Our Southern Summer Sojourn

Tennessee is a great place. It's nothing like the place I grew up in. I grew up in Idaho, among other places, and the default color is brown. Like...really brown. 

Tennessee is green. Like.....so green that I (I'm appropriately ashamed to admit this, let me assure you) I understood exactly what Bella meant when she said that all of the green made her feel weird. The first thing I really noticed about Tennessee is that they have grass growing on the medians on the highway. AND NO ONE PLANTS IT. It's freaky, and it really doesn't happen in Idaho.

Tennessee is also the second stop in our summer trip this summer. Here's how it's been going: 

(the first was Idaho for a few days to visit my family--we had fun playing basketball and sitting in the kitchen dyeing my hair and watching silly movies and I saw my best friend for the last time before her mission. It was really sad to think we won't see them for the whole summer! I'll miss their silly smiles and jokes and hugs) 

We've spent a lot of time in Tennessee enjoying the sun...through the windows...on the couch (seriously, I have seen way too many episodes of "Charmed" and we've watched ALL of the Harry Potter movies, plus we started "New Girl" and watched a fair amount of "Sherlock"). 

Also, in an effort to pack light for Cambridge, I've done a fair amount of experimenting with "rag curls" and they never ever turned out right....as you can see. This is....well, this is the best go of it I had.

We went and saw The Fault in Our Stars and I CRIED SO HARD. This is us post-TFiOS, below. Anyway. That's a whole other post.  

Seriously, though. This is Granny's yard. LOOK AT ALL THE GREEN. Alan chopped up a tree, felt manly, etc. 

And Coley, Sean, Alan and I sang in Stake Conference together...we practiced quite a few times together...but we didn't always practice. And unfortunately, Shadow was the victim. 

This is Mema's house/yard. She lives further out of the city, in the sort of, countryside, in an idyllic southern home with a covered front porch and lots of rocking chairs. 

We're excited to leave for Europe on Friday, but we'll definitely miss this wonderful place and all the lovely people there. 

This morning we started our journey to Europe! We've been sitting in airports all day trying to get out on a flight to Italy! So far....it's looking like we have a better chance of getting to Venice than Rome. 

(Look at all those people trying to steal our spots on the flight!) Because most of Alan's cousins work for Delta airlines, most of Alan's family can get away with flying standby for cheaper than the usual rate, so....I've never flown any other way--it adds a lot of adventure to our trip (like on our way to Tennessee on our honeymoon, we spent the night in the airport because we couldn't get on a flight that night, but we could in the morning)!