Fabulous Friends and Fun
Southwestern Company is where it all began. I don’t mean this trip. I’m talking our lives together. If there was no Southwestern Company, there’d be no “Travis & Kate.” No Taite, Calla, Lincoln, or Parker. No farm. No insurance company. No galavanting around the United States. I might not even be a Christian. Selling books during our college summers completely changed our lives. If we were going to be in Tennessee, we were going to share Southwestern with our kids.
Travis scheduled an appointment with Dan Moore, our friend and current president of Southwestern Advantage. Dan took us (well, really our kids) on a tour of the building. We saw the “Wall of Greats” and many of our friends’ photos hanging on the wall. Much of Southwestern has changed, but the foundation of hard work and positive attitude remains the same. We were also able to visit with author, speaker, encourager, and head of Southwestern public relations, Trey Campbell. He blessed us by sharing his vision and a few of his published books with us. I can envision at least one of our children being involved with Southwestern Companies. We’ll probably be back here someday.
Travis’ Executive Admin, Liz Manning, and her best friend Olivia met us for dinner at a hip Mexican spot called Taco Mamacita's We spent the whole time eating delicious food and talking about the Bible (one of my favorite subjects). Then they took us to Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams for dessert. Brown Butter Almond Brittle. Need I say more? We don’t have Jeni’s in Minnesota. We might have to come back to Nashville just for some ice cream.
Tony and Tessa Ripley moved to Nashville last spring with their beautiful kiddos, Cael and Elise. We sold books with both Tony and Tessa. They were in our wedding and we were in theirs. We traveled to Israel with them a couple of years ago. Needless to say, we go way back. We love this family. We were blessed to spend the day with them Saturday. All the boys (including dads) ran around at a park and played soccer for hours. The girls had their own games that were overwhelmingly imaginative and I have no idea what they were doing. Tessa and I talked (and talked and talked - typical for us). Tessa prepared a delicious vegan lunch. Eventually we all became tourists. We visited the Parthenon, Music Row, and Downtown Franklin. We planned to eat dinner at a pub with live music but that didn’t work out so well. 🙄 So we ate at a Greek reataurant. I think that was better anyway. When the music is too loud ya can’t hear each other. The kids had already made a plan to swim at our hotel’s indoor pool. The management had to kick us out of the pool area to close it down at 10:00. We were sad to have our evening come to an end. Looks like we’ll have to come back.
Taite’s very first nanny, Nicole (Price) Rodriguez and her husband Javier live in East Nashville. Nicole sold books with Travis. Another friend of ours, Katie (Pelligrini) Thornberry and her husband Brandon also live in East Nashville. (Katie was one of my favorite book selling roommates!) Good news, these two families both go to church together. We wanted to see them and we wanted to worship the Lord. How perfect! We met them for service then went our for pizza at Boombozz. After worshipping, eating, talking, and playing it was time to head to Alabama. We missed so many touristy things in Tennessee. We’ll probably have to go back someday.
EDIT: on Sunday afternoon, March 1st, we left Nashville for Alabama. On Monday night East Nashville - and the establishment where we ate pizza (Boombuzz) was destroyed by a tornado. Please join us as we pray for our friends and all the residents and business owners of East Nashville.
Top: The East Nashville corner where Boombuzz is located before the tornado.
Bottom: Same corner after the tornado.
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