Sister Trip 2011

One of the reasons I haven't blogged is that I was trying to keep a secret.  A very big one.  In 2007 my 3 sisters(The Student, The Quilter, & The Nurse) and I went to Gatlinburg, TN.  Just us for a Sister Trip.  It was supposed to become an annual thing, however, some of us had babies(The Quilter being an overachiever had two @ once!)Some of us went into and eventually graduated from Nursing School, others decided to go to college for, well forever.  So this year everything worked out to have another trip.  Here's the secret-we kidnapped my Mom!

She was totally clueless!  My Dad told her he was taking her out of town, but not where, how long or anything else.  The mission kind of became Torture the Control Freak(our mom).   We also had a little fun at her expense because she's notoriously overdressed for things, so we showed up all done up to kidnap her.

 She whined enough, or ahem, tried very hard to figure out where we were going in the first hour, so we finally told her our destination was Nashville, Tn.  She asked if The Nurse was meeting us, and we told her, sadly, no, she couldn't get off work.  We were, of course lying.  She told us if The Nurse showed up she was going to kill us all.

So when The Nurse did show up, I waited expectantly.  Since it's a week later and I'm blogging, Mom lied as well!  I guess that means we're even!  We went to The District and walked around, we had dinner in Hillsboro and walked around, then we went back to The District and walked some more.  This was just the first afternoon and evening.  We did all this in heels, so at the end of the night, we got a little silly...this picture is our mostly sober walk to the room. 

So The Quilter no longer felt like wearing her heels.  None of us did, so we all took them off.  Then the Quilter didn't feel like walking, so she started crawling.  Then she didn't feel like moving at all and I tried to carry her.  I guess you could say it failed miserably.  The Security Guy didn't seem to mind us laughing hysterically in the hallway so we stayed there for a bit, waiting for the The Student.

Then we went to bed, and Mom got up and dressed obnoxiously early and wanted to go sightseeing!  We laughed really hard and went shopping hours later.  Dad showed up, and then we went sight seeing in our very special shirts!

 The front of Dad & Mom's shirts say "Nashville, Tn 2011"  And the back of Mom's says "Kidnapped by 4 of a Kind"

 Our shirts had our birth order and our childhood nicknames from Dad.  The front says "Sister Trip 2011, Nashville, TN"

When we went to dinner that night, the waiter saw Dad with all five of us, and said to him, "I don't know how you did it, but you're my hero!"  Dad chuckled and waited awhile before divulging the truth, that we're his wife and daughters. 

The next morning Dad & Mom crashed our room before leaving to head back to Indiana. 

The Sister Trip part began then, officially.  We did lots more shopping.  

The Hotel Concierge, Nival, was incredibly helpful, and was so nice to our parents while putting up with us, we gave him a copy of this picture with a thank you card.

At the end of the night we sat at the hotel pool and soaked our aching feet while enjoying cheesecake from the Cheesecake factory.

And yet again, we ended up laughing hysterically in the hallway.  Yet again, due to The Quilter's antics.  She tried to wipe the hotel floor germs off her feet onto the wall.  Her foot got stuck somehow?  And when she finally got it off she did a loopy turn and landed with a hard thud. 

 

We of course laughed while she tried to limp into the room.  'Cause that's how sisters love one another. 

Remember how Mom really wanted us to go sightseeing?  Well, you could see the replica of the Parthenon from our balcony, and she kept going on about how close it was, and how neat it was when she and Dad saw it.  Well, she'll be happy to know that we made it there.  Bright and early, too!

 Maybe a little too early.

This really isn't bad. If we hadn't done so much walking in heels, it might have just been The Nurse that was sleeping through it.  We call her the Professional Sleeper for reason!

She's never happy when she finds out we took her picture while she was asleep. 

and yes, I have pictures of other things for you all, it was just so very difficult not to talk about all our fun plans for this trip!  Because of a few problems, we now have a Sister Trip Rule List.

1.  Only wear heels for dinner, never for shopping

2.  Sister Trip has to be 4 days

3.  Take a nap on Saturday

4.  Make good on the ideas of horseback riding and skydiving.  Someday.

5.  More time relaxing, less time walking around in heels.

I might be missing a few.