Nashville

Every April, the organization I work for puts on an enormous conference (think 10,000 people). For 4 days, I'm ON and busting my booty for a good 16 hours straight at a time, but it's weirdly fun. Exhausting, but fun.

This year, we were in Nashville. Chris and I are super cool people who like country music and have always wanted to visit Nashville. With my flight already covered, plus things like airport transfers and such, it seemed like a good opportunity to GO ON THE VERY FIRST JUST-THE-TWO-OF-US TRIP SINCE OUR HONEYMOON 7+ YEARS AGO without breaking the bank. (Though we DID manage to make a decent dent.)

Chris's mum graciously flew out to watch our girl-children, and on Wednesday morning I flew down to Nashville to do my thing.

During the WORK part of my trip. I heart Dolly. How can you not respect a musical genius who modeled her whole look on the town hooker? Girl is freaking true to herself.

 

On Saturday afternoon, I was finally DONE and Chris had just arrived. After a quick change out of my work clothes and into something comfy and summery, we were on Music Row, downing some hoppy beers and listening to some fabulous music.

My first post-conference beer. So happy to be DONE and kid-free!

Live music! Everywhere! And they were SO GOOD!



The only pic of the two of us, with a photo bomb. Dang.

From then on, we ate, drank, danced, and slept (we napped! multiple times!) our way through Nashville. We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame, which was cool and definitely worthwhile, but really, just hanging out and having a beer and listening to music at venue after venue was pretty hard to top, so we mostly just did that.

Emmylou! I love her ever so much.

Everyone in Nashville was SO nice, even though we were infiltrating TOURISTS. The food was incredible (sweet potato pancakes with fried apples and pulled pork for breakfast? Yes, please!), the music even better, and . . .  and . . . we just had a grand time.

Who's a tourist? THIS GIRL. I bought me some bonafide, made-in-Amerrrrrica cowgirl boots.

Puckett's. Good for breakfast, great for music.



I love the Nashville aesthetic. I'm totally going to integrate mason jars into my décor and barware.

As much as missed my kiddos, it was kind of a bummer to come home. To be FREE for a few days, just Chris and me, was totally strange. And totally needed. So, we're grateful.

At home. Lorelei with some Nashville bling.