Welcome to Tennessee

We are keeping busy while we wait for our stuff to arrive from England.  It's been fun exploring a new area.

We visited the Carnton Plantation which is just a few miles from our house here in Franklin, TN.  This home played an important role during the Civil War.  The Battle of Franklin was one of the deadliest battles fought.  Over 4,000 soldiers died here and are buried in a nearby Confederate cemetery.Franklin was founded in 1799 which, for America, is pretty historic.

We've had a few visitors already.  Grandma and Grandpa Tolley came from Montana.  They drove for 3 days to get here (and delivered our cars to us).  They enjoyed the Carnton Plantation with us too.

Dallin came to Nashville for the annual International Trombone Festival.  He stayed with us for a week and took Matt and I with him to see the premier of a trombone concerto with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.  It was amazing! We also enjoyed the trombone choir.

My baby bro is so grown up!

This hall was built in 2006 and the design came from a research tour of Europe's greatest halls.  (Would have loved to have been on that trip!)  Right now the symphony has no openings but based on their venue and the caliber of their playing, I probably don't have a chance anyway.  But it was a spectacular evening.  Wouldn't it be great if we could go to next year's ITF in Paris, France?

Summers here in Tennessee are very hot and humid and we've been making good use of our Family YMCA pass and getting to the pool just about every day that the weather cooperates.  Both girls have done a week of swim lessons already and have moved into the Advanced Level.  They each passed the swim test (swimming the length of the lap pool) and earned their wristband which entitled them to use the waterslides and climbing wall, etc.

It's so hot that every hour the lifeguards declare "break time" for 10 minutes and everyone has to go sit in the shade and drink water.  My poor kids have not experienced much summer for the last few years and are thus somewhat unfamiliar with how beach chairs operate... We are working on that.

Franklin has a beautiful historic downtown that has been renovated and beautified immensely.  It was the perfect venue for the 4th of July celebrations. 

The girls marched in the Kiddie Parade and we enjoyed viewing the local shops and listening to the Dixie Band.

We've been busy working too.  Not everything has been fun and games! Matt has settled into his job and is already planning a trip to Australia to meet with colleagues.  At the homestead, Matt has spent many hours cleaning up fallen trees and building us a fire pit in the backyard. Admittedly, Matt thinks the chainsaw and building fires is pretty fun.  He even mentioned a desire to change careers and try life as a lumberjack for a while.  I don't think so.

We love the fire pit and enjoy evenings outside cooking s'mores and watching the fireflies.

We've spent many hours pulling weeds and tending the yard as well.  One of our more recent projects was harvesting leftover straw from our farmer/neighbor's field for our berry patch and garden plots. 

Probably not the most standard use of a minivan, but it was nothing that the shop vac couldn't clean up later!

Aside from working outside, we have our down time as well.  Living in a house devoid of belongings lends us to be creative with our limited resources.  Here we are having our first meal in our new house.  Frozen pizza.  Served on the cardboard box it came in... because we didn't have any kitchen goods yet.  The table and chairs are rental furniture, along with a few beds and linens.  They've all gone back to the rental place now since Cat only reimburses for 1 month of use.  So now we are really camping out till our sea shipment arrives!

There are lots of creative activites to engage in whilst living in a large, vacant house with no television. Hide-and-Seek was great fun at first.  But now that we've discovered every closet and corner of the house we've moved onto new projects. 

We built a village of houses and shops out of cardboard boxes in the playroom. 

We built toy airplanes out of sticks and string.

We tested the underground irrigation system.

And we did some informal measurements of the new built-in entertainment center.

Someday soon (we hope) our shipment from England will arrive and we will become busy unpacking boxes, hanging pictures on the wall and eating off of a table.  Till then, we're all doing fine and enjoying the great house and neighborhood!