Gone to Texas

Hello? Anybody out there? Remember me? It's me, Alyssa. Your friendly sporadic blogger.

Man, it's been a CRAZY past few months. Most of you who read this are also Facebook friends, so you probably already know that Marcus and I are once again residents of the great state of Texas. It is a very bittersweet time for me. I am SO proud of Marcus, who finished seminary at Vanderbilt and accepted a position at Grace Avenue United Methodist Church. We are so excited to make our new home in Frisco and be closer to family. But I was devastated to leave my amazing job at Blood:Water Mission and all the wonderful friends and places we loved in Nashville. To be honest, I don't really feel like I was "done" with Nashville. It feels so surreal to be back in Texas and not have a job or a place of our own (yet!). But I am so confident that God has called us here and feel very blessed for His provision in our lives.

I suppose this little blog will need a makeover eventually. Hopefully I will get back to blogging on a more regular basis that warrants a new design! I have several things I want to post about in the next month, and while I'm on the hunt for a new job, I should have plenty of time for that! To hold myself accountable, I'm listing them here.

-Completion of my Nashville Bucket List
-Books I read in 2012
-Review and Resolutions for 2013
-Progress on decorating our new house

Yes, we bought a house! I could not be more thankful for such an easy house buying experience and I can't wait to share pictures with you. Praying everything goes smoothly until we close at the end of January!

And finally, to celebrate my return to blogging, I want to invite you to join me in a Valentine's Day blogging party! I'm a big fan of The Crowley Party and Alycia has joined with four other bloggers to host this swap. It should be fun!

It's good to be back, blog world! I hope you'll stick around!

Nieces in Nashville!

We just spent a wonderful long weekend in New York seeing the sights, visiting family, and celebrating my sister turning 30! I'll post about that in the next few days, but first I wanted to share some photos of a fun weekend in June when Marcus' parents, his brother and sister-in-law, and our nieces all came to visit us here in Nashville. We had such a good time and I loved having our family in town.

After Marcus got done with his mission trip, we headed to downtown Franklin to explore the shops.

Matt and Marcus with Lucy, Clare, and Abby

Of course, you can't go to Franklin without stopping in at Puckett's!

Abby loves her Uncle Marcus!

We finished off the day with swimming at the hotel pool. We all had a good time...until it was time to get out of the water...

It was freezing!!

On Saturday, we took a trip to the Nashville Zoo! I was so excited to mark another thing off my bucket list, and who better to do it with but three cute little girls?!

Meerkats!

Abby loved the "falingos"! :)

Abby is in love with the cartoon Dinosaur Train, and sang the theme song to us all weekend long! We thought she'd love the DinoTrek exhibit at the zoo, but it was just a little too real.

Abby and Lucy digging up dino bones.

The carousel was much more fun and Clare got to join in too! :)

We love our nieces!!

Cutie patooties!

There was a lot of good food mixed in with all the fun activities, and we even managed to squeeze in a few nights at CMA Fest (an unlisted bucket list item!). We had such a wonderful time and I'm so glad they were able to make the trip to visit us. I know they probably won't remember it when they're older, but it will be fun to show them these pictures of the time they came to see Uncle Marcus and Aunt Alyssa!

I'm Back.....for now!

I have been itching to finally start posting again in the past couple of weeks, but Marcus has been away on mission trips with the youth group, so I just now have the computer back!

Because of your sweet comments on my last post, I was reminded of why I started this blog in the first place. The whole point of Wish You Were Here is for our friends and family to stay in the loop on what's going on at the Womack house. So, this post is just a big ole recap of what's been happening for the past couple of months. I don't really remember as far back as April (except for Easter and finally getting to watch TV again!) so I'll just start with May and catch up to today. Get ready for lots of iPhone pictures ahead!

In May:

• I started working on a Christmas quilt! This is the one I kept promising to show you my progress. Here is the only picture I have. And I haven't worked on it again since then! :) But I'm excited to see it start coming together.

• I visited the Main Downtown branch of the Nashville Public Library! This was on my bucket list, so I was really excited to finally go and mark something off my list!
• I joined a book club! For May, we read Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. It was absolutely fascinating. I highly recommend it! This month and next, we're reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It is one ginormous book!

• We spent Memorial Day weekend floating on the river in Knoxville! One of my best friends Laura, and her hubby Rob recently moved there, so we spent the weekend on the houseboat they were renting until they could move in to their house. Lots of fun!

• We came home to an escaped dog who had found some Tylenol (no bueno) and made our first visit to the emergency vet clinic. I don't wish this on anyone. Ever.

• We celebrated TWO wonderful years of wedding bliss. Marcus took me to a fancy restaurant and I made him watch our wedding video. :) For the second anniversary gift of cotton, I gave Marcus a monogrammed handkerchief and a Longhorn cap, and he gave me a beautiful canvas photograph that I want to hang above our piano (when we live in a house big enough to have the piano!).

Who forgot to ask someone to take our picture at the restaurant? Yep, us.

I can't believe how quickly the past two years have flown by. Marriage has been such a wonderful adventure and we love our life here in Nashville.

Stay tuned for some of our June adventures (I promise I won't wait a month to post about it).

Wish You Were Here: Chattanooga

Marcus and I used Valentine's Day as an excuse for a little overnight getaway to the charming town of Chattanooga. It's just a couple hours from Nashville, so it makes for a perfect little weekend trip! The short drive takes you through the mountains and even through Georgia for a few minutes before you find yourself back in Tennessee in a little town that sits on the river and is home to a fantastic aquarium, incredible art, tasty food, quaint little B&B's, and general feeling of sweet yet sophisticated southern hospitality.

This was the first time Marcus and I were able to go to Chattanooga for fun, and we accomplished our goal of just relaxing and enjoying each other's company.  We stayed at a wonderful little B&B that was part of the Bluff View Art District. From our room, we could walk to the restaurant where we had dinner overlooking the river and the perfect little coffee shop for dessert. And that's exactly what we did on Friday night!

Really bad picture with the self-timer. :)

Another bad picture with my eyes closed. This is where we stayed!

On Saturday morning, we got up and had breakfast at the Inn. After checking out, we headed over the river to Frazier street, right by the riverfront Coolidge Park. We decided to just visit the little shops and not have any sort of agenda. I found a great little dress for my friend's rehearsal dinner, and Marcus got The Beatles Rarities on vinyl at a cool little vintage shop. After hitting up the antique mall, it was time for lunch! We hit up Good Dog for some tasty hot dogs and frites (fries). Then, we topped it off at the ice cream parlor, Clumpies!

Yummy breakfast!

Yummy hot dogs!

Yummy ice cream!

After a day of exploring, it was time to head back to Nashville. We had such a great time and if you're ever looking for a quick little escape, Chattanooga is the perfect place!!

Nashville Bucket List

You may remember that one of my resolutions was to create a bucket list of things we want to do while we are still living in Nashville.  It wasn't hard to think of all the things we haven't gotten around to doing, and it didn't take long before I had a pretty long little list of things to do! So without further adieu- my Nashville Bucket List!

1. Visit the Frist Center for Visual Arts- I have been meaning to visit our local art museum for a while now, and even did go one time (but never got inside because there was literally no where to park!). I'm not a huge art buff, but there have been some really amazing exhibits that I missed out on, so I want to take advantage of this before I don't have a chance to!

2. Hang out at the Downtown Public Library- I am already a huge fan of the Nashville public library system, but their online reserve system is the reason I've never visited the main branch! It is really convenient to pick out my books online and then just pick them up at my neighborhood location when it's available. However, the downtown branch is a tourist attraction on its own! I'd love to spend a Saturday just sitting in the cafe and reading a good book.

3. Visit the Nashville Zoo- who doesn't like the zoo?!

4. Walk the trails at Radnor Lake- I'm told this is one of the best parks in the Nashville area and I'm a little embarrassed I haven't been before! There are tons of walking trails where it's impossible to not see some wildlife.  There is so much nature to experience around us and it's definitely time I got around to exploring!

5. Go to a Tennessee Titans game- I much prefer college football over the NFL, but LP field is practically walking distance from our house.  Marcus has been to a game and I think it's my turn!

6. Weekend trips to Chicago, Chattanooga, Asheville, and the Smokies- If and when we move back to Texas, we will never live this close to these places that we can just take a drive for a short weekend getaway. It's really hard to do this when your husband works on Sundays, but I'm determined to make some of these trips happen!

7. Spend a hot summer day at Nashville Shores- We planned a day like this last summer. We planned it a month out so all of our friends were off work and could go. And then it rained. I'm pretty sure there are better water parks out there, and this one's probably nothing to write home about, but I still want to go.

8. Go to the Doyle and Debbie Show at Station Inn- The Station Inn is a legendary bluegrass venue in town, so I've been wanting to take my dad since we moved here, but the last two times he's visited it hasn't worked out. I do want to take in the bluegrass tunes, but I also want to see the Doyle and Debbie show, a country music parody show. They just recently took the show to Chicago and it's gotten great reviews, plus "Debbie" is my Zumba teacher! So this is at the top of my list. :)

9. See Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb of God at the Ryman- Andrew Peterson has been doing this Christmas show at the Ryman every year for a while now, but we always have to leave town too early to see it. Hopefully we can make it this year!

Wow, that was lengthy. If you're still reading, I thank you. Now you have to come visit so we can do some of these things together! There's no time to waste!

Wish you were here!
The Womacks