A Weekend in Nashville - Part 2 - Ice cream, Half-Marathon, and Grassfed Beef

Back in April, Eric, Evie and I drove to Nashville for a long weekend with two sets of friends.   In those pre-baby days we decided to run another half marathon...but in the days leading up to our trip my sport bra didn't fit, my shoes were too small, and I had the flu.  Oh and on the drive out to Nashville, Evie pooped in the carseat.  Read all about Part 1 here.

After the nutty trip through packet pick up and the race expo, we packed out little nugget back in her still-wet carseat and drove out to our friend Kathryn's house where we met up with her and Ashley.

We had a great time letting Gabe and Evie play.  It was love at first sight.  What do you think?

And Eric and Gabe played with buckets on their heads.  It's what the cool kids do, ya know?

We took the clan of husbands and kids and went to our very first vegan restaurant (they did have one item on the menu with real dairy sour cream [thank god]).  There were lots of things we'd never heard of, so it was great having die hard vegetarians explain the menu to us. And then...

Next door was the most epic (real diary!) ice cream experience of my life: Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream. Move over Graeter's.  I found a new Ice Cream From Ohio Love Of My Life.  Jeni's has ethical ingredients and incredible flavors.  It was essentially what I envision heaven to be life.  Pretty sure Jesus would agree.  I had a salted caramel & gooey butter cake two scoop ice cream cup.  I still dream about it.

Pretty certain they found the decor on Pinterest.

After ice cream we said goodnight to this crew, and drove out to a farm on the south side of the city where we stayed the night with Katherine and Ryan, and my sister and Sam. 

Saturday morning was race day!   Katie, Kathryn and I were going to walk the race together, but about a quarter of a mile into the race Katie took off!  Kathryn and I walked most of the race.  It was long. Hilly. Hot. Sunny.

And boy am I out of shape.

 Two sit breaks and we still made it in just under 4 hours.  Not too bad for not walking more than 8 miles a week since before I got pregnant.

I put sunscreen on my arms and face, so I did not look quite as bad as Katie...but my legs are still rocking a pretty awkward running shorts tan.

After the race we headed back to Katherine & Ryan's for naps.  They were so generous to watch Evie all morning.  That evening Katie & Sam headed out for a night on the town since they'd never been to Nashville before.  Katherine, Ryan, Eric and I grilled out and spent quality time catching up.

Sunday morning we enjoyed a big tasty brunch and a loooong car ride home!  But not without another trip to Jeni's!!!!

And on our way home we had our traditional stop at Sonic and the Lodge Cast Iron outlet store, where this time we ran into...

I wish we hadn't had an event we were rushing home for, other wise we SO would have stayed and played!