The Peach Parents: Road Trippin

Our road trip thus far has been utterly exhausting, but for the most part the good kind of exhausting, where you are happy to worn out and happy to go to bed!

We stayed in Conway AR the first night at our favorite hotel…Country Inn and Suites…we love the rooms, customer service, pool, work out areas and the breakfast is by far the best hotel breakfast we have seen. I woke up early and got in 8 miles on the treadmill before everyone else woke up. Then we showered, ate breakfast and hopped in the car headed to Memphis.

We arrived in Memphis and went to the Bass Pro Shop at the Pyramid to meet our good friend from SWBTS (Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary). She and her two sets of twins were waiting there to show us the fish and other stuffed animals. Her husband was out of town so between the 3 parents we had 7 kiddos…..5 under 4 years of age to wrangle. BUT it was fun. We hadn’t seen Deanna in 5 years….she wasn’t pregnant yet and we had just adopted Goober and Ribbit. She threw us a huge party and also came to Ribbit’s 2 year old birthday party. She stayed with me when Adam went out of the country and we had weekly dates to watch a show that we both loved. Adam and her husband Andy loved watching Harry Potter movies together and the wives loved that we weren’t drug along to watch those J. It was such a sweet, but too short, stop and we left there after 1.5 hours.

We ate lunch from our cooler and arrived in Nashville that afternoon at our friend. We went straight to the Kendricks home, Adam’s friends from college. We have seen them off and on over the past 7 years but normally only one at a time and never with all 3 of their girls. We loaded up all 6 kiddos and headed to a local pool. The kids wore themselves out swimming, showing each other tricks, racing the parents and jumping in. The parents caught up on life…the dad’s in the deep end and the moms in the shallow end with the younger kids. Their oldest is Ribbit’s age and they were instant best friends. They held hands and sat by each other. Ribbit was so happy to have other little girls around. Then we all changed and headed to barTaco ….a newer pace in the revitalized part of Nashville. It was pretty good. The kids shared a large kids tray which had 3 skewers of huge pieces of pineapple and watermelon, a bowl of cucumbers, 3 tacos, 1 quesadilla, a bowl of guacamole and drinks. Adam had the falafel taco, a pork pastor taco and fish taco. I had two pork pastor tacos on a piece of lettuce and spicy cucumber salad….a long with about 3 cups of water as were were THIRSTY!!! The kids were so excited to find a SPRINKLES (the first cupcake bakery) right down the street so we let them choose dessert. All 3 of our kids wanted icecream and all 3 Kendrick girls got cupcakes…..hehe.

This morning I woke up and used the large hill to the Kendrick house for my workout. I did 15 rounds up the hill with a set of either dumbbell rows, deadlifts or manmakers in between each one, totaling up 2 miles. Then I walked down their steet to the high way …on the way back up the hill I did opposite leg toe touches and 3 different plank exercises (a great ab workout) and I loved the scenery!!! Then we headed straight to downtown Franklin. We stopped at Frothy Monkey coffee and the kids got a banana chocolate drink while Adam and I got coffees. We walked around downtown Franklin, checking out the old theater and statues before we headed to the best Farmers Market ever at the Factory. There were so many things to see, taste, do. There were vendors with every kind of handmade goods you can imagine, all kinds of super cute artwork and jewelry….and we TRIED EVERYTHING….we didn’t even need breakfast.

From there we headed to eat lunch at Martins bbq with Adam’s friends from high school who are now practicing attorneys in Nashville. They along with their youngest met us there just in the nick of time….right as we ordered the lunch crowd came in and the line went out the door. It was funny that the last time we were all together was at our weddings…1 year apart. The food there was great and my smoked turkey salad with pecans, cranberries and onions was to die for. The kids loved their brisket and the mini moon pies they gave away. I saw that they had Cheerwine which is like a cherry Dr. Pepper. I drank it a lot during the two summers I worked in NC during college. I let Goober get a glass bottle of it and he loved it too!!!

From there we headed to go some touristy things around Nashville and Lolly met us. We went to Lipscomb, where Adam attended for two years. We went to see the Parthenon and take silly pictures. We went to the Bluebird Café which for me was HUGE as I love country music. We then headed to a little street that Adam remembered from college. There were lots of neat stores and restaurants there. We window shopped, tried weird ice cream flavors at Jeni’s and looked for 2 specific presents---to which we were not successful. Goober surprised me by buying a purse that I liked. He told Adam about it and they agreed that he could use birthday money to buy it. So while I thought Adam and Goober were outside people watching they were actually scheming and Goober was so excited when he handed me my purse. I was speechless and said “ you shouldn’t have done that”…his response was “well I don’t need the money and you wanted it”. What a sweet boy with a big heart.

We settled at Double Dogs for dinner where they serve your food in dogs bowls…not the best in my opinion but the kids liked it J. Now we are en route to Lolly and Captains for a few days and I am honestly stoked to be in one place for more than 4 hours and not living out of our van.