Birthday Party in Nashville!

March is the big birthday month in the Dahl house (meaning the house that Greg and I live in), and my brother Ben also celebrates his birthday in early March. So Greg and I went and spent a weekend visiting Ben and Jenny right smack in the middle of all of our birthdays.

Lucky for us, Tom and Betty were in town serving in the Nashville Temple so we got to see them too. Bonus! If you're ever in Franklin, TN I highly recommend Chuy's. I could drink their salsa for breakfast.

I am the only one in my family who's never seen the Opryland Hotel. They all went in 1994 when my sister Lea competed in the Miss America National Teenager Pagaent as Miss Kansas. Yeah, I was kind of the bitter younger sister and wanted nothing to do with celebrating my glamorous older sister who could actually walk in high heels. Now that I'm over all that stuff I can say, "I'm proud of you, Lea!" She didn't win Miss America, but she did win the talent portion...of course!

I had NO idea the hotel was this big. It is the largest non-casino hotel in the United States, and certainly rivaled those Las Vegas casinos. It is all recently renovated after it flooded last year during the horrible Nashville floods. BONUS! A Twilight Convention? We looked for Edward and Jacob, but all we found were "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob" teeny-boppers.

This is mimicking my parents' picture they have in the same place during one of their previous visits. As a side note, our tour of the Opryland Hotel consisted of my brother Ben adding little comments like, "This is where I hung out with Miss Virginia, and this is where I went swimming with Miss Maryland..."

Here is my Mr. Universe!

Ben, Jenny and Tyler

Celebrating our birthdays!

Singing Saville style. I love Tyler's face...it looks like he's studying us. "How do they sing so loud and why???"

Jenny's new purchase - an ice cream maker ball. Turns out, we had to roll it more than we wanted to in order to make the ice cream.

This is Tyler's Pirate playground. Isn't it incredible?

We had a wonderful time playing with Tyler all weekend. Who knew he was such an incredible swordmaster. Pirates, beware!

This is Carnton Plantation, which during the Civil War Battle of Franklin became a Confederate hospital. I recently read the book "Widow of the South" which was about Carrie MacGavock who lived here with her husband and helped care for the soldiers. It was a terrible book, and I recommend skipping all of it and just reading the Epilogue at the end of the book.

This is the Carnton Confederate Cemetary. Carrie MacGavock was an incredible woman, and took it upon herself to not only have these soldiers buried on her plantation, but also to identify them and write home to their families.

The Carnton Plantation is only a few miles from their house, as is Spring Hill. This hill provided a look-out for the Confederate army during the Franklin Battle. Although the Confederates won this battle, the Southern casualities were so heavy that they were never able to recover fully from this battle.

Don't be fooled, this is actually Tyler's bike, and he did ride it around the trails the entire time. But his crazy mom "Miss Jenny", as he calls her when she is his preschool teacher Monday through Thursday, wanted to take a ride too!

How can you not have a blast when you're hanging out with these crazy people?!