I'm Back!

It's been a while since I've posted here, but I've been out of town since last Tuesday on an awesome trip. My best friend, who was my college roommate at VT, lives in Mississippi, and even though I just saw her and her little boy in April in Williamsburg, it was time to visit them at their home. We haven't been to Mississippi in 3 years, which was when we went down for their wedding when Mykenzi was Camden's age. Since then they'd moved and obviously had a little boy, who is just 6 days older than Camden. So, we decided to drive down there, and in order to break up the car time for the kids we made several stops along the way in cities we wanted to see, that we otherwise would not have.

Our first stop was at a hotel in Radford so that we could visit the Virginia Tech campus the next day (it was move in time there so we couldn't get a hotel in Blacksburg). It was awesome though to see everyone moving in, and really brought back a lot of memories to my husband and I. We try to visit the campus once a year, but this was the first time that we actually walked through our old dorm, Lee Hall, which is where we both lived our Freshman year and also where we met. It was neat to show all of this to Mykenzi and to explain it to her. We left there and drove to Nashville where we had dinner at The Aquarium Restaurant at the Opry Mills Mall, which was delicious, and we strolled around the outside of the Grand Ole Opry House and through the Gaylord Opryland Hotel (this place is absolutely gorgeous, pictures to come soon). Then we made the trip to Mississippi where we stayed with my friend's family, and after several days there, waking up with all 3 kids playing, going shopping, and lunches and dinners together, it wasn't easy to leave. They took us to many of their favorite local restaurants, and her husband is a HUGE Alabama fan so we went over to Tuscaloosa for some great ribs at a restaurant called Dreamland, shopped for a while, and also visited the University of Alabama campus. We then traveled to Savannah, GA because believe it or not, Mykenzi loves Paula Deen, and since I've been trying to teach her to name states on a map, she has learned that Paula Deen lives in Georgia, so we added that stop to our trip, which was rather out of the way. We had her all pumped up to eat at her restaurant, The Lady & Sons, and then I did some research and found that people wait for hours to just put their name down to eat at this place, and we decided to tell her that it just wouldn't be possible (who wants to wait in line for hours with 2 kids?). When we arrived we saw that the line wasn't too bad that evening (although we were starving and didn't have time to wait) and since we get up early with the kids we figured it would be easy to put our names down once the host came out to accept names (they don't do phone reservations for parties less than 10). We were there 30 minutes early and were the 5 table in line, but the first to select the earliest time, so we were all excited that we were actually going to get to eat there. We had some time to walk around Savannah (beautiful place by the way), and when we actually spotted Jamie Deen walking down the street right toward us, and we just stood there. When he reached us, before we even said a word, he bent down and started talking to Mykenzi (who by the way was given a pamphlet with Paula Deen's picture on it the night before by a lady running a touring service who found out she was a fan of Paula Deen's, and she held on to that thing all evening and the next morning went looking for it again, and proceeded to carry it around town with her all morning). Mykenzi clammed up as she often does around strangers, and we teased that she was star-struck since she didn't talk for another 15 minutes or so even after he walked away, but we did get his autograph. Paula was out of town so we didn't get to see her like Mykenzi was really hoping for, but we did see the other son. Lunch at The Lady & Sons was amazing and so filling, we definintely weren't disappointed there. After all that excitement and full bellies we headed to Wrightsville Beach, NC, which is pretty, but I enjoyed Downtown Wilmington the most. We actually saw the filming of a One Tree Hill scene this morning, and we saw Bethany Joy Galeotti. We weren't close enough to hear the dialogue, but we were close enough to see her and to be shhed by a crew member (Mykenzi was loud, but I was probably just as loud in pointing out who we saw to her). In addition to that we saw several public locations where One Tree Hill is filmed, and we spent a little time on the beach for Mykenzi (Camden hated the sand and refused to be put down).

Hopefully I'll have a chance to post some pictures soon, but it's just been crazy lately! I hope you're enjoying the last of summer. While I'm not at all eager to send my daughter back to preschool next week, I am very much looking forward to fall which is my favorite season!