I am aware that time has been moving very swiftly. We have near to a month of travel under our belts since I wrote this but for the sake for keeping some kind of order to my recordings I am going to add the next few posts in date order.
Here is another roundup of the bits and pieces that made up life in Nashville before we headed for the next continent.
This delightful young lady turned 21.
So after an early morning presents and breakfast wakeup, we went out with our favourite nashville friends to Pinewood social for dinner. It is a local restaurant/bar/renovated retro bowling alley and then we headed to the candy store that kids dreams are made of, with trains and machines that cart taffy and more varieties of toffee apples, candy, truffes, chocolate and icecream than anyone needs.
In an attempt to work through some of our stickier parenting questions we have been skyping with a 'parenting coach' Kelly, who has been wonderful at helping us understand a little more behind why kids (and adults) flip their lids at each other and how we really view 'connection'. We are elevating the role of empathy alongside firm boundaries and attempting to evolve our parenting style as we manage this somewhat transient lifestyle. It's far from perfect but we are seeing gains and little moments of sibling love and that is encouraging to this mothers heart.
There have been early morning business meetings by the pool while we wait for the office to open.
Moments where our relaxed posture gives no indication of the intense strategy discussions that are being had. It was a lovely backdrop by which to decide to refine our marketing strategy and re-evaluate our goals.
We are of the opinion that without this trip we could not have established the stronger understanding of the market here and so while progress has not been as fast as we would have perhaps liked it has certainly been a worthwhile venture.
Part of the work I have been doing is visiting with our sales reps here and attending trade shows. With the prospect of me being away for almost two weeks solid a little much for us all, we decided to take a family road trip for the first week and have an adventure along the way. Not exactly the razzle dazzle spots of America but it had to be done.
Through Illinois, Kentucky and West Virginia (West Vinegar according to G) and then back home through Tennessee.There were good hotels, and not so good. There were hours of movies watched and piles of books read. Hundreds of miles later and all the adults don't care if we never hear the song 'Uptown Funk' again, but G has it on lock and together with E they have designated everyone parts and singing along is not optional.
We have decided that American road trip food is dicey at best and quickly developed some preferred stops. It was at one of these where we felt slightly unnerved as a young man sat down alongside us, open holster with his serious looking pistol. It just seemed so out of context that you would require a weapon in a restaurant and his attitude was cocky which did nothing to settle me that he had good reason to be in possession of such an item. Perhaps he did but it was certainly an unsettling feeling for these kiwis, however I did manage to snap a sneaky photo!.
We saw beautiful old factories that made us dream of settling down one day and renovating some eclectic space to call our own. They were situated in Elkins, West Virginia however (read, the middle of nowhere) so that’s probably not going to happen.
We were going to finish with a trip to Dollywood at the end but with the confirmation that we can get to Disneyland for the day we're in LA, we decided to give it a miss and diverted the kids with a horse trek instead, thereby keeping the surprise of Disney firmly tucked up our sleeves until next week.
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