This past weekend I escaped to Nashville with a few of my girlfriends. We were missing two other girls who should have been there with us, but we did have a blast!
We left Friday afternoon, which just happened to be my birthday. :} Shannon, Sybil, and I stopped at the outlet mall in Lebanon, TN for a few minutes before continuing on down to the Green Hills area to meet Rebekah and my college friend, Erin, for dinner at...
...the Cheesecake Factory!! One of my most favorite restaurants ever! :)
After that, Erin headed home since she was off to a zip line with friends the next day and the four of us headed to our hotel to just hang out and chat for the evening.
Leah helped make a surprise for each of us that came in very handy later in the weekend - personalized headbands and towels!
Saturday morning we headed down to Franklin to explore it's super cute downtown area, eat lunch, and grab a cupcake at Ivy Cake - the same place from which Carrie Underwood ordered cupcakes for her wedding. :)
(sending Lauren a quick pic...) :)
We found one shop in particular that Rebekah and I especially liked called Philanthropy. (click to view their website and learn more about them) They are a Christian company that donates 10% of every sale to 6 different charities. Their store is so cute and Rebekah and I talked for quite a few minutes to the girl greeting people as they walked in the door. I mean...ask us one question on our favorite topic of orphans and adoption...and we might not stop! :} She and I each got a pair of adorable gloves (Rebekah! we should have gotten a picture of us in them....oh well!), and Sybil found a coat that she should have bought...! ;)
Next we were off to the "dragon park" (not it's official name...but you can see why it's called that!)
It was built in the 80's and is just soo neat!
Check out some of the details below... :
Cool, huh?
What's even cooler is the fact that behind the dragon is a completely handicap accessible playground! So Rebekah's Isaac can come play here and do everything his siblings do. :)
I'm guessing Big Brother and Little Man may end up getting to come play here some in the next couple years possibly since Little Monkey may need some procedures done at the nearby hospital.
Shannon's husband and kids came and met us at the playground late that afternoon so they could see Catherine, Shannon's sister, who had joined us Saturday morning.
After the playground we headed over to Opry Mills mall to eat dinner at the Aquarium Restaurant. We thought we were there to see the fish...turns out...
...we sat right next to Dave Ramsey and his wife! Pretty cool!
Although, I did feel a little guilty that I wasn't paying with cash. lol
And no, I don't know if he paid with cash or not..... :}
I did not feel guilty giving Rebekah my phone for a better view and using Jonathan as a decoy photo subject! lol
Back to the hotel where Sybil tries on her outfit for the next day as we prepared to...
Here we are all white and clean at the beginning...!
...run in The Color Run 5k! Shannon and I had been talking about a girls weekend way back in the spring. A few days later, Shannon said she had found the perfect thing to do for our girls' weekend - run a 5k! To which I said...HA! that does not sound like my kind of girls' weekend! Which is when she told me to go watch the video of something called The Color Run.
Yup.
If there was ever a 5k that would look fun enough to convince me to actually be excited about...she found it!
Everyone knows how much I love color.
This 5k is referred to as the happiest 5k on the planet and was so fun and family friendly! So the rule was...wear white! But other than a white tshirt, you could wear whatever you wanted. And people did! It was so fun to see all kinds of ideas for the next one... :} We had picked out fun animal hats to wear (in the above picture) and were very thankful for them as we walked up with goosebumps all over that morning!
See those white flags...waaaaay at the front (top left)? That was the start line! There were thousands of people there - strollers, little kids, grownups...everything!
This was the view behind us. Pretty Nashville skyline! :)
And then we were off! (hahaha...ok...like 50 minutes from the time it started! They sent groups every 5 minutes and it took that long for us to move up that far in the line.) I took my cell phone in a ziplock bag so I could a) listen to music (gotta have music!) and b) take pictures! Here's what going through a color station looks like:
There was a color station every kilometer, plus a color festival at the end (video coming!). Each station had a literal TON of color - so there were literally 5 tons of color for the run! That was a lot of color! The powder is made of food grade cornstarch so walking through the cloud of color, you did get it in your mouth but it was more like a sprinkle of flour in your mouth and you could tell it was edible.
So after all that color...this is what we looked like...!
Bahahaha!!! I have no idea how Rebekah and I got the most color on our faces! We look just lovely don't we??
Here's a close up of a few of our faces...
Sybil with just a colorful sprinkle (again...HOW??!), Rebekah looking like a hobo with color from the nose down, ...and me looking like a total mess with color mostly from the nose up! :-p
My hands, front and back. I had worn bracelets on my left hand (in the right picture) during the race and this is what my wrist looked like when I took them off.
My car got covered in pink!
On my driver's window, Rebekah wrote "will run for color". :) It was a quote from a bumper sticker they were selling. :}
After we got back to our cars we headed straight to take a shower right over to Opry Mills again to eat lunch! Ack! First we had Catherine's boyfriend, Brian take a few more pictures. He was the only one allowed to touch my "real" camera since he was the only one who was completely colorless! :)
Lol, Rebekah and I always complain that we never remember to take a picture together...now we have one...and we look like this!! HA! Figures. :}
Thankfully we had a 45 minute wait and while Dave and Catherine's boyfriend, Brian waited outside with the kiddos, the rest of us girls made a beeline for the nearest restroom in the mall armed with two packs of baby wipes and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed!
That came from one part of my arm!! We had color EVERYWHERE!!!! It went through our shirts - my stomach was orange and blue! And that night I cleaned my ears with q-tips (you know...the same ears that I kept headphones in the entire time...) and they were completely pink!
Anyways, we ended up walking around the mall half colorful which was fine when we had our color run shirts and number bibs on...when I changed my shirt though, people just looked at me wondering if I ever take showers!
I was sad to leave everyone and head home although I couldn't WAIT to climb into a shower and melt the color away! :} (The fun was totally worth it though, don't get me wrong!) We had a fantastic weekend, and as long as the Color Run comes back to Nashville, I think we just found a new tradition! Except that next year we're bringing everyone we know to join us for the fun!
Wanna come?? :)
Oh yeah. One more thing happened that afternoon too...but I'll share that later. :)
