Several months ago Shaye surprised me with a trip he had planned with Jerron and got my dad and Brandon to go in on it as well and they sent me, Mikkel, my mom and Jessica to Nashville for a girls trip! I seriously had no idea about it and was completely surprised when he told me. They had also got us tickets to the Taylor Swift concert while we were there! Well a couple weeks ago we set out on our great adventure and it was fabulous! I was nervous leaving for so long and I have a hard time doing things like this for myself cause I can always think of a reason I shouldn't. I probably would have never agreed to it if he had asked me. I am so happy he just did as a surprise cause it was the best and most fun I have had in years!!
The first day we headed down town to do a bus tour and see the sites of the city. We found Blake Shelton at the Opry gift shop and he asked me to sing a song with him. He also made me wear that pink hat, haha:)
Seeing the city was fun. It is a nice city and it is actually very very large but somehow has a small town feel. I must say I liked it right from the start.
This is just a peek inside Tootsie's a famous honkie tonk where bands play. There are bars and restaurants all up and down Broadway with live music. It was fun to just walk up and down and here the music.
Then we went to the Country Music Hall of Fame. It was cool to see lots of things from famous artists. My favorite was the Carrie Underwood exhibit. She is a tiny little person it seems. Her clothes look like they could fit a 12 year old!
Some fun stuff from Taylor Swift. It looks like she is extremely tall! That dress would be 5 inches to long for me!
A view of the river and some of the cool bridges.
That first night we went to the Bluebird Cafe for a little singer song writer concert of sorts and a little something to eat. This is a really famous place where people play and some very famous people like Taylor Swift and Garth Brooke's were discovered. It is very hard to get in and you have to make reservations online in advance. It was pretty cool though and the song writers that preformed were very talented!
All of us inside the Bluebird. Did I mention my aunt Lori came too? She met us in Nashville and it was so to have her along with us!
The next day we set out to see a little bit of the country and surrounding areas. We found the Nashville Temple which was cool. Pretty awesome that we have temples dotting the earth these days!!
We found the firefly Grille and had a fabulous lunch there! Mikkel had seen on twitter and Faith Hill said this was her favorite restaurant so we had to check it out. It did not disappoint, it was fabulous! The decorations were so funny and random and there were pictures of famous people plastered all over the walls but most of all the food was fantastic!! Our waitress was great and she told us about some of the different famous people that come in there often it was interesting to hear about them.
From this view it almost looks like a Mexican place or something. Seriously it looked like someone had just thrown stuff all over the ceiling and there were Christmas lights everywhere!
But the food was seriously fabulous. I got the highly recommended mac and cheese. Which is a totally strange choose for me cause I don't really like it but the waitress said it was amazing and so I decided to get it. Wow, it really was so good we all couldn't believe how good it was! We should have thought to take a picture before it was almost gone but Shaye would have LOVED this stuff!
Then that night it was time for the big party! We all got matching Taylor shirts and wore our red pants since it was her "Red Tour".
We all also were rocking the red lipstick and looking fabulous. Now if you think we went all out you are wrong! You should have seen everyone else at this concert. Fully decked out in red and huge lighted up signs or dressed up as other random things. We just blended in or even stood out for not being over the top! ha
After the concert we went to the Wild Horse Saloon and went line dancing! It was so fun and it was a funny place. The women's restroom was cracking me up. There was an attendant lady that would turn on the water for you and get you some paper towels and then there was a whole variety hairsprays and perfumes set out on the counter for your connivence so you could freshen up and look and smell your best;) We had lots of fun dancing and we must of kinda looked like we knew what we were doing cause this guy came up to Mikkel and asked her if we were back up dancing from Taylor Swift's show?! What?! I don't think so we could figure out if this guy was for reals. She told him we weren't and he said his friends really thought we were so he asked if we'd just go along with it and take a picture with them. So we did but couldn't figure out if they really thought that. The girls were funny and kept telling us how amazing we were so we were just like, thanks I guess:) Anyway it was pretty funny and made for a good story:)
It was also pouring rain when we came out of the concert! Luckily the owner at the Firefly Grille that day had given us all the umbrella's he had that had been left by different people. Best souvenir we got!
The next day we had fun taking some tours and seeing the sights. We took a tour of the historic Ryman Auditorium which is considered the church of country music. It was interesting to learn about and we got to go up and stage and pretend like we were in concert. haha
You wouldn't know it now but when I was young I really loved to preform and thought I would be a singer or actress. I loved to sing and put on plays. Why did I stop? Well I became shy and I must have realized at some point that I actually do not sing well and it would never work out! So I finally got to live my dream and be up on stage. :)
Me and my fantastic band members jamming for our photo shoot. I would be nothing without these two:) They also had a recording studio there where you could pay $20 and record a song. Mikkel and i really wanted to do it for fun until we saw a girl in recording and it looked like she was pretty serious about what she was doing so we decided we just wouldn't measure up.
That night we went to the fabulous Grand Ole Opry. It was so fun we enjoyed a fun concert and saw several of the guys from the show "Nashville" that is on t.v. It was fun and the guy that plays Deacon, his real name is Charles Esten, he was awesome! I loved both the songs he sang and he wrote them and I wish I could find them somewhere because I want them!
Also our last day in Nashville we went out to this famous place called The Loveless Cafe. It was such a fun little place. We had a little impromptu bachelorette party for Jessica while we were there. Mikkel made her a cute veil out of tissue paper and the wait to be seated was an hour and a half! Luckily we were having fun the had several gift shops and games you could play outside so it was the perfect place for a party! When we were finally seated we got to enjoy the most delicious biscuits and homemade jam. The food was amazing! Good old home cooked food, I felt like I was at Sunday dinner at Grandma Brown's. And it was never ending! We had so much food we didn't know what to do with it!! We had cute little lips on our straws to make the party complete!
Then it was time to come home to my favorite little cowboy! I missed him so much and I was so so grateful that GG came to help take care of my boys while I was gone so I didn't have to worry about them! I had more fun than I've had in a very long time and it was fabulous! I got this little shirt for Peyton and I just thought it was so cute. Love my little cowboy!
