A Spontaneous Trip To See the Parthenon and How We Ended Up As Parents Who Rock

No, not the Parthenon in Greece, this one is just four hours away. In Nashville. A couple of weekends ago we decided on the spur of the moment to take the boys for a night to Tennesse to watch a college baseball game and just do a little getaway. The idea wasn't received very enthusiastically. The kids' Spring Break was just starting and they wanted to play with friends. "We wanted to go to the skatepark here", they grumbled. My youngest said, "How many stars does the hotel have?" I cracked up at that and asked where he heard that. On a Priceline TV commercial I was told.

Anyway, I ignored their protests or made some comment about my needs and they got on board. I made reservations at the Hampton Inn by Vanderbilt University and we made it just in the nick of time to check in and then walk through Vanderbilt University to their baseball stadium. Last year and the year before my husband and I did this very same thing alone (we find someone to watch the boys for us about once every two years and no I am not exaggerating).

We arrive and see the stadium is only half full and the game is just starting. We get to the ticket booth and they are SOLD OUT. What? This has never happened before. We were shocked. The boys stared at us like we were Clark and Ellen Griswald. I only felt a little better after I saw many others arriving and complaining about this situation too. No, they would not let us in even at half-time. We noticed a lot of Boy Scouts in attendance and then The Husband sees a older Scout man with a wad of tickets in his hand. Yep, he had a ton--I think the scouts bought the entire outfield. So we were able to buy 5 tickets and redeem ourselves to our children. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed ourselves. Actually an hour later there were complaints of being bored but they were ignored.

I used to travel to Nasville occasionally for business. This was 13 years ago before kids. I would stay at a hotel right across from the Parthenon. It is spectacular all lit up at night. Sort of more spectacular than during the day. But I did finally get to visit it the next day. It was built almost 100 years ago. Before this structure it was a temporary structure built for Tennessee's 1897 Centennial Exposition. I love learning these historical details and seeing photos of how cities once looked. You know the ones that show old buildings and homes and businesses on a certain street and then seeing the same street with the newer (uglier) buildings.

Our two oldest sons brought along their skateboards on our one-night spontaneous getaway in case we found a good opportunity to use them. They didn’t use them much while in Nashville other than the hotel parking lot. On Sunday after visiting the Parthenon we headed back home. As we were approaching Chattanooga I suggested that we stop somewhere for lunch. There was an exit near downtown that seemed right so we pulled off. What was right next to the highway? A skate park. There was cheering from the back of the vehicle.

We registered the boys (signed away our rights in case they crashed their bodies like those characters on the skateboard video games) and then headed down the street to the Subway to bring back lunch goodies. We ended up hanging out for about three hours. The weather was really nice. I took a bunch of photos and our youngest son who doesn’t skate took even more pictures. Well, he once skateboarded into a "bowl" after his brother told him to and he fell down and got turned off from falling. He told us he wants to be his brothers’ skate action photographer. For real as his career.

So he then took a bunch of photos. I assumed that later that we’d have to delete all of his. Wrong. It was my photos that we had to delete. So here are two that the family Skateboard Photographer took. It was nice to end the weekend as being really cool parents.