a whirlwind adventure Part 1

On Monday I learned that Petra was getting back together.

I had not heard of Petra that much before I met Dave. Dave has been a fan for many many years.

"I wanted to see Petra before you could probably even say Petra" he told me today.

They have been apart for at least 10 years (these members that are playing havent played together since 1985) and decided to do a reunion tour. To kick it off they are going to air a live recorded show on some TV channels. They need to record this concert first.
This concert is free.
This concert is in Nashville (7hour drive.)
This concert is this coming Saturday!

I email this information on to Dave and he gets really excited, but cautiously so. I agree to let him go. The first thought was that I have too much to do at home this weekend in order to go- he will have to rent a car to go. 

I decided that if I went then I wouldnt be able to go to the concert anyways- because we wouldnt have a sitter for Zeke. Dave reserved 1 free ticket for himself and booked a room. The details were then left to me.

I decided that I would like to go to Nashville. I now needed to cover my plans for the weekend. 

Pet Partners was having an event on Sat. I made sure that we had volunteers. I got all the right things to the right people. I would miss the quilt drawing (for the quilt I made and donated to raffle) but it was all taken care of.

I had "Room at the Table" meal for homeless people in town on Saturday night. I was doing main dish. I confered with the other person doing the main dish to see if it would reheat well. She assured me that it would. She also agreed to warm it up for me- I just had to get it to the church Friday night.

I also had agreed to help at church for the yearly advent festival Sunday afternoon- I told them what was going on and they let me skip out. 

I was now able to go to Nashville.

...........fast forward to Saturday..........

All my stuff was done by Friday night, the car was packed and we were ready to go. 

Dave got up at 5 am and put the rest in the car, I picked up Zeke and put him in the car seat. (he is very cheerful in the morning). It took him about 45 minutes but he fell asleep again. I also dozed a bit. We stopped for Breakfast at Cracker Barrel (love Cracker Barrel- almost every road trip requires at least one stop at a Cracker Barrel) at 8:20. We took a while before we left again. We let Zeke walk around and get some exercise before we put him back in the car. 

Such a good traveler

We drove down the road a bit and stopped for gas and Zeke got boob (yes I'm still nursing) and fell asleep for another 2 hours at least before we arrived in Nashville.

We arrived in Nashville at Centennial Park at 12:10 but Dave's phone said 11:10. This confused us and Dave went to ask a local and we found out that we crossed a time zone line somewhere.  We now had an extra hour in which to explore Nashville. The concert doors were opening at 6 and Dave wanted to be there long before that. (first come first served seating.)

Zeke on the way to the Parthenon

  We parked at Centennial Park where they have a replica of the Parthenon. It was really cool. We ate our packed lunch here and Zeke enjoyed being out of the car seat. 

Bad picture of me but the boys look good.

The Parthenon was originally built to house a huge stature of Athena the Goddess of War.  You can read more here . But just to give you a bit of scale- the person she is holding in her hand is 6 foot 4 inches.

We explored the area around the Parthenon. There was a large pond with leaves and ducks and all kinds of fun things for Zeke. 

he wasn't sure about the leaves until we showed him how to throw them!

A statue from when we were driving around Nashville

We got to our hotel, went out to eat, and got up to our room just in time for Dave to leave to walk over to the Concert (10 min walk)

Now I am at the hotel with Zeke. He was so wired and not wanting to go to sleep. He was literally bouncing off the walls- falling over because he was tired. He gets giddy when he gets tired.

Shrek was playing on TV and Zeke got suckered into it and wouldnt sit or lay down in his crib and I couldnt turn the TV or hide him much but I KNEW that he was exhausted. I finally had to turn off the TV, turn off the lights and hide in the bathroom for about 10 minutes. Thats all it took! It is also where I started this Blog Post.

Here you can find part 2.