On Our Way To Crazy

Sometime back in April, Southwest was doing these one-day half-price sales to different locations. Each sale was only available for 24 hours. One day I woke up and, thanks to Twitter, learned that the location for that day was Nashville. I called my parents, they said they would look into it, and I didn’t give it another thought.

Now you may not know this about me and my family, but we are kind of last minute people. I have gotten better after seven years with Aaron the thinker-aheader, but my roots are still there. So it came as no surprise when, at 11:45 that night, my mom called me in a panic because she couldn’t get the website to work.

After some panicking, a few phone calls to the airline and several attempts to sign up for a rewards account, we booked the tickets. And this past weekend, my parents made the trip.

I picked them up at the airport on Thursday morning and took them straight to Noshville, home of the dancing pickle and the best breakfast in town. After a good long nap and a brief incident with a busted tire, we had dinner at Kalamata’s (where they know our names and give us free dessert) and headed home to bed.

Friday was a long but awesome day. We started out with a trip to Trader Joe’s, where my parents experienced the awesomeness of ginger cat cookies, caramel clouds and chipotle pepper hummus. Then we loaded up the Jeep, made a quick flamingo stop, and headed down to Lynchburg where we toured the Jack Daniels distillery.

We’ve talked about going there for ages, but just never made it. We were missing out. It was really really fun. I had no idea. I don’t even like whiskey, but it made me want to drink some. The whole process of how they make that stuff is crazy, and it was really entertaining to see.

After the tour we had dinner at the freaking awesome BBQ Caboose in downtown Lynchburg because the internet told us to. All we knew was that it was a small place with a live ‘classic country’ band. So when we walked in and they asked for our reservation, we were a little surprised. Lucky for us, the Andersons were out of town, so we were able to sit at their table. We ate our barbecue chicken, potato salad, red beans and rice and DELICIOUS peach cobbler and ice cream and listened to the musical stylings of Mama Tried. And even though Aaron and I were the youngest people there by about 40 years, we had a great time.

Saturday we ran all over town all day and threw together a cookout for a bunch of our friends. We had a great evening in the backyard playing bocce ball, pitching washers, drinking blueberry beer and eating my dad’s from-scratch (non key) lime pie. Recipe to come.

Sunday was slow and relaxing, which was perfect, because we needed to rest up for Monday. Because Monday? We took the NASH TRASH TOUR. You guys. Oh my gosh. I have never laughed so hard in my life. Singing, dancing, swingers jokes, passed crackers and spray cheese, extremely old country star gossip… it was hilarious. At one point they were just pointing out random people on the street and calling them celebrities. We saw Boyz II Men, the Village People (who had put on a little weight), Emmylou Harris, Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, the list goes on and on. It was so much fun.

After the tour I took my parents to a new burger place I’d read about that turned out to be really delicious, took a quick shopping trip with my mom and we headed to the airport.

It was a great weekend, as always, and it was hard to say goodbye, as always. I know it’s the right thing for us to live in Nashville, and I wouldn’t trade our life here for the world. I just wish Nashville and Dallas were a bit closer.