memorial day weekend

for memorial day weekend, we had a lot planned. saturday was my dad's 50th birthday and tuesday is lindsay's 26th birthday. we wanted to be in nashville at the beginning of the weekend and knoxville at the end of the weekend. we decided at the last minute to forgo our friends peter and jackie's wedding in lexington on saturday afternoon because we wouldn't have gotten to dad's until 6 or 7pm. we got up early saturday and drove down to nashville - that's a tad longer than i remembered. maybe because we stopped more frequently and let jake go to the bathroom. it was worth it because he kept his pullup dry the entire day. we're getting there.

when we got to dad's new place, we went out to lunch at the newly re-opened texana. it wasn't as good as before, but i didn't get ribs or anything. dad had a lot of friends over that evening for his birthday and we had a lot of good h'ors d'oeuvres and fun.

sunday morning we loaded up and went to mt. juliet to meet mom and charlie for breakfast at cracker barrel before they went to church. it was yummy and lindsay actually drove us on to cookeville. we hadn't been back to our college town in a long while and it was cool to see the few changes around town. we knew we wanted to eat at toot's (probably our favorite restaurant, we've eaten at all 5 of them now), but we also wanted to eat at spankie's. the bread, spinach dip, and burger would've been good, but we were still full from breakfast! we settled for fried dill pickle chips and wings at toot's.

we trucked it on up to knoxville and after a rest, we went out to the chop house for lindsay's birthday dinner. i wasn't totally hungry, but that filet was worth it. we came back to the house and i watched my final sermon from preaching class and the movie bobby with my mother-in-law and cory. we enjoy watching movies together.

we had a wonderfully lounging memorial day monday and had grilled out summer food for lunch. i'm sitting here full and content and reflecting on a good weekend. a lot of driving (with a drive back to lexington ahead) and a lot of eating, but great times with family.

happy memorial day! back to work tomorrow!