the Homestretch

I left NOLA on Saturday and drove up to Birmingham, AL to grab lunch with a "little sister" of mine. Paige is actually a foot taller than me, so she's not so little, but I adopted her as a younger sister a few years back. She's currently a Sophomore in college, studying nursing and I couldn't be more proud. I'm so glad she was able to break away from all the college fun and demands of studying to show me around campus and grab lunch at a cute place downtown.

After fueling up (on food and gas) I hit the road towards Nashville to her parent's horse farm. It'd been over a year since I'd been "home" the the farm and I was very excited for my visit with Mama & Papa T, as well as the grandparents Nons & Poppa. No visit would be complete without feeding a few peppermints to the horses or giving lots of love to the growing number of dogs! The T's always know the best places to eat in town and we enjoyed a yummy dinner at the Franklin Chop House.

Sunday I drove to Louisville to visit my sister and her roomie, Jess. I got there just in time for the Sunday evening service at Sojourn and it was so great to be there for their baptismal service where a woman was able to leave behind her life of prostitution through the church's ministry Scarlet Hope. It was especially neat to be there with my sister who has met this woman through her volunteer efforts with this ministry. Afterwards we grabbed some blizzards at DQ and headed home to watch the Emmy's (yes, that's right, I watched an award show named Emmy with my sister Emmy).

Monday I called my friend Janee on a whim as I was driving through Cincy and it just so happened that she was off work, and shopping at a mall that I was about to drive by! I pulled over and we grabbed lunch and caught up on our life post Duke and pre-her 2nd baby. It's always great to spend time with her as she's so down to earth and funny!

I finally made it to my parents house around dinner time. I was SO done with my road trip by this point. It was a cold, rainy, miserable day and my bottom was so sore from sitting for over 60 hours in one spot. Mom did not disappoint and a delicious, hot dinner was waiting for me. And so began almost 2 weeks of non-stop consumption of delicious food and laying on the couch watching some quality (thick sarcasm) TV shows like Millionaire Matchmaker, Keeping up the Kardashians, Project Runway, and all the new Fall debut shows.