Pinning!!

Caution- this is a long blog with lots of pictures! :)

This weekend my family and I traveled to Nashville, TN for nursing school pinning (aka, graduation!). Vanderbilt traditionally only has one graduation ceremony per year, so I will officially walk and be hooded next May. But until then, the nursing school had a pinning ceremony to celebrate completion of the MSN program.

So, we left on Thursday afternoon, drove 1/2 of the way and stayed in Little Rock, AR (not AK, I was kindly reminded by those on Facebook!) We arrived Friday afternoon in Nashville and went to the Carnton House, which served as a make-shift hospital during the Battle of Franklin. There are blood-stained hardwood floors through out the house from the doctors performing surgeries - pretty gross and couldn't take pictures unfortunately. But, there were some pretty pictures of the outside of the house:

After we were finished touring, we took a brief look at the Grand Ole Opry, then we met up with friends at Cock of the Walk, a famous-for-fried-catfish place. They also had a huge rocking chair with lines of people wanting to take pictures in it, so we figured, what the heck? We'll take one too.

After dinner, we picked up Lane from the airport!! YAY!

Saturday I had class in the morning, then had a bridal brunch with some of my good friends from school, which was really fun.

Saturday afternoon was filled with a trip to the Parthenon (no, we didn't go to Greece, Nashville has it's own, made up of playground pebbles. Nice.)

We then wanted to go see the Belle Meade Plantation. On the way there, we heard a loud pop. We pulled over and heard one of the tires hissing air. Fabulous. So, Mike and Papi changed the tire to the spare and we thankfully found a friendly Nashvillian who drove us to the nearest Goodyear (we weren't in Franklin, so we couldn't go to Moody's Tire!!). Ended up being replaced and we were fine by the end of the day. Good thing boys know how to change tires because we girls had no clue. Nor did we want to get on the dirty ground and figure out how. :)

This is what we wanted to have close to us, but were in the wrong part of town-sorry Moodys! (Background info- my roommate's family from college whom I have been staying with during my time in Nashville owns a Goodyear tire store in Franklin where I've been staying).

Belle Meade Plantation was beautiful- they were setting up for an outdoor wedding that evening. I didn't get a picture of the house because my camera battery died, but here are some beautiful hydrangeas they had growing outside:

Saturday night featured a FABULOUS party at one of my classmate's homes. She is originally from Louisiana and had her sisters and mom come in earlier that week to fix authentic Cajun food and it was AMAZING. The party was so fun- so good to hang out with my friends and for my family to meet my Nashville world. Sorry, no pics from that night...

Sunday we went to the Hermitage, the home of President Andrew Jackson. Very controversial man...had no idea. His home was beautiful, though...

After the Hermitage, it was off to pinning!

Receiving my pin from the Dean

He is so glad to have his wife back!

The fam

Lane!

My school friends, minus a few

After pinning, we had dinner and dropped Lane off at the airport. We decided to drive around quaint little Franklin and loved seeing all the cute houses - I told Mike that I want one when I grow up. As we started to head out of town, we saw two hot air balloons very close to us and decided to chase them to see where they landed. Random thing to do, right?

So, we actually watched them land in a field, watched how they got all the hot air out, smelled the propane they used and watch them package the whole thing up to take home. Very cool.

Ironically, one of the hot air balloons was a Vanderbilt balloon!

We left at 7:00am this morning and got in at 6:00pm this evening. A very long car ride, but a great weekend! I was so thankful that my family could come and see Pinning as well as see my Nashville world. I am thankful that this chapter of my life is over- it was such a crazy and stressful year, but a year where I learned a ton and was reminded of how thankful I am for my patient husband and caring family and friends. YAY for being DONE!!