This is my last post about our Nashville vacation. If you missed my other posts, you can find them here and here.
Saturday, May 25th was our final vacation day for this trip, and we were kind of all over the board with what we wanted to do with our day. We had intentionally left it open in case something came up that we just had to do. Well, the only thing that the kids really, really wanted to do was visit the LEGO store in the mall where we had eaten at The Rainforest Cafe, so that was first on the agenda for Saturday morning.
We knew we would not be returning to our hotel, so we packed everything and loaded all our stuff in the van before heading out that morning. It worked out just right because the LEGO Store didn't open until 10:00am.
My kids have tons of LEGO, but they had never been to a LEGO store. They loved it!
Bren and a LEGO baseball player
Brooke
Brianna
Brecklyn
Brianna built Grampy and G-Jo at the minifig building station. I think someone was missing her grandparents :-).
The store is not that big, but we ended up spending about an hour there! The kids just loved exploring and dreaming and shopping, and they were super pumped when we let them each pick out a small set to buy.
Earlier in the week, Chris and I had been discussing how Kentucky was less than two hours north of Nashville and none of our kids had ever been to Kentucky before. We asked them if they'd be interested in driving to Kentucky for lunch, and we were met with a resounding YES! So north to Kentucky we went!
Brecklyn, Brianna, Brooke, and Brenson
Brianna took this photo for us :-)
We located a town called Franklin just about five miles north of the Tennessee/Kentucky border, and determined that is where we would eat lunch. Everyone was in the mood for Mexican food, and Franklin did not disappoint with a Mexican restaurant.
Yay for El Petrero!
The kids saw this "mural" on the wall and couldn't decide what it was. I finally told them it was the shape of the state of Kentucky!
Brecklyn and Brooke
After lunch, we stopped at a few gas stations looking for a patch for Brenson for his patch collection. Sadly, we had no luck. Before we got too far down the road, though, we stopped at the Tennessee welcome center as we were crossing back into Tennessee.
Brecklyn, Brenson, Brooke, and Brianna
Bri took this pic, too!
It was about a three hour drive from Franklin, Kentucky back to my brother's house in Tennessee where we would spend the night. The kids crashed out on the drive, and we were back at my bro's house by about 4:30 that afternoon.
Once we got back with my brother's family, the guys all went to a nearby town to eat dinner at a catfish restaurant while the girls stayed in town and had dinner at a local diner. Almost as soon as the guys got back in town, it was bath time and bed time for all the kids, and Chris and I weren't too far behind.
On Sunday morning, we all got up and went to church with Shawna, JT, Mallory, and Kaylee. Jeremy was preaching at a congregation about an hour and a half away, so we said our goodbyes to him before he left. After church, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at Jack's, then hit the road for home. We knew we had about eight hours of driving time ahead of us, so we wanted to get started ASAP.
Our drive home was fairly smooth, minus some traffic slow downs that cost us some time. The kids slept for a several hours in the van which was nice.
We stopped quickly at Taco Bell for dinner (we actually just went through the drive-thru so we could keep trucking down the road), and crossed into Oklahoma at dusk. With all of the horrible flooding that was occurring, we didn't know if our usual route would even be open, but thankfully it was. We drove over the Arkansas River on our way home, and the severe flooding was mind blowing! I took a video for well over two minutes of the water out of its banks as we were travelling 70 miles per hour down the highway. Further into our journey - when we crossed the river again in Muskogee - we looked out to see so many houses that looked like floating roofs in the water. There were many people who lost all of their earthly possessions in this flood.
Finally, just before 10:00pm, we pulled into our driveway at home. We love going, seeing, and exploring, but it's also always wonderful to be back home. We had planned our trip to get home on Sunday partially because Monday was Memorial Day and Chris had the day off work. That gave us a whole day to get unpacked and settled back in at home. We had a fantastic trip and are so thankful we had the opportunity to go!
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