Road Trip!

We took a somewhat spontaneous road trip this past weekend- aren’t you proud of us?! John woke up on Monday or Tuesday and asked, “You wanna go to Opryland?” Well, it doesn’t take any arm twisting for me to agree to go to Nashville, especially Opryland. Pre-HG, John and I would go all the time, and we were excited to watch her explore all the different atriums. We packed up on Saturday morning and were on our way! She entertained herself pretty well with Tangled and Beauty and the Beast and passed out about an hour from Nashville, which ended up to be the only nap she had that day. Once she got there, she never slowed down. She wanted to ‘esplore’ (explore). She had a ball running up and down the stairs and walkways, riding the escalators over and over, taking a boat ride around the Delta, and giving us that sweet smile and a ‘peeeease’ to get pizza, ice cream, a teddy bear…basically anything she wanted.

I did note that it was hard to explain to a two year old what a hotel was. The last time that she stayed in a hotel, she was not quite one and doesn’t remember it, so she was a little confused. When bedtime came around, she was MAD. She wanted to go home, go to Mommy’s house, go to her bed…anywhere but the hotel. Pretty pitiful, but with the help of Tangled, she finally fell asleep around 9:00. We were woken up rather rudely in the 5 o’clock hour on Sunday morning with a siren and voice over the loud speaker telling us the emergency was clear and we could return to our rooms….yet we had never heard a warning telling us to vacate. We never did figure out what that was about, but there wasn’t much sleep after that bellowing wake up call. We got up and headed off to search for coffee and chocolate. After breakfast, she gallivanted a while longer, and then after we got the ‘No more pictures!,’ we got the ‘I wanna go home.’ We gathered our things and headed back to sweet home Mississippi.

She’s been telling everyone about her ‘road trip,’ and I think we all really enjoyed getting out of town for a bit, although we all three were feeling a little under the weather. It was a nice change of scenery and fun to be together. We did learn a valuable lesson though- never take a trip without grandparents!! What were we thinking! ;)

“Road trip!” She loved the patio outside our room, overlooking the Garden Atrium. She didn’t want me to come out there with her at first. But she finally agreed to let me join her. Ready to “esplore” Running around like a wild child “Look at that flag, riiiight there, Mommy!” Waiting on the boat ride YummmmOur cute little dinner date…the girl eats all the cucumber out of my sushi rolls. We’ve started asking for a small side of cucumber just for her. She moved on to mutilating her apple slices with her chopsticks. We knew it was time to go when she pulled the tablecloth over her head… Fascinated by the water light show “Mommy, LOOK!”Bedtime meltdown  More exploringBreakfast of champs:  chocolate chip cookies Chasing Mommy Goldfish Random meltdown…almost time to go Ok, now she’s over it.She wasn’t crazy about the waterfalls.The many faces of Helen Grace…Silly Sweet and demure Sassafras A heart for Daddy Wild Mommy’s girl Precious angel