Daddy/Daughter Trip

Before I post about New Year's Eve, I almost forgot to blog about Doug and Bri's daddy/daughter night out right before Christmas.

Doug still had a couple of nights he needed to book to keep his status level with his favorite hotel chain, so he decided to stay at a hotel with Bri overnight in Atlanta right before Christmas. I wasn't able to go too unfortunately, I had a PT appointment that I needed to keep and a number of errands I needed to run before Christmas. So, it was just the two of them.

I think they had a great time without me. :) 

And I had the house to myself for a whole entire night!

Doug took her to a very fancy restaurant called "BLT Steak" ~ where she had chicken liver pate' (above - she didn't know what she was eating but liked it) and popovers the size of her head...

And she had a hamburger too...

They rented a movie in the room that night and in the morning, they had room service...

Doug really wanted to walk around and visit Centennial Olympic Park, but as you know, all it did was rain like cats and dogs in December. So, they just stayed in and watched a movie. Bri really had a big time!

Nashville - Day 3

 We awoke on the 3rd day of our Nashville adventure and it was time to head home already. And to be honest, I was ready to get home. I still had Christmas presents stacked at my house and I just wanted to start sorting through everything.

Doug mentioned this cool restaurant called the Pfunky Griddle that he had read about and we all decided we wanted to try it for breakfast. 

It was small and quaint, and again, crowded. There was a bit of a wait. I was ready to get on the road because we had a long ride ahead of us, but we were there and we were hungry, so we waited (quite a while).

Once we were seated, we ordered and got all our ingredients to do our own cooking on our own skillet. It was really neat. Doug and Bri made pancakes (Bri was so excited to be able to put candy in her pancake). I am not a big pancakes person, so I ordered an egg, potatoes and veggies. Everything was delicious...

It took a while to cook, so it pushed us back a bit more. By the time we got in the car, I was feeling a bit irritated that we were behind. 

We got on the road and drove for about a half an hour east on the highway and then it stopped. Like parking lot stopped. No one was moving. I was stressed because we were already really behind where I wanted to be. And I was starting to feel like I needed a bathroom break. Ugh.

Behind us, we saw a car cut across the long grassy median and hop back on the expressway heading west. We were in the left lane and could luckily cut across too if were were brave enough to get out of there (thank goodness there were no guardrails or trees there). Doug cut across the median and hopped back on the highway west too. Thank goodness.

After a pit stop, Doug figured out a side road that would get us back on the expressway further down the road. 

As we drove down this other road, police cars were blocking everyone from getting on the expressway. There were a ton of people trying to get off...

 We could see the highway from where we were driving. No one was moving. I'm so glad we did what we did to get off...

Sadly, we found out when we got home that it was a fatality wreck. People sat in that traffic for hours. I thought to myself, what if we hadn't been delayed. Would we have missed it? Would we have been in the thick of it even worse? Could we have been involved in it? I was thanking my lucky stars that we were delayed.

We made a quick stop for Fireworks on the way home...

As we drove along home, I noticed the sun was going down and there was a beautiful, tiny rainbow in the clouds...

Was someone maybe watching over us on the way home? I don't know. But we made it home safe and sound.

Nashville - Day 2, Part 2

 After walking through the "Ice" exhibit, we ran through the rain that was starting to fall to get back into the hotel. Slightly wet, we made it inside and started searching for something for lunch. We grabbed a piece of pizza and luckily managed to find a seat. The hotel was beautiful, but it was so crowded. There was a cheerleading competition around there somewhere, people were coming in for a bowl football game and it was just a busy time of year too.

We sat and watched this fountain for a while. It was really neat...

 I really wanted to ride the riverboat that went all through the hotel. The line was long, but it started to pour outside, so I figured, what else are we doing to do.

Waiting in line...

See the rain pouring down the glass? It was raining so hard, there were some leaks happening...

We waited for about 45 minutes in line. It wasn't a big deal except for the family that was standing in front of us. There was a mom, dad and two teenage girls. They were definitely "well off" and dressed quite nicely. Fancy purses and shoes. My main issue was with the mom actually. She was chewing gum - LOUDLY. It was SO annoying.

*Pop, smack, chomp, chew*

I listened to it for 45 minutes. The dad was chewing gum too but not as loudly.

I'm sorry, I don't care if you are wearing Prada shoes, Calvin Klein skinny jeans and carrying a LV purse. If you chew your gum like a cow, it makes you very unappealing. Ick.

That's my public service announcement.

Luckily, the gum chewer got on a different boat than us.

Here are my two loves waiting to sail off...

Actually, this was probably my favorite part of the trip. I loved the little ride around the resort...

There were so many beautiful fountains and waterfalls...

Our triangle family...

We were pretty tired after our morning/afternoon and we headed back to the hotel. After a bit of a rest, we went out to dinner...

No fancy restaurants for us! We checked out the "Peg Leg Porker" ~ amazing Nashville bbq...

My rib eating girl...

BBQ selfies?

On the way back to the hotel from dinner, Doug drove us down music row...

It was really crowded. There were several events going on around there that evening. Doug and I would like to go back and spend time on the row together on our own ~ it's a little too adult for Miss B.

There's our hotel in the distance.

Time to turn in and get ready to head home the next day.

Nashville - Day 2, Part 1

Day 2 of our Nashville trip took us to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. I had absolutely no idea how massive this hotel is. It is like the size of a Vegas hotel without the casino. That's big!

Passing by one of the entrances...

We knew it was going to rain in Nashville that day and it was going to rain a lot. We thought it would be a good idea to valet our car. Not so much.

 We arrived around checkout time. And the hotel was packed. And we waited 20 minutes to valet our car - no joke. Once we got into the hotel lobby, we had to wait a very long time to pick up our tickets. While Doug was standing in line, Bri and I walked around the hotel a little (it was really beautiful)...

After Bri and I walked a little, I then stood in the line so Doug could walk around a little and figure out where the "Ice" event was happening. My friend Val had visited the exhibit and said it was amazing, so we wanted to check it out.

We picked up our tickets and found out the event was in the Convention Center ~ and the concierge told us to walk outside to get there. So much for not walking in the rain - heh, grumble.

We also had purchased tickets to go snow tubing. Since it was set up outside the convention center and we knew rain was coming, we figured it would be best to start with that. It was set up under an overhang, but if the rain started blowing sideways, that wasn't really going to help us.

I went down one time and realized with my back issue, it probably wasn't something I should continue to do. Doug went with Bri a few times. She went a few times by herself.

She loved it. If you ask her what her favorite part of the trip was, she'll tell you tubing...

After tubing, we entered the convention center...

There is a corridor with lights you wind around to get to the ice room...

Visitors are given blue parkas to wear in there and I luckily brought mittens for Bri and myself. With it being warm that day, most people didn't have them. We were then told it was nine degrees inside (insert jaw dropping).

Entrance...

When we first entered, Bri spotted a panda made of ice and she was so excited...

It was really amazing to see all of these creations carved in ice (by Chinese ice carvers)...

 It was really amazing to enter the area with the ice slide...

An ice corridor...

A pink flying unicorn ~ a young girl's dream...

I'm thinking it was colder than 9 degrees in there...

Unfortunately, it was so cold in the event, my phone died toward the end of the exhibit and I couldn't take anymore pictures until it warmed up again (luckily Doug's camera phone still worked).

These are from Doug's phone...

A Chinese Dragon!!! How perfect is that? Bri was so excited! The ice carver was also working on a teddy bear...

The Nativity Scene (so beautiful)...

 And Miss B had done very well, but by the last display, her lips were turning blue and she almost started to cry because she was so cold. She was quite happy to exit the exhibit.

I absolutely recommend this event because it was really amazing to see. But next time, I would bundle up Bri a lot more because the parka didn't work well enough.

Bri cheered up super quick because the exhibit exits you out into the warm gift shop (of course). And because it was after Christmas, everything was 50 percent off. Score!

She was super excited about getting a stuffed "Ice" polar bear...