::lately::nashville

several weeks ago (labor day weekend),

willow and i were planning to fly to virginia to 

visit my sister .

buttttt...with all my kidney issues right before it,

we decided to postpone.

this momma was up.set.

disappointed was an understatement so 

W promised he'd take us on an adventure.

so to nashville {my second favorite place ever!} it was!

this little girl was the best traveler! 

nana had made us lots of cute things for airplane entertainment

and they worked just as great for a road trip.

we've never been the THE memphis zoo,

so that was a must.

that place is INCREDIBLE!

we saw a fraction of it and were so impressed!

look at how close we got to that bear!

and so many fun water features to play in!

(next time we'll know to bring a swimsuit!)

we got  as far as jackson, TN before we were

ready for some swimming so we stayed the night there.

we had a short drive the next morning and headed straight for the mall of course!

willow loved it! we took turns tag-teaming

so we each got to do a little shopping.

willow STILL talks about this frog every day.

we were so shocked when there were 

NO HOTEL ROOMS WITHIN 100 MILES OF NASHVILLE!!!!!

 at this point we were tired and i still wasn't feeling great

from the kidney stuff so we went to the cutest park to figure out a game plan.

this is one of my favorite areas of nashville with the cutest restaurants

and the park had a little festival going on with music and

bouncy houses, etc so willow was thrilled!

we had planned on staying through the weekend but since we had no options we had

to head home early. :(

we drove for.ever to find a hotel.  

like, hours. 

and then waited more hours for a pizza to be delivered.

(there were no restaurants where we stopped and it was almost 10:00)

the next morning we killed some time at the hotel

because there was a drive thru safari

close by, but as soon as we left for it,

the bottom fell out and it started pouring!

we stopped for lunch to see if it would clear up and it did!

until we got about 15 minutes away from it

and it started pouring again :(

but honestly, it was a great weekend.

we needed that family time and we're fortunate enough to 

be able to get away :)