Bacation in Tennessee

Nope - that's not a typo.... it's "bacation" or how Andrew pronounces "vacation". :-) Such a cutie! As you all know, we went to Tennessee last weekend. We were taking Alex to visit two schools but also tried to treat it as a mini vacation of sorts. At least in Andrew's mind. :-) Can I brag for a second? I had two AWESOME children for the entire weekend. Schedules were turned upside down, the big kid had to do things the little kid wanted to do and vice verse and everyone was pleasant. I was So. Freaking. Proud.

Two brothers... laying in bed... talking about life. :-)

We left for Tennessee on Saturday around noon. At about 2:00 I told Andrew it was time for a nap and guess what? The child closed his eyes and took a nap!! In the car!!! Without a fuss!! Wooohoooo!!! That should have been a sign that we were going to have a good weekend. We arrived at our hotel in Nashville around 4:00 CST and then headed off to meet up with one of my favorite people and her family - Ondrea! Keith and I had the pleasure of meeting Ondrea, Brian and Meg in Moscow. We had hibachi for dinner and then headed to the hotel pool. Ondrea has 4 little fishes (is that a word?) and I definitely have two. Alex was SO good with the little kids.

3 little fishes

A wardrobe malfunction

Writing a letter home to the dogs and cats

We all crashed (and slept horribly, except for Andrew) that night (and all nights)and then headed to Bounce U in Nashville to meet up with even more awesome people and their kiddos! We got to spend time with Kim, Lexi and the boys, Adrienne, Jim and Owen, Carrie, Michael and little S, Carey and her two kiddos (private blog) and, of course Ondrea and family! We had a blast. I had the opportunity to meet Carrie, Adrienne and Carey in Nashville (what seems like) many moons ago so it was great to catch up with them. It was the first time meeting Kim and she was just as sweet in person as she is on her blog. Alex was awesome - playing with all of the kids and just enduring whatever attacked his legs at any point in time. :-)

The bloggers and their babies!

Even Alex had fun!

And so did Keith!

On Monday, the tables turned and it was all about Alex day. We started our day out by forgetting we actually had to CHECK OUT of our hotel room. :-) The maid knocked at the door and looked at us like "umm... hello! Are you leaving?". We were in our own world - knew we had to be at Vanderbilt until 2:30 and figured we'd just hang out in our room until then. Whoops! So, to kill time we went over to Centennial Park and fed the geese, ran around and took some great pictures. It's so rare to have all 3 boys (Keith is a boy) so I love to take pictures of them together.

Is this not the sweetest??

Feeding the geese!

At the Parthenon

At 2:30 we headed to Vanderbilt and started our tour. We walked into the info session with Andrew and I felt the daggers. People were NOT happy we had a toddler with us. I decided to take Andrew out of the room and sit him down with my ipod and low and behold he was an absolute angel. He watched the Little Einsteins and then on the walking tour he fell fast asleep in the stroller. I could not have asked for a better child. Alex LOVED Vandy. Loved, loved, loved it. Of course, it helped that he was the minority gender in our tour group. :-)

After Vandy we headed to eat at a taco place Ondrea said we needed to visit (yummy Queso!!) and then we started our drive to Sewanee (University of the South). We spent the night in... umm... a motel of sorts. I will be honest and say I'm a "hotel" kind of girl. Let's just say that I survived. We woke up Tuesday morning and went on a tour. Again - we had an angel three year old! What a beautiful school up on the mountain! Alex met with the swim coach and he was impressed with how close the professors/coaches are with their students. I think it made him start to realize that maybe 30,000 kids in one school is too much for him. We'll see.

Sewanee is not on the short list, but Vandy surely is. He knows what he needs to do to get in and he's willing to do it. He currently has a 3.89 GPA and a 1900 (out of 2400) SAT. Next year he is taking (hope you're sitting down) AP AB Calculus, AP Economics, AP Statistics, Spanish 4, Human Anatomy, World Literature and something else I can't think of. For each AP class he gets and extra "quality point" so instead of a 4.0 as an A he could get a (5.0). I have so much to say about the higher education system but that is for another post. Vanderbilt, last year, had 19,000 applicants and only accepted 4,000. Crazy isn't it? And that is the norm nowadays. Alex's graduation year is supposed to increase the applicant pool by about 10,000 but the acceptance rate is still the same. Talk about competitive!

We didn't get much sleep on "bacation" but it was so much fun seeing all 3 boys together. There was a lot of bonding going on and it was so sweet to see. It was good time spent with Alex - quality time. Guess what we did tonight?? We had Sunday dinner together! And it was great. :-)

On another note (boy this is long winded... again) today, Andrew turned 3 1/2! Here's the conversation we had about that.

Mom: Andrew! We need to measure you tomorrow. You'll be 3 1/2 years old tomorrow!
Andrew: 3 1/2 years old?
Mom: Yes! Tomorrow is the day you turn 3 1/2 years old!
Andrew: I like that. I really like that!

Hehehe... anyhow, we measured him! At 3, he measured 2'9". Today, he measured 3'2"! Yay bean greens! :-)

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!
Becky