From Oklahoma, we made our way east to Tennessee. We are finding that it takes a little longer to make the long trips as Aden and Wiley like to "stretch their legs" a little more. It is always helpful when we can break a trip up and so that is what we did. Our first service in Tennessee was not until Wednesday night, so we left on Monday afternoon to make the ten hour trip. The first day, we drove to Little Rock, Arkansas where we stayed with family friends, the Harrises. It was dark and rainy for most of the trip, so daddy was happy to take a break as well. Roger and Carol took good care of us and we had a great time getting to know them (for Aden and Wiley) and catching up with them for mommy and daddy. The second day we drove to Memphis, Tennessee where we stopped long enough to get a picture with Elvis (actually we stopped for the bathrooms but his statue was at the rest stop) and then on to Jackson, Tennessee to see some friends with connections from both daddy's college days as well as from Kudjip. The Harpers had invited us to stop through on our way. We were planning to have dinner and drive the rest of the way to Nashville, but mommy didn't feel well and they had said we could stay the night. So we did. They had a big great dane dog named Jinx and he was about twice as big as Aden. He was really nice though. We enjoyed our time with them as well. On Wednesday, we finished our drive over to Nashville with plenty of time before our evening service.
We had a great time meeting new people in all of the churches and visiting friends around the Nashville area. We played at Uncle Bob and Aunt Beth's (Merki)house. We played at Uncle Mike and Aunt Becky's (Hancock) house. We had dinner and a surprise shopping spree with Tera and Shibu. We also got to play on the boats at the Bass Pro Shop (after dinner with James and Jonquil) and pretend we were going to Hawaii, Vanuatu, Samoa and most of the South Pacific. The Opry Mills mall had a carousel that was fun to ride on as well as a train that Aden and Daddy rode on that took us all through the mall. Grandma and Grandpa also came down for part of the time and traveled with us to the churches (and watched Aden and Wiley while mommy and daddy had a date night).

It was a fun week in the Music City and the weather was perfect. We enjoyed all of our time with the churches, Trevecca and our friends and even had a chance to celebrate Wiley's 1st birthday with one church. We would later have a family birthday party for him (that should be the next blog), but first it was on to Ohio...