A trip to Tennessee

A few weeks ago Erin went to "Jesus camp" with her cousin Molly and several hundred other people. I thought it would be great for her to meet people from different areas that shared her belief system. Well, Erin "over achieved" and met a "special friend" who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She wanted to visit. I like an adventure so I said, "sure".

Travis has been writing letters to his great-great uncle Col. Alfred Asch for a couple of months. When he heard we were going to Tennessee he said, "isn't Tennessee were Uncle Al lives?" So he requested a visit with Uncle Al.

We headed out Thursday afternoon with Erin, Abby, Travis and Bryan as my passengers. Kevin and Samantha stayed home to work and Cole stayed home to not be in the van with his siblings:-)We had an uneventful drive and arrived in Franklin, Tennessee to stay at the home of my cousin Dave Asch and his wonderful wife Marcia (heretofore to be known as Poppy and MarMar). We were greeted by Maggie.





Travis and Bryan played a new Wii game and Erin and Abby did what Erin and Abby do. They had to work their cell phones to find coverage in the house.






We went to lunch at this lovely restaurant in downtown Franklin, which happens to be owned and operated by my cousin and new BFF Graham and his wife Corey (who we did not get the pleasure of meeting on this trip)



This is us with my cousin Graham. He looks 17 but his mother swears he's 35. We were introduced to him for only about 20 minutes before he started beating Travis up. It endeared us all to him right away.


We also learned that Franklin is the home of many country and christian recording artists and many of them stop in regularly to The "Merc". Vince Gill and Amy Grant, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Miley Cyrus, all the of the Judds (aren't there like twenty?) and "gasp" Toby Mac! I love me some Toby Mac. Apparently Toby was not feeling the "Merc" today so we had to have MarMar drive us by his house.

And this is the illegal alien (alleged)blowing out Toby's Mac's gutters. Not even lying.


After a quick trip to Kohl's to buy more formal attire for dinner (there was a dress code) we journeyed to the retirement village called The Heritage to meet Uncle Al.




Uncle Al and Poppy had some posters to give the boys and they got a lesson in WWII fighter aircraft. Erin got a lesson in being Vanna White.



After dinner we drove back through Franklin to some of the Civil War sites. One of which was The Carnton Plantation which was used as a makeshift hospital after the Battle of Franklin which was the bloodiest one day battle in the entire Civil War. Several dead Generals rested on the back porch of this home...but honestly, "the wars over, the north won, slavery baadd. But it's okay south cause you get Nascar and the Allman brothers." We took a short walk through a confederate graveyard but, man it was hot, so we got back in the car and drove around looking for more of "them Civil War ghostices". This was truly a full day so we came on home and crashed (except for me who is up at 2 AM blogging). Tomorrow we plan to go out to the "waterfall property", take some more pointless pictures of celebrity homes and head to Chattanooga to meet Josh and his family.
The End