Weekend at the Turner Farm

This past weekend, I got to spend it relaxing in the mountains at the Turner Farm at their annual family reunion. 

It was the 100th year! 

The Turner family is my friend Julia's mother's family. This is the house where Julia's grandfather grew up and it has since become a tradition for all of the family to gather there every year in the fall. The family is huge, but everyone of them is so sweet! Friday night we roasted hot dogs over the fires and later smores for dessert. We were able to go for a hay ride once the rain let up for a little while.  

Eli, Kandice, Me holding Zeke, Julia and Katherine

I got to hang out with those two little boys for the weekend; I love being around little ones! Saturday we slept in, went back out to the farm property and enjoyed an awesome lunch of fresh BBQ and tons of sides and desserts. We had some entertainment from a skit that some of the family had prepared after lunch. Saturday night and Sunday was spent hanging out at Julia's cousin, Kandice's house playing games and watching football. I loved getting time to spend with Julia and her sweet family and so glad I got to finally experience the Turner Family Farm. 

Sugar High!

Today I experienced one of Nashville's greatest treasures, the Pancake Pantry.

I introduce to you the Swiss Chocolate Chip Pancakes:

Yes, that's chocolate chips AND powdered sugar! And don't be fooled, there's about 7 pancakes on that plate.

About 4 hours later when I was at work at the clinic, I looked at my CI and said "I can feel my heart beat behind my eye balls, that can't be good can it?" 

Can we say sugar overload? But Oh so worth it! Thanks for the suggestion Lauren! :)

Hockey and an old Friend

The hockey screening with the Predators went well. I didn't get stuck with the feet like I feared; instead, I was in charge of timing their planks and making sure they kept the correct form. The rookies were a lot younger than I expected them to be, 18-20 year olds. I definitely saw lots of nice, big thighs :) The veterans came through after the rookies were done. It was sad I didn't know who the big players were. One of the other ladies from our clinic is a huge Predators fan and she couldn't wipe the smile off of her face while we were there. So she would fill me in on who the players were and why they were so great. Her favorite player was the one that's missing one of his front teeth; not what I would go for, but it did give his smile some character!

Saturday evening, I met up with my long lost Cari! It was so great to get to see her again! We walked all around downtown and then ate dinner together. She just moved here the same weekend I did, so it was pretty entertaining having two people who don't know the town attempt to get around. But we had a blast catching up and I can't wait to see her again. She's motivated me to become more dedicated to my running again. This girl is doing the IronMan in November! She's training 25 hours a week on top of being in a Nurse Practitioner's program. I definitely don't have any excuse now for making time to run. I forgot to get a picture of with Cari but I plan on seeing her again so I'll snap one then! 

I can't believe it's week three already, the time is flying by! It's good and sad at the same time. Tomorrow morning I'm going to meet Kelly at the Pancake Pantry, I hear its amazing so I'm super excited! 

Getting familiar with Nashville!

Nashville is starting to feel like home and I'm loving it here. My CI, Flavio is great and I've enjoyed getting to know him. He has a fun personality and is great with the patients. He's already taught me a ton in just one week and I'm confident that I'll leave this rotation feeling pretty comfortable with manual therapy. On Friday I got to observe two surgeries; the first was a medial meniscus repair- cool but not too exciting. The second though was an ACL reconstruction; it was pretty neat to see the bone-tendon-bone graft replacement and the surgeon talked to me throughout the whole surgery- I felt kind of special :)

Erin and Kelly came to visit this weekend for our second annual 621 roomie reunion! It brought back some great memories being all together again. 

We took some updated Erin and Kelly pictures:

We had some Tennessee original BBQ; went to Nashville's exact replica of the Parthenon (it's what you see in the background of our pictures, but here's a better picture of it):

I also found the sign of the founder of Nashville, which, if you didn't know.. He's from the Carolinas! :)

We sat in on a Shakespeare in the Park play and then got the grand tour of downtown Nashville all lit-up at night. I saw tons of restaurants that I can't wait to try out. Erin B got hit on from the car window while driving through dowtown... we can't keep the boys away from her! It was fun being together again and the time was too short! 

This coming Saturday should be pretty interesting; I get to go work with Nashville's NHL hockey team, the Predators, screen their new drafts and free agents for this year's team. I'm hoping I don't get stuck with a bad job like checking their feet! I'll let you know how it goes.

I just recently found out that one of my all time favorites from Clemson just recently moved to Nashville as well and I can't wait to see her Saturday night!

I will have more pictures coming soon!