we went to nashville!

At the end of September, I kissed this little sweetie goodbye, and handed her over to her grandma.  Then Bart, the boys, and I headed to Nashville, Tennessee!

I knew I was going to have a terrible time being away from my little princess for that long, but It looks to me like she wasn't missing us a bit, as she was eating lunch with grandma at Costco!

One of the very first things we did when we got to Nashville (after a 10+ hour drive), was head downtown to check things out.  It was such a fun city, and not really like any other place we'd ever been.

Of course the boys were all thrilled to see the Tennessee Titans' stadium, even though they aren't necessarily fans of that team, but an NFL football stadium is an NFL football stadium, am I right?!

My three biggest football fans!

We had to take our picture with this boot, because that's what you do in Nashville, right?  We also went into a few boot shops, and I picked out my dream pair of cowboy boots, which were on sale for only $950.  Then I remembered that I wasn't sure I would even ever wear cowboy boots, so I went home without them.

The main reason we went to Nashville was to go to a Florida Gators football game.  Nashville is the farthest north that they play this year, so we decided it was as good a place as any to see a game.

We got to see some of Bart's friends from PA school who also happen to be twins.  Two sets of twins in one very Gator-y picture!

Notice how the stands seem to be filled with more orange and blue than black and gold?  And as the crowd began to fill in, it was even more Gator fans.  It felt a little like being at a home game instead of being with the visiting team.

Okay, so I know this little guy is a huge football fan, but was only 4 years old when we went, and a real football game is much longer than a YouTube video of football highlights, so I wondered how much of the game he would watch before he got bored and stopped paying attention.  The answer: The whole game, every single play.  In fact, I think he watched more intently the entire game than the twins did.  Seriously, this boy loves football!

We all had a blast cheering on our gators!

And of course, the Gators won, 13-6!

After the game, we went exploring a bit around campus and to this awesome park nearby.

Krew insisted on having his picture taken with this weird dog.  I guess that's better than when he used to cry whenever he saw a character like this.  

So besides going to the game, another awesome thing we got to do in Nashville was visit with some friends that we knew when we lived in Tampa.  They were even nice enough to let us stay at their house.  Well, Kevin works for Pearl drums, and gave us an amazing tour of their corporate offices.  It was fascinating.

Later, at their house, the boys got to play in their drum room.  Who even has a drum room?  Our cool friends, that's who!

I swear my boys could have spent hours in their making noise and pretending they knew what they were doing.

One day we walked through the Opryland hotel, which is just massive and beautiful and interesting. 

Our friends also took us on this beautiful hike.  It was perfect weather for a hike, and even though we were hiking with 8 small children, we all had a great time. 

At the end of the hike, there was this little pond, and you can see the cave up there that was hand-dug through the rock to get water from the other side of this cliff.  It was really cool!

Of course the men (and Kade) had to be brave and climb up there, while I kept shouting things like, "If you fall, I'm not going to help you!"  Because I'm nice like that, and I dislike watching people do stupid things.

The whole group.  

On the way home, we decided to spend the night in downtown Chicago.  In the morning, we explored downtown a little bit.  I always think that downtown Chicago is so interesting and fun.

While we were in the Under Armor store, the twins decided they needed their pictures taken with some of their favorite basketball players' posters.

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Krew on the other hand, really, really wanted his picture taken in front of Trump tower.  Bart and I thought it was so random how completely obsessed he was with Trump tower.  I mean, we knew he had heard of Trump from all the election stuff, but this was before he won, so maybe Krew knew something we didn't know!