a weekend recap: girls trip edition

 

Happy Tuesday, friends! I'm linking up with Joanne today, which is appropriate, since she was one of the ones on my weekend girls trip that I'm about to talk about! There are lots of pictures, but I'll try to write as few words as possible. 

Back in January, I met up with Marilyn for dinner one night, and she dreamed up a plan to meet up with some other bloggers who were in similar life stages as us: with grown kids, who are or who are almost empty nesters. She reached out to Tanya, Joanne (linked above), Maria, and Amy. All of them were willing to meet up and were available to come, except for Amy who had events that same weekend to attend with her sons who are graduating from college soon. About two weeks ago, Maria had to back out due to an unexpected injury/surgery, so that's how it ended up being just the four of us. We had so much fun, but we missed the girls who couldn't join us! We met up in Nashville for the weekend and did some exploring. Tanya and Joanne flew in from their home states, and Marilyn and I drove to them. Here's a little recap...

Marilyn and I were excited to meet up with the girls! We picked them up from the Nashville airport. Please note the Twizzlers we're holding; they're a great road trip snack! 

I love the sign that Marilyn made for them in the car, even if she did almost get carsick. We had a good laugh over the stickers that wouldn't stick; note Joanne holding the E up with her hand. 🤣

Our house (duplex) was so cute! Marilyn did a great job with picking out this Air BNB. Her previous travel agent mode was on this entire weekend! She is very knowledgeable in lots of cities, and it was wonderful having her as a guide.

Friday night we ate dinner at this cool place in Franklin called The Factory. We ate Mexican food for dinner and ended the night with Jeni's ice cream (for the first time while on this trip).

I sat outside on the porch and talked to Todd Saturday morning.

And then we started the day in Franklin at Landmark Booksellers.

We walked around a lot of cute stores for most of the afternoon after having a great lunch at Merridee's Breadbasket (so good!!!), then we went back to our Air BNB for a little while. We made reservations for dinner at an Italian restaurant called Chrysalis, which was another amazing meal, then we went to Trader Joe's and ended the night at the house again. On Sunday we had a lazy morning, which was nice, then we left to eat lunch at Cava, moving on to the Belle Meade plantation in Nashville to explore the grounds and historic home. This was a great tour with a very knowledgeable young docent; but the grounds? They were stunning! 

This is a pretty decent picture taken by propping the phone up with a purse and using the self timer...

...followed by this much better picture of us all taken by teenage girls visiting from South Dakota for their senior trip!

Jeni's ice cream stop #2 of this trip! I'm addicted to the Gooey Butter Cake flavor! We drove around the downtown and 12 South areas of the city and stopped for some more pictures.

I got really good at these "us-sies"! 

We all kind of did our own thing for dinner that night; I got ramen from a place inside The Factory, and some of us snacked for dinner when back at the house. We stayed up semi-late again talking, then we went to bed for the night. We were out of the house the next morning by 7:30, and we ended our trip with a huge breakfast at Loveless Cafe. It was everything we hoped and dreamed, and more! I had fried pork chops with two eggs and the hashbrown casserole; we also enjoyed a plate of their famous biscuits, which were the best I've ever eaten. We dropped off Tanya and Joanne at the airport, and Marilyn and I headed home. 

We all kind of said the same thing about this weekend: it was a wonderful time of meeting and cultivating new friendships. It's nice to know that at each stage of life, we can still meet and enjoy new friends. It was a beautiful weekend in so many ways; I am not talking about the weather at all, though that was really nice as well. It's such a sweet gift from God to spend time with like-minded friends who are similar in personality and temperament, and who are just genuinely kind and caring people. We sincerely hope to do this same kind of thing again next year! I'd love to make it a yearly thing, honestly. Would it be appropriate to call it a blogger's retreat?? I think it would, because we did talk about some  technical things this weekend! Both Joanne and Tanya helped us with a couple of issues both Marilyn and I were having on our blogs, and we came home with new ideas and ideas of more blogs to follow. Maybe next year we'll travel with our laptops. 🤣🤣 Also, about the blogging community, I am so thankful that it's made such a huge comeback! We've all blogged for over a decade; between us we're at 20, 17, 15, and 12 (I think?) years of blogging. Can you even believe that?! I never would have thought that all of those years (17 for me) of writing here would bring about a weekend such as this. In the words of Sophie and Tanya, "Won't He do it??" IYKYK. I'm so grateful! 

Thanks for reading my blog today, and following along! I know this was long, but this isn't even close to all the pictures I took. I'm going to post some to Instagram in a day or two, and I'll share more on Friday, most likely. Love to all!