Tennessee

At the end of April, we took a trip to Tennessee to visit John's mom, Linda, and his grandfather. It was Sophia's first plane trip. We left early in the morning and thankfully were able to get Sophie to take a short nap in the Moby wrap in the airport. The kids did pretty well on the plane ride. Sophie was a little fussy toward the end of the flight since she was tired. Zoe had a great time looking our the window, eating snacks, reading, and watching Finding Nemo.

After arriving in Nashville and a quick lunch, we were off in the car for the 2 1/2 hours drive to John's moms house. Thankfully, both kids slept most of the trip. John even got to take a nap.

After arranging and re-arranging Zoe ended up sleeping in a pack n' play in the office area of the house and Sophie ended up in a pack n' play in the laundry room. Zoe actually asked to go to bed the first night and did great all night. Sophie, on the other hand, had some trouble getting to sleep. John's mom slept on the pull out couch in the living area and John and I were in her bedroom. She is so nice to give up her queen-size bed when we come to visit.

The next day we spent some time outside playing with the kids. We played some baseball (toddler style), ran around, and played with pinwheels. Sophie hung out on the blanket most of the time playing with the edges of it and the grass while watching us. It was pretty windy that day, so thankfully the shop provided some shelter.

That evening we went to Jerome, Linda's cousin, to see all the animals and have dinner with them. We has some really good BBQ, yum. Zoe really enjoyed feeding the fish in the pond, petting the goats, and riding on the cow. Sophie looked around a lot but wasn't too impressed, still just a little too young. It was a great visit with them.

That night was the start of a couple of days of rain and lots of flooding. The kids slept through the crazy thunder and rain just fine but I didn't sleep much. We spent a  lot of time indoors playing, and when the rain would let up briefly we took a walk outside. We even got caught in the rain one evening when we walked down the street to James and Martha's house to visit. They ended up driving us home after it started pouring.

Sophie on the tractor at James and Martha's house

We took a trip later in the week to Maggie's farm, Linda's aunt. They own a lot of farmland and some really big farm equipment. Usually we get to take a look at the farm equipment and Zoe got to stand in the wheel well of one of the John Deere combines last time, but this year it was too wet. There was a lot of flooding all over TN. Mary Beth even tried to come up to visit one afternoon but wasn't able to make it because some roads were closed from the interstate up to Sharon, TN where we were.

Flooding from the storm. The river overflowed and covered the farm land.

Nashville got the storm after we did and had severe flooding. The interstate was closed for a couple of days, but thankfully it opened the morning we needed to drive to the airport in Nashville. We spent a lot of time trying to find out if we would even be able to make it to Nashville to make our flight back. Since they opened the interstate the morning we left, we were able to get to the airport without a problem.

The flight home was pretty good for John and Zoe. She went to sleep within 30 minutes of takeoff in John's arms since it was her bedtime. Sophie never did go to sleep which made for a very exhausting flight home for me trying to keep her happy in the back of the plane.

We made it home and all in all it was a great trip! We wish we could make the trip more often to visit Linda and granddaddy.

To view all the photos from our trip visit our Flickr website.