to Michigan, and well, we couldn't just leave him there when we were going home!).  They were very reasonably priced and had a great hot breakfast daily, as well as a dinner thing called a "kickback"----it was mostly bad-bad-BAD-for-you food (nachos, potato bar, hot dogs) but it was FREE and with all the kids we had, we took advantage!

After checking in we headed down for the first view of downtown Nashville for Kendra and I .  We went to some of the favorite Honky Tonks of the Garnett crew and heard some decent live music. 

Erin and Jack

The Friday early crew.  Please note my cowboy boots.  A big splurge for me on this trip!

Girlies upstairs listening to the band.

My mom and Troy got stuck in a traffic from a major accident and my brother got stuck at work longer than he hoped, so both of them didn't arrive til pretty late.  We just hung out at the pool, ate the "kickback" food (and felt gross afterward) and waited for them all.

Saturday:

We started the morning by taking a tour of the Opryland Hotel.  This place is stunning!  It is really a city unto itself.   It was amazing to think that it was devastated by the Nashville floods last year.  Apparently the waters reached the 2nd floor rooms.  Wow.

Bama, Papa and the grandkids

Us three kids:  my brother Brendan, sister Erin, and me

Kendra and mom

I thought this was a cool photo op--if I was a better photog the lighting would have been considered!

All the kiddos!

After the Opryland tour, we grabbed a quick Wendy's lunch and headed to downtown.  Our mission was Tootsies---a honky-tonk that does "open auditions" every Saturday afternoon.   My two nephews are A-MAZE-ING drummers.  I'm not just being  a bragging aunt.  Seriously.  Jack is 13 years old, and he played at Tootsies two years ago.  He played two songs, with his dad singing one of them.  Rocked the house.  People around me were talking in amazement while I sat with a foolish grin on  my face.   

Then my nephew Luke stepped up.  He is seven years old.  SEVEN.  I'm going to let my brother's words explain these two boys.  My brother is a drummer, as is my dad.  So they know more than the average Joe about evaluating talent in that arena.  Brendan says that Jack is excellent--he will listen to what others will tell him to help him be even better.  He is awesome and will continue to get even more awesome.  But Luke.  He says Luke is unteachable.  At first that sort of offended my sister.  But then he explained.  He said that Luke has innate talent and nobody is going to teach him anything.  Crazy good.   Here's another thing about Luke.  He is not a fan of having people's eyes on him.  His whole life he's been like that---he gets really shy sometimes.  But not with drums!  He got up and played while his dad sang, and there was not one inch of space to stand in that room.     Luke was jamming so hard he broke a stick!  He did not break rhythm one bit--and the house drummer just handed him a new stick and he kept on going!!!!  Let me tell you how awesome it was to be in that audience hearing all these people talking about my two nephews.  We're not supposed to be prideful, but I'm telling ya, I had me some serious PRIDE!  I took video, but no pics.

Saturday night:  a rare treat for me...a night out with my siblings and their spouses without the kids.  Downtown we went again after we fed the kids and left them to swim to their hearts content with Bama and Papa.  Lots of the Honky Tonks allow children to come in up until about 7 p.m., but there are several that don't allow kids during the day at all.  Those are some of Jack and Erin's favorite places to go, so we got all gussied up for nightlife and went out.  Sadly the music was disappointing that night---sometimes you find tremendous talent and sometimes not.  This was a "not" night.  But we still had fun.

Sunday:  Jack and Erin love Sunday mornings in Nashville because lots of times the places have talent who sing the old country stuff, which they love.  So again, we headed downtown.  This was Kendra's real birthday!!!  And what she wanted to do most of all was shop.  So some folks sat and listened to music and some of us shopped.  Kendra really, really wanted a cowboy hat.  She had birthday money from Uncle B and Bama, so we went looking.  She found this great hat for a very reasonable price:

We met The King while shopping  :-)

The plan for the day also involved an ice cream to celebrate the birthday, and we went to a Sanders ice cream shop.  My mom was in hog heaven because when she was a teenager she used to scoop Sanders ice cream at one of their shops.  She loved telling the stories to the grandkids.

Our last stop for the afternoon was at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville, where the two-person band called Kendra up to the stage to sing Happy Birthday to her.

As we had eaten the "kickback" dinners two nights in a row, we had planned to go to a restaurant called Demos's, which by Jack and Erin's account had excellent food for fairly cheap.  It was delicious!  I swear the bread had some addictive substance in it.  Our waitress was outstanding---so much so that I asked for a manager to tell him how great she was.  We had a blast and ate well, and Kendra got to have a delicious birthday dinner complete with singing and dessert!

The girlies before dinner

At the restaurant for K's birthday

The yummy cake which Kendra shared with all her cousins! 

Sunday night:  After we got back to the hotel we hung out for a while and let the kids swim one last time.  My BIL Jack said we had to have a Senorita Sendoff in their suite--I'm not sure how he came up with the name but it stuck!  We all gathered to say our goodbyes.  It was not pretty.  You see, most of the time, Kendra and I say goodbye to my sister's family at their house and drive off and do the same with my mom and Troy.  They never deal with the wreckage that is my daughter as we leave them.  Well, this time, they saw, and she started quite the avalanche.  Kendra started crying, then Tessa, then my sister, then my mom....it was a hot mess.  But then it got worse because poor little Luke, the youngest little buddy, lost it.  Just lost it.  Luke really bonded with my brother's son, Briggs, this trip and he was not happy to have to leave him after only a few days.  It took him a good hour to calm down, my sister later told me.  Sigh.

I'm really glad my brother called and made this suggestion.  I think we might try a different place next year---it would be fun to explore other locations.  Heck, the kids would be more than happy to just hang out and swim all day long.  As long as they get to be together, that's all that counts.