Chris and I had an amazing trip to Nashville this past July. So here’s a little background on why we traveled to Nashville. We started
Financial Peace University in 2011 which in a nutshell is Dave Ramsey’s class on getting debt free and managing your money (this class is offered all over the country and is seriously amazing! Changed. Our. Lives.) His Radio show which is listened to by 5 million people every day is broadcast from Nashville. On his radio show he lets people come on the air and scream “We’re debt free!” If you’re able to you can come to Nashville and do it live from the lobby of Financial Peace Plaza. While Chris and I were in the process of becoming debt free I’d listen to his show and literally get chills every time I’d hear a family do their debt free scream. Chris and I sort of joked about going to Nashville when we’d finally paid off all of our debt to do it live. Several months before meeting this milestone Chris’ really good friend Erik got engaged to a girl from where else, Tennessee! It worked out perfectly for us to go to his wedding and schedule our debt free scream in the same weekend!
We were so excited to get a weekend away by ourselves. That is a very rare occurrence and has only happened a few times in our marriage. (We loved it so much, we are starting to make it a regular occurrence! And our kids are getting older so it’s a bit easier to get away.) Getting away and having everything organized for 4 kids for 4 days was a bit of a challenge but oh sooo worth it! It felt so amazing to get on a plane and be alone with Chris. We arrived in Nashville at about noon which was perfect timing to arrive in the city and start to explore.
We stayed at the Union Station hotel which is an old train station turned hotel. It was simply beautiful and perfect walking distance to all the action on Broadway.
When we arrived in Nashville my first impression was amazement at how green everything was. There is so much vegetation everywhere. We checked into our hotel and settled into our room. As soon as we were ready to venture out into the city we looked out the window and there was a huge rain storm with lightening and all! So that is why there is vegetation everywhere! Rest assured the sun was shining through the clouds 30 minutes later and we enjoyed a nice stroll to south Broadway.
The sights and sounds of this fun city were apparent right when we arrived. There was live music playing everywhere! Even in the airport! We enjoyed walking in and out of these fun restaurants and bars to listen to live country music.
The music was great and the food was even better! We ate so good in Nashville. I gained 6 lbs in 4 days! We ate at Puckett's Grocery in downtown that first day and we were both in heaven. The pulled pork was something else. They also had the best barbecue sauce I’ve ever had!
I took a lot of food pictures! We had to try the Pecan Pie while we were in the South. It did not disappoint.
Some more pictures of this fun city….
After exploring the city a little bit we headed back to our hotel to rest. We had reservations for
The Bluebird Café which is a legendary place that has hosted famous singers and songwriters. Tickets are hard to come by and I had to reserve ours at 6 am a month prior. The place is in a little strip mall and really doesn’t look like much. It only seats 90 people and is tiny. If you’ve seen the TV show Nashville, they film a ton in here. Anyhow it ended up being a huge highlight of our trip. We got to listen to 4 songwriters sing in a round. Some of the most amazing talent and they just make you feel like you are just hanging out with them while they are writing music.
I recorded a little bit to share what the fun atmosphere was like.
We absolutely loved to Bluebird! What an awesome place!!
The next morning Chris and I went on a run and ran along the riverfront. Call me weird but I love running when I’m on vacation. It is just so fun to explore new places and do it while running.
We were only in Nashville for 3 and a half days and one of those days we were going to be spending at the wedding so we really had to keep busy in order to do everything we wanted. On Friday morning we went to the Ryman auditorium which was so cool! We did the backstage tour as well and really enjoyed it. I loved learning the history behind the building. It was originally built as a church by a man named Ryman. Years later it was the home the Grand Ol’ Opry for many years.
Even though the Grand Ol’ Opry has moved to its permanent location. There are still many concerts held here year round and from all types of artists. There are framed Hatch Show prints from tons of musicians of all genres. Apparently it is quite an honor for an artist to perform here.
On our backstage tour, we got to go into the dressing rooms where many, many famous people have prepared for their shows. It was fun to hear all the neat stories the guide told.
It was cool actually getting to stand on the stage.
Later that afternoon we made our way down to Brentwood which is just south of Nashville to visit the Dave Ramsey Show. It was a beautiful drive and I kept telling Chris that we need to move here! When we arrived it was a bit surreal. Seeing Dave Ramsey on the air and knowing that we would be on the air shortly made me so nervous. Martha, his director of guest relations, made us feel right at home and really gave us the Southern treatment!
During one of his commercial breaks he came out to meet people in the lobby and take pictures with them. I of course went right up to him and gave him a hug! He was a little taken back but hugged me back anyway! We hadn’t been on the air yet so he didn’t know who we were but was nice, shook our hands, and I told him thank you for changing our lives!
Then it was go time. I was so nervous. Just before we went on the air the producer said, “Don’t worry its just you guys, Dave and 5 million people listening!” It went really well. He asked us how much we paid off which was $80,000 in 2 years. We kind of told our story which goes something like this (taken from a message to a friend, I didn’t feel like typing it all out again)…
So we started FPU (Financial Peace University) just over 2 years ago and had $80,000 in debt. Student Loans, Credit cards and a car payment. We've pretty much been in debt since the day we were married- it all started with the ring. It felt like it would just always be there and no matter what we did to try to get out of it we felt like we were not making any progress. The debt got bigger and bigger and finally we just had enough. I had been listening to Dave Ramsey on the Radio since he took Dr. Laura's time slot on the station in LA. I would get goose bumps when I'd hear people scream "We're debt Free" I wanted to do that so badly. We had some friends who had been real estate agents for us several years ago who were passionate about FPU. They were coordinators for a class at a church here in Rancho. We signed up for the class and the rest is pretty much history. Well not really, it was a lot of hard work and sacrifice. We had to go without a lot of things we really enjoyed like going out to eat, clothes, something as simple as new towels and sheets. We scrimped and cut every corner possible. Luckily I was able to make some money through a job that I'd been doing on the side since we were married by working as much as I could. It was hard and there were times when I thought it wasn't worth it for me to be out of the home. ( I worked anywhere from 12-20 hours a week) but I kept telling myself the sooner we get this done the sooner I can stop working. In March of this year we paid our last debt (we aren't counting the house in any of this obviously) and it felt amazing. The best part is knowing that we will never go down that road again and we have changed our family tree forever. The budget was the key and knowing where every dollar goes.
I do have to give Chris credit. He always created budgets every month but I would never follow them. I’d complain and say they were too restrictive and too hard for me. He was always trying to find a way to get us out of this mess but I just didn’t think it was possible. Once I got on board he was very happy! He said something funny to Dave Ramsey while we were on the radio, “I’m sure glad Dr. Laura went off the air!” It really has changed our lives and we have seen our actions affect our kids in so many ways. They are money conscious and really understand money way more than we did at their age.
Our kids screamed with us while listening to the radio all the way from California. I held their picture because they couldn’t be with us to do it.
We got to sign a plaque in his Lobby which will be there forever. Someday when our kids are visiting Nashville on vacation they can see it and say, “That’s when mom and dad changed our family tree”.
We stuck around until the show was over and Martha gave us a tour of the Dave’s office and the behind the scenes. While we were there a man came in and overheard us talking, he said, “I just heard you guys on the radio, what a cool story!” That felt pretty neat! We saw Dave throw his baseball cap on and just head out the front door like he was just a regular joe. It was a cool experience I’ll never forget.
The Loveless Café came highly recommended so we decided to give it a try. We took the most beautiful drive from Brentwood to the restaurant. It was simply gorgeous and so green.
The Loveless Café was amazing! A very popular place out in the country that has the best barbecue and fried chicken around. Not to mention the best biscuits we’ve ever had. We loved this place. The cream corn you see below was to die for. And yes those are Mormon potatoes you see there too!
The next day was Chris’ friend Erik’s wedding. It was out in the country near Knoxville so it was a bit of a drive. A couple of hours away. One thing we didn’t realize was that Tennessee has 2 different time zones. We thought we were making great time and would get to the wedding 20 minutes early. We got there and pulled up to tons of cars and we could see lots of people standing around. We thought it was weird that so many people were there early, but then we looked at our phones and noticed the time! It was raining pretty hard and so we jumped out of the car and ran up to the tent. Luckily the wedding was delayed because of the rain so we didn’t miss a thing! It was a backyard wedding held in front of a lake which was simply beautiful.
Chris was happy because the wedding was casual and, casual as a wedding can get! We had a great time and it was great to see Erik so happy.
We made the drive back to Nashville that night and checked into a different hotel. This one was called Gaylord Opryland and it was right next to the Grand Ol Opry house, in a different part of Nashville. It was an amazing hotel and absolutely gigantic. There are over 3,000 hotel rooms and it was just too over the top. Felt like something out of Vegas. They had tons of indoor atriums and even a shopping Mall inside the atrium. Chris and I were a bit overwhelmed and even though it was a beautiful place it was just too big and we wished we’d stayed in the other hotel one more night. We arrived at night and had to check out the next morning so we didn’t really get to explore it much.
I did play around with my camera on Sunday morning as I walked around and took pictures. They even had a boat ride inside!
That night we stopped at the Dukes of Hazzard museum which made Chris very happy! He was like a little kid and it was so cute.
The next day we were to fly home that evening so we had some time to explore a little more. We went downtown one more time to pick up a few souvenirs for the kids. I really enjoyed taking pictures and probably drove Chris a little crazy.
We picked up some of these pecan pralines to take home and they were amazing!
We drove down to Franklin to visit some cool civil war sites. We ate at Puckett’s one more time since we loved it so much! This time it was in downtown Franklin which is such an adorable city.
We visited the Lotz House where the Battle of Franklin started. This house still has a hole in the roof from a cannon that landed there.
The Carter house was across the street where the Lotz family sought refuge.
I really enjoyed the Carnton Plantation. It was simply beautiful. This home was used as a hospital during the Civil war. Many soldiers died here and were buried in the cemetery.
Being inside that cemetery was very tranquil and solemn. You felt the presence of those who’d died there and were buried. Sadly those tombstones you see, the block shaped ones, all have numbers and say unknown. Visiting this place really made me appreciate the history of our country and gave me a great respect for those who lived, fought and died here. What a devastating event the Civil War was.
This was our last stop before heading to the airport. We loved Nashville and can’t wait to visit again. What a fun city with so much history. After this trip Chris and I decided we want to explore so many fun cities. We plan on making a bucket list of cities we want to visit!
