A Trip Home

Last Thursday, I left Murfreesboro to head to Crossville. I hadn't been in a while and it was a good chance to get back before school starts. Sometimes it's just nice to go home, ya know? Anyway, I always have my favorite places to stop when I go home, so I was looking forward to my shopping excursion. When I got there, I met my mom at the house and we had to stay there for a little while because there were men working on the garage since it didn't work anymore. My dad called and wanted us to meet him for lunch before he had to head to the store. (Here's my dad in his favorite chair looking oh so handsome:)
After the worker men left, we went to meet him at the Cracker Barrel. I was really good and ordered a grilled chicken salad and I even left most of my croutons! We all had a good lunch, but it had to be quick so dad could get back and open the store.

After lunch, mom and I began our tour of my usual places to hit when I go home. We went to the Dollar Tree, which as you all know is my most FAVORITE store on the planet! I needed something that was metal for my students to be able to use their Magnetic Poetry centers on. They just happened to have some colorful square metal sheets to be used as a memo board in their Back to School section. I picked up six of them! I also got some really cool, clear frog and human models in their toy section. You can take them apart and "disect" them without getting all goopy! I got a couple of them for my friend, Clarissa, too! We also hit up the Cato store, but didn't find anything there. So we moved on to the used book store.
The Book Cellar is also one of Corey's favorite places to visit, but he looks for scary books! I go to look for books to use in my classroom. I will usually buy 2-3 copies of the same book if I can find it so that I can use them for book circles! I did end up finding a few books, and even one on tape, so it turned out to be a pretty good find!

After shopping all day we met my dad for dinner at Dickey's Barbeque. That happens to be my and Corey's "special" place (lol) but that's another story. I had a baked potato with pulled pork bbq and it was mighty tasty!! They also have these big-ass pickles you can get out of a jar! It was a very tasty dinner!

My mom goes to a water aerobics class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. She wanted me to go with her in the morning, but I needed a bathing suit, so we went out to the outlet mall to find a new swim suit for me and some new tennis shoes for dad. I got a chocolate brown suit with rouching to hide all my fat rolls! It's really cute! So anyway, the next day we got up and went to her water aerobics class. I SWEAR to you my mom and I were the youngest people there! And...the class was lead by this old German lady. Let me tell you, that German lady was FIERCE! She had everybody's asses up moving around! It lasted about an hour, but it was fun and I am thinking about going to the YMCA here since they offer water aerobic classes, too!
Here is a picture of the pool:


The rest of the day was great, too! We met Marilyn, a family friend, to go see "Hairspray" at the movies and it was really cute! It was SUPER hard not to get popcorn, but mom and I snuck in some 100 calorie packs of snacks and we were fine! Here's my mom and Marilyn at the movie theater:

My dad's band, the City Lights, was playing out at the Fairfield country club that night and mom and I wanted to go see them, so we went shopping to find something to wear, naturally! We searched all over the place, but I finally found a really cute black and white polka-dot dress at Goody's. When we tried to call and make reservations, they were all booked up, so we didn't end up going after all. :-(
Instead, we called Marilyn and asked her to eat at Gondola's with us. It was really good and nice to spend more time with her!

The next day, I slept late! It was nice since I hadn't been sleeping well. I watched my mom kill a poke weed in front of her house. This is what people use to make "poke salit" and no, that's not spelled wrong. People used to eat this stuff! Here's a little slide show of it's removal by my mother:

We went to lunch with my grandpa at Shoney's and it was good to see him. Below are pictures of him with my mom and with his fishin' hat on:


It was also good to see the animals.

Spooky, the dalmation, Orange, the cat, and a random frog in the driveway! lol I also saw a black snake wriggling across the road as I was leaving! Ewww... I had a fun time and I'll be back again on Sept. 1st for my 10 year High School reunion!