Tennessee Adventures

Tennessee is an absolutely beautiful state! I was so excited to see all of the green and to experience the warm weather. Brent and I left for Nashville Monday, April 5th and headed back by Thursday, April 8th. It was a short trip, but very busy and packed with tours of hospitals, elementary school stops, house dreaming, and you can't leave out fun with friends and family! We stayed with Keri and Jeremiah in their super cute apartment and were able to have dinner with Meghan and Jacob one night. It's so refreshing to hang out with a group of great people that we get along so well with. We have friends we get along with great in Michigan, but to know that we have people near the place where we might be living is exciting. That will probably be the hardest thing for me --to leave all of my family and friends here. I wish I could take everyone with us when we do have to move, but I know that isn't realistic. We will just have to take plenty of vacations to Michigan and get all the frequent flyer miles we can get AND we will have to have a big enough living space to have lots and lots of visitors :) OPEN INVITE RIGHT NOW FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO VISIT! We would love to have you as guests in our new home :)

Brent was able to stop at 7 different elementary schools near Nashville and drop off his resume. He also has a friend from high school that works at one of the elementary schools. She was able to send him a link of the open positions in Rutherford county that we didn't even know about. Brent was able to get his resume e-mailed to those schools before the deadline--praise the Lord :) We are planning on going back to Tennessee in the beginning of May for a teaching job fair in Murfreesboro, so hopefully those resumes will make an impression on the principals. I mean, c'mon, who wouldn't want Brent as their kid's school teacher? :) I may be a little partial.

I was able to take two tours when we were down in Nashville of Vanderbilt--one of the main campus and the other of the Children's Hospital. What a phenomenal and gorgeous facility! AND they would pay for my Master's in full after I worked there for 15 months (12 credit hours/year which is definitely a plus!!!). The Human Resources Nurse Recruiters were phenomenal! I can't say enough great things about both of them--they were so helpful and nice and really went above and beyond what they had to do to make me feel welcome. They had wonderful southern hospitality :). Not only did I have a tour at the main hospital, but the recruiter set up an impromptu interview with one of the managers of a unit that had an opening. I was so glad we could make that work. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Vanderbilt is where I can start working.

And, I can't say this enough, but Keri and Jeremiah are awesome hosts! They feed us dinner and let us stay with them all the time, even when they have to work the next day :) We had so much fun with them painting pottery, driving around Nashville, looking at houses in Murfreesboro, and watching movies. It was like we were still neighbors at Waterside--we just picked up right where we left off. We would LOVE to be neighbors again someday.

We also found this cute little restaurant on our way home from Tennessee called Willie D's Cafe in Indiana, just outside of Madison. They had awesome food--especially their potato soup--and it was family owned! I love supporting local businesses. I'd much rather give my money to the mom and pop shops than the huge chains out there. We will definitely be visiting that establishment more often on our trips.

I'm sure we will have many more Tennessee Adventures to come! We will keep you posted :)