On Our Way To Crazy

Merry Christmas! Did you guys survive? It was close for us, I’m not gonna lie. We spent two weeks away from Nashville and we are worn plum out.

We drove down to Dallas after a Christmas party on the 17th, getting into town around 9:00am. I have to say, we are getting pretty awesome at the overnight drive. Aaron does most of the driving at night, and I usually take over when the sun’s coming up. I pack us a killer snack bag and cooler (so you can have apples and cheese at 3am if you want), load us up with trivia and pop culture podcasts and we are good to go.

We had an awesome week in Dallas, the best in a long time. We spent lots of time with my parents, eating and playing games and wrapping gifts and eating some more. It was restful and fun and just what we needed. We got to spend time with home friends, shop at the good mall and eat at all the places we don’t have in Nashville. (By the way, Nashville, let’s look into some Taco Cabana action up here.)

On Christmas Eve I drove out with my mom to visit my grandma, who served me excessively sweet tea in a Schlitz Malt Liquor glass and was convinced I’ve lived in Nashville for 30 years. Christmas morning we had cinnamon rolls and opened gifts from my way-to-generous family, including a handmade wahoo board from my dad with the biggest marbles I’ve ever seen, matching East Dillon Lions t-shirts and a stocking lottery ticket we scratched off to reveal a $500 prize. SO MUCH AWESOME. We spent the afternoon with my dad’s family, where we watched my relatives fight over bedazzled baseball caps and frozen burgers before hitting the dirty Santa jackpot: Tim McGraw cologne AND body wash. Try to contain your jealousy.

The day after Christmas we drove down to Waco to see Aaron’s family. It was completely uneventful, so we are labeling it a success. After Waco we hit Austin for a couple of days to celebrate Aaron’s brother’s engagement and birthday. It was nice to get to just hang out with his siblings doing normal stuff. And we got good time in with our niece, who would like to be called Oliver and thinks we live in a marshmallow.

We (finally) packed up and headed home yesterday. We love Texas and love our families, but 13 days is way too long. Especially when we get about four hours away from Nashville and the battery in the jeep starts to die. We drove two miles with no headlights before coasting to a stop in a Love’s truckstop parking lot. We got our hopes up when we found a mechanic right across the highway, but they fell right back down when he told us the part wouldn’t be available until noon today. So we marched across the street to the beautiful Rest Inn in Palestine, AR, and spent the night watching movies trying not to think about how much it was all costing.

In the end, though, it didn’t cost too much and we were on the road by 1:00. We made it home this afternoon, canceled our New Year’s plans and rang in the new year eating pizza and catching up on the DVR. Because we are old and classy and so, so tired.

Overall, though, it was a really great trip. We are so lucky to have parents who are so generous and fun and easy to be around. We ate well, got a ton of rest and had a blast. 2010 was a pretty hard year for us but it ended on a high note for sure. Bring it on, 2011.

As I may have mentioned, there is a lot going on in my life right now. A lot. Like fourteen other life-changing kinds of things on top of the work stuff I posted about the other day.

Which means I spend a lot of time procrastinating on facebook.

Yesterday, sitting among registration forms and food money and postcard proofs and a stack of 40 straw cowboy hats and receipts and pink flamingos, I happened to click on the ‘photos’ link on my facebook sidebar. The first album that came up had ‘Richard Smith’ tagged underneath it. Richard Smith is better known as Pawpaw, my dad’s dad. While Pawpaw is technically on facebook, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t spend a lot of time uploading and tagging pictures. So I clicked it to see what it was.

And what it was? Was an album full of old pictures of my family. My grandparents when they were first married, my dad and his siblings as children. Pictures I have never seen before. Pictures that were uploaded by a woman I have never heard of. (Mom? Call me? Who is this woman who has a bunch of pictures of our family?)

I immediately started saving them to my computer. Because they are awesome. Want to see them? I know you do.

This is my Nanny and Pawpaw. How great is this picture? I can’t even imagine them looking like this. Also, I want that chair.

This is my dad (far right) and his siblings, minus one of my aunts, who… wasn’t born yet? I’m not sure how much younger she is. They are so cute, you’d never expect them to turn into the crazy adults they are.

Nanny and Pawpaw again. I love the expression on his face. Hard to believe this is the same guy who calls me from the golf course in the middle of a windstorm and yells into the phone asking about the Nashville weather.

My dad, holding cupcakes that I’m sure were meant for everyone but he probably ate himself.

Nanny and her sweet glasses.

I don’t know who the lady is that uploaded these pictures, but I’m so glad she did. I was pulled right out of the chaos of my adult life in Tennessee and dropped into the 1960s in Mesquite, TX. Completely unexpectedly. (We won’t talk about the part where I cried a little.) It is so easy to get caught up in where you are and forget to look back and where you came from.

My life right now is so focused on the future and planning for what is to come. And that is mostly okay. But these people are MY people, and I am thankful for that reminder.

I mentioned this in the flood post, but one of the coolest things to come out of this whole “Nashville is under water” thing has been how the community has come together to volunteer and figure out how to take care of each other.

Several local artists have made posters and t-shirts that they are selling to benefit the relief effort. I really want to buy, you know, all of them, but I think I’m going to have to narrow it down to one or two. Which is your favorite? Want to trade a few of your dollars for a sweet poster and to help out my awesome city?

This one is my favorite, I think. I love the colors and the message.

This one creeps me out a little, I’m not gonna lie.

LOVE the graphics on this one. Gorgeous.

Yes, technically this one was for a benefit concert. But it’s worth it for the line “Rebuild this city on rock and roll”, right?

I’m pretty sure I need to own this t-shirt.

I don’t know if you heard or not, but we got a little rain last weekend. Two straight days of it. It all seemed normal at first, just a little wet, and then all of a sudden it was EVERYWHERE. Downtown was flooding, houses had water up to their roofs, streets looked like rivers. It was unreal.

We didn’t have any damage, luckily. Apparently we have very good drainage in our yard. Our part of town was largely unscathed, although several people had water damage in basements and yards. But large chunks of town did not fair so well.

There have been some amazing images coming out of the flood. Some of our most beloved places in town sustained pretty major damage.

Overall, our church folks came out alright. Some property damage, some cars that floated away, but not a lot of truly major loss. Very, very lucky.

Once the church staff had determined that we didn’t have a lot of internal loss to deal with, we went into external mode. We partner with an organization in Franklin called Graceworks that serves as kind of a clearinghouse for food, clothing, furniture and cash donations in Williamson County. We called and asked what they needed the most, and they told us three things: soup, crackers and underwear. So we put the word out and ended up with three huge trailers and several giant SUVs full of those three things. I have never seen so much underwear in my life.

As part of that drive, the youth group pooled their cash and we went shopping for supplies. I don’t know that there’s much that’s funnier than sending junior high kids into the underwear section with $60 and instructions to buy as much as they can. They have VERY STRONG OPINIONS about what is appropriate, even when you’ve lost everything. Because “even poor people don’t want to wear granny panties”.

It took a few days for the national media to really pick up on the extent of the damage from the flood. A lot of people were really worked up about that, but I don’t think it really matters. What was awesome was that when it did hit the news, the story wasn’t really about devastation and loss and looting and struggles. It was about volunteers and a city coming together and the 30,000 volunteer hours we put in over the course of six days. It has been amazing to see how quickly people have pulled together and started rebuilding this city (on rock and roll). So many stories came out of people just driving around offering lunch to workers, or going door to door with tools helping people rip down drywall or tear up floors, or setting up shop in a church parking lot and giving away water and sunscreen. So cool.

Saturday morning we took the kids to Graceworks to help sort all the donations that had come in that week. This weekend was also Stamp Out Hunger day, so in addition to the flood donations, the postal workers were bringing in truckloads of food. Over 35,000 pounds of food came in and our kids worked really hard sorting and organizing it all. It was pretty great, mostly. But people donate some really gross stuff. Open boxes of cereal, granola in baggies with ANTS IN IT, half-eaten jars of peanut butter. Seriously. So gross.

One of the coolest things I’ve seen come out of this disaster is the general sentiment from the people of Nashville that we really love this place. It matters to us. So many people chose to come here for music or medicine or whatever… they really feel connected to this city. And so do we. Love love love Nashville.

I spent some time last week in Dallas. When I booked the ticket a couple of months ago, it was to attend a weekend wedding extravaganza for a friend I’ve known since I was four. Four! How does a 29-year-old person have 25-year-long friendships? HOWEVER, a few weeks ago, that friend, after a heart wrenching process and a lot of crying group therapy sessions and emails with our friends, decided to call the wedding off. It was a tough, but right, decision, and it resulted in a whole different kind of weekend for me.

I never get to go to Dallas and just hang out. We are always there for a reason – holidays, events, family things. Never just to visit. All of a sudden I had four days to fill with whatever I wanted. It was awesome.

I landed in Dallas Thursday afternoon. My parents picked me up from the airport and we talked about going to a sports bar somewhere to eat and watch the basketball tournament. Somewhere in the conversation it came up that there was a new ALDI grocery store in Mesquite, my hometown. Then we had an obvious breakdown in communication, because when I was saying ‘go out to eat and watch basketball’, my dad was hearing ‘go to ALDI and look at weird food with a bunch of crazy people’. So that’s what we did. It was fascinating.

Then we played wii swordfighting.

Friday morning my mom and I, armed with nothing but a Gap coupon and some fairly comfortable walking shoes, headed out for a full day of shopping. We went to multiple Targets in search of the Liberty of London line (seriously, y’all! Look at this! and this! and this! and this! and this! Oh, how I wish Aaron wore ties regularly.) We loaded up on notecards and tops and dresses for little girls we only kind of know but who HAD to had them because they are so cute. We walked a GIANT outlet mall circle and found great deals on sandals and dresses and… ponytail holders. So fun.

Then we played wii ping pong.

We got back just in time for me to turn around and have dinner with two of my most favorite people: Allison, my high school friend, college roommate and bridesmaid, and Julie, our awesome friend who was also one of our youth leaders when we were in high school. She hates it when we tell people that. We had pancakes and crepes at Cafe Brazil and then hung out at Allison’s total jealousy-inducing Pottery Barn-ish house in the M Streets. Great night that ended with the creation of the phrase “Fake Asian Babies For Christ”, which I would explain to you if I could. But I can’t. So I won’t.

Then I went home and played wii bicycling.

Saturday morning I had brunch with my friends from high school. I know I write about them every time I go home, but I can’t help it. I have eight awesome girlfriends that I have known most of my life. Who has that? Not many people, that’s for sure. I am very lucky. We had monkey bread and fruit and talked about turning 30 and having babies and canceling weddings and how things are never quite what you plan them to be. It was wonderful and restful and comforting. I love them.

Then I went home and played wii basketball.

I never seem to hang out with my mom and sister without getting our nails done, and this time was no exception. We were on our way out the door for mani-pedis when my dad came down the hall asking if he could go. That’s right, my big dad with his mangly feet (sorry, Dad) got a manicure and pedicure with us. It was awesome. That poor girl who had to scrub his ticklish feet.

My sister and her boyfriend work at one of those movie theaters where you can eat dinner. So Sunday after our nails were done we headed over there to watch Alice in Wonderland in 3-D and eat fried appetizery things and ice cream sundaes. For free. I loved the movie, the food was great, and all it cost me was a few dollars for a tip. Can’t beat it.

After the movie, I ran across town to have dinner with my friend Jon and his family. Jon and I have known each other for a long time… he was my first real boyfriend and we have a lot of history together. I don’t know how it turned out that we are actual friends after everything that went down and how much time has passed, but I am thankful for it. His wife is awesome and his kids are hilarious and we had a really nice time.

Then I went home and played wii jetskiing.

Before I flew out Monday afternoon, I met up with an old pastor of mine. We didn’t really have a youth pastor when I was in high school, but right before graduation a guy named Paul and his wife Jill came in and took over the youth program. It was life-changing for me – they were young and fun, and I volunteered with them throughout college. I always thought Jill’s life seemed awesome because she got to teach English and be a youth pastor’s wife. (I obviously did not live in a church culture that let me believe that a female could be the real youth pastor.) Anyway, they were one of the only functional youth programs I’ve ever been a part of, and Paul is now a pastor of a church really similar to ours in Nashville, so it was really great to spend some time just talking with him. He gave me some much needed encouragement and perspective on my current situation and future plans. So helpful.

Then I went home and played wii canoeing.

I love going to Dallas – it’s always relaxing and fun to see all my old people. This trip turned out to be an unexpectedly good one, and I am thankful. Especially for the wii.

Hello, internet. Nice to see you.

I have been gleefully unplugged for about a week now. I didn’t even have Blackberry service for a couple of days. Somehow I managed the jitters and cold sweats. I think all the food and alcohol helped.

We were in Texas for eight crazy nights. It was glorious. We played the Wii my mom awesomely got my dad for Christmas, decorated mountains of cookies and stayed up til 3am with my parents listening to stories about hanging out backstage with Ted Nugent (the Nuge!) and watching my mom do the moonwalk of losers. We worked really hard to make Aaron’s dad’s grandpa name “Buckethead”.

We ate Whataburger, La Madeleine, Pappasitos, Pasados, Whataburger again, Corner Bakery, homemade tamales and a few chocolate pies. We dipped thousands of peanut butter crackers in chocolate. My aunt forced me to eat a cream cheese jalapeno jelly cracker thing and got mad when I didn’t like it. Aaron’s mom tried to burn the house down by cooking pizzas with the cardboard still on the bottom. We ate dozens of bowls of taco soup, the Official Meal of Friends Aaron and Brandi Go Visit.

I got to spend eight straight days with people I love. Texas people. Home people. I spent my 30th straight Christmas crammed into a house with fifty people yelling, eating, and unwrapping a tidal wave of gifts. The Wii golf team of Brandi and Papaw got two birdies in the same game and is poised to take over the world. I watched football and wrestled the kids of the guys Aaron went to middle school with. I shopped and wrapped and cooked with my parents, then lost to them at every game we played. I talked about marriage and depression and recipes and uncertainty and getting older with the same girls who were on my t-ball team.

We are really lucky to be in job situations that allow us to travel home for Christmas like we do. We got real, honest-to-goodness REST. And we are very, very thankful.

It’s 11:00. I am in bed next to a sleeping husband and a snoring dog. My kitchen is clean and my fridge is full of leftover potato casserole and green bean bundles and chocolate pie.

I spent the whole day inside my house. This morning we got up early and had the-turkey-is-finally-in-the-oven celebratory champagne and cranberry cocktails. We watched some of our kids perform in the parade on TV, made a thousand side dishes and snuck food to Miles while everyone else was looking the other way.

The house filled up with family and friends who brought pear stuffing and sweet potatoes and wine and laughter. We sat down around a beautiful (if I do say so myself) table and told stories about Thanksgivings where tables fell to the floor and mashed potatoes were thrown and that one time Aunt Donna’s jello exploded all over the kitchen and she stormed out without saying a word. We ate and ate and ate.

The Cowboys came on and our sweet friends patiently sat through two quarters of a game they didn’t care about while my husband and my father-in-law yelled at the TV. We fell asleep on the sofa. We played a super fun game at halftime that made me laugh so hard I cried. We ate more pie and watched the second half. I changed into my lucky shirt and we won, again. I am made of magic.

Our friends left and we settled in for the Texas/A&M game. Well, they did. I sat with my back to the TV and read a novel that made me cry and want to visit Wyoming. One by one, we went to bed.

And now I am sitting here, exhausted and stuffed and blissfully happy. We all have so much to be thankful for, we know that. And I am. So thankful. For all of those things.

Especially the sleeping husband. And the snoring dog. And the sweet life I get to live with them every day in this tiny house on this tree-lined street in this amazing city. And the intensely stressful jobs full of people we love who drive us crazy. And all the people we’ve met here who have become our family. And our actual family who are our rock and support even though we are so far away.

And the chocolate pie. Oh, the chocolate pie.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

Charlie Brown is very important to my family. My sister has a bit of an obsession, and it’s just not the holidays with out the Peanuts specials. I particularly love the dancing scene in the Christmas special… I wish I could tell you my sister and I have never recorded ourselves recreating their moves, but that would be a lie.

Last night was a pretty crappy night, and today hasn’t started off much better. So, when I came across this video on The Most Awesomest Stuff Ever (which is the most awesomest blog name ever), I was pumped. Just try to have a bad day after watching this.

I am obsessed with redoing things these days. My hair, my wardrobe, my youth programming. I have bought both skinny jeans and leggings in the past few weeks. I don’t even know who i am anymore.

But my most intense obsession right now is my bedroom.

What I really want to do is add onto our house. Build a master bedroom and bathroom, a big-ish den type living room and some kind of laundry/mudroom. But since that costs lots of dollars and I have no dollars, redoing the bedroom is going to have to suffice.

Redoing is a bit of a misnomer… doing is more like it. We never really decorated the bedroom when we moved in. It’s kind of a mismatch of art, patterns and the blandest of bland paint colors that I just can’t take anymore. The bed is too big for the room, there is no storage and the whole thing has to go.

I want this room:

AB Chao has the coolest house I’ve ever seen. I want to clone the whole place and move it up to Nashville. Every detail is interesting and thoughtful and AWESOME.

It wouldn’t take much… we already have white bedding, so all I would need is the paint, some vintage-y side tables and a couple of great throw pillows. Oh, and some huge windows so that the paint doesn’t darken the room so much we can’t even see each other.

I get this bug fairly often. I overwhelm myself with design blogs and furniture websites and instructions on how to reupholster pillows and I feel the need to overhaul my entire house, room by room. I’m over the polka dot paintings in the livingroom. I want to turn the dining room into a library (and then the library into a dining room). I want to paint my bedroom Down Pipe and cut some big holes in the walls to make new windows.

I get stuck on the idea that something needs to change. For the first few years we were married, we changed jobs or cars or homes or churches every year. But now we are entering our third year with everything being the same. And it’s all really really good. Really. But I need to shake things up, and I think my bedroom is going to feel it this time. Want to help me paint?

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.