Here’s a recap of everything that went down in Nashville, including where we stayed, what we ate, and what it was like to hang out at Ramsey Solutions!
This little trip for our family was nothing short of absolutely amazing. We had so many milestones with this three-day-extravaganza that it seems important to mention them all soooo hang tight friends! Here we go!
1. Jett’s First Flight
This was Jett’s first time on an airplane and he loved every second of it. I fly regularly and he always wants to go with me. We also live underneath the takeoff pattern from our closest airport so we spend a lot of time saying “oh look, an airplane!!!” as if each one is the first we’ve ever seen!
He wasn’t the least bit scared and handled takeoff and landing like a champ. We also had fun in the airport walking around to see everything and riding the skytram from terminal to terminal. We caught the takeoff on camera – you can watch it here.
2. Going to the National Corvette Museum
If you’ve known my husband for about two seconds, you know that he has been a lifelong fan of Corvettes! He collected them from a very young age and has always dreamed of owning one. When I told him I wanted to go to Nashville to do our debt free scream, he said if we were going, he wanted to drive to Bowling Green Kentucky to go to the museum. It was a deal.
We drove up on Monday, in the pouring rain (seriously, it rained for almost our entire trip!), and it was only about a two hour drive from Franklin. We toured the museum which obviously has tons of Corvettes from every year, lots of videos of how they came to be, how they are built now, and the coverage of the sinkhole that destroyed the showroom floor too. It was actually really interesting, even for this non-obsessed gal.
One really cool thing for Chris is that he got to see the last Corvette in existence that was produced in 1983, which is the year he was born!
Jett really wanted to bring this little go-cart home with us and begged us to let him drive it around. He finally settled for a picture!
The coolest part for me was getting to see someone drive their 2019 Corvette off the “boulevard” in the front entry way of the museum. They have delivery days, and April 23rd just happened to be one! It was a sweet moment and kind of weirdly solidified all that we had done to get here, financially speaking. Jett was in awe, literally watched with his mouth hanging open, and I told him if he stayed out of debt and took care of his money that one day he could drive his brand new Corvette off the museum floor too! #goals #startthemyoung
3. Filming a Segment with Rachel Cruze
I KNOW!!! I can still hardly believe it myself. Here is the short version: My friend Alissa is friends with one of the producers on the Rachel Cruze show. Alissa told her our story and that we were coming to do a debt free scream. The producer did some light Instagram stalking and saw some of my posts about how far we had come as far as financial habits were concerned and thought we would make a good couple to interview! A pre-screening interview later and we were scheduled.
Forgive the blurriness of this photo! We were done filming and all of that nervous energy was taking over and my hands were shaking! She was so sweet and fun to talk with. Watch our episode here!
4. Our Debt Free Scream
Now to the best part, for sure. But first let me fill you in on the back story a bit! When we started our debt snowball (in November of 2015), I told Chris that when we were finished, I wanted to go to Nashville and do our debt free scream. At that point, I had been listening to the Dave Ramsey show podcast religiously every day for three hours. Hearing other people’s debt free screams was SO inspiring to me and really geared me up every time I heard one!
We actually paid off our debt on Friday, October 13th, 2017, and applied to be on the show that same day. The application says it can take up to six weeks to hear back from the producers and that they “might” contact you, but there are no guarantees. Six weeks had passed, and I was disappointed that we hadn’t been contacted it. They also say that if it has been more than six months since you paid off your debt that you likely wouldn’t get to go on the show. So I let it go and chalked it up to “well, we tried!”. But in the back of my mind I was really disappointed.
Fast forward to Tuesday, March 20th, 2018. Almost five months after we applied, we got a phone call from Kelly Daniel, which I thankfully missed. I listened to that voicemail about six times to be sure I had heard her correctly before calling her back! I was so glad that I missed the call because it gave me an opportunity to get all my nervous excitement out before actually talking to her on the phone and sounding like a crazy person.
I called her back and then sat with my phone in my hand for almost 36 solid hours waiting on her to return the call. She called on Friday, March 23rd and asked if we still wanted to come to the studio and do our scream. It took everything I had to not lose my composure! Anyway, we got it scheduled, booked our flights, and it was done!
It was important to me from day one that we share our story. Because we were so normal and so “just like everyone else”, we knew that we could touch some lives if we were open about everything we did, all the struggles we had, all the wins that we had, and all the knowledge we accumulated throughout this journey.
It was also really important for me for Jett to have this landmark in his childhood. I really and truly hope that our debt free scream day was something he will never forget and that it helps shape him into someone who is thoughtful, generous, and responsible with their money.
I’m so glad that we did it. It was definitely one of the best trips of my adult life and I’m so thrilled that we took Jett with us and made it a little vacation too!
5. Where we Stayed
We are truly very lucky people to have great friends like the Circles. They own a home in downtown Franklin, Tennessee and we of course HAD to stay there and try it out! It is absolutely gorgeous. Alissa wrote a post all about it on her blog, but here are a few pics for eye candy!
6. Where We Ate
I have to be honest here and say that while we had some pretty delicious food, we didn’t stop long enough to take pictures of any of it. Normally, the highlight of a vacation is where we are getting to eat, but since we changed our eating habits, food played second fiddle to the other experiences! Here’s where we ate!
Dinner Sunday: Quinn’s Neighborhood Pub & Eatery
We ate here out of necessity after a long day of travel but it was really delicious! The atmosphere was great and the server we had was very friendly! I had a cheeseburger, Chris had the fish & chips (and said they were delicious) and Jett had macaroni and cheese. (Spoiler alert, Jett basically had macaroni and cheese for every meal, as per the usual!)
We cooked breakfast at home on Monday morning before we headed to the Corvette Museum (boring and responsible, yes, but how do you think we paid off so much debt?!)
For lunch we went to the Double Dogs Restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Chris had the Breakfast Burger, which comes with a fried egg on top, I had the BBQ bacon cheeseburger (no bun!) and sweet potato fries and Jett had a hot dog and french fries! I’m not sure if it was off the charts amazing or if we were all just starving but we all had clean plates after lunch!
Dinner that night was pizza ordered in from Quinn’s again! We are nothing if not repeat offenders if we find a restaurant we like. The reason we went back there is because they had gluten free crust at the same price as regular crust, which we really appreciated! The pizzas are a bit small though – we ordered one and shared it but we could have each easily eaten our own. They were delicious though! Jett had a small kid’s pizza and his was great too – made for a good breakfast before heading to the airport on Wednesday. 😉
For breakfast the next day we went to Merridee’s Bread Basket in Downtown Franklin. The setting was very cute, like having breakfast in your grandma’s kitchen! Chris and I each had omelettes and Jett had french toast. The omelettes were tasty but very simple. The French toast however, was amazing and their bakery counter looked great!
I’ll skip lunch, since we ate at Panera’s in front of the Cool Springs Galleria. We didn’t have a lot of time between the filming of the Rachel Cruze show and our debt free scream, so we had to pick something quick, easy, and familiar. Guess what Jett ate? Yep – mac and cheese!
Dinner after our debt free scream was our big splurge both food wise, alcohol wise, and money wise! We tried to eat pretty clean and financially responsible for the rest of the trip so we could go all out for our celebratory dinner. We ate at Puckett’s Grocery & Restaurant in Downtown Franklin. They are a locally owned eatery that specializes in amazing smoked meats and good, southern cooking. Along with two very amazing glasses of wine (first time drinking wine in almost two months!), I had smoked pulled chicken (AMAZING) with sweet potato fries and baked beans. Chris got their chicken and waffles (soooo gooood) and Jett had…. yep – mac and cheese! (Kid is nothing if not a slave to habits).
After dinner we walked around to Kilwin’s for ice cream! Chris and I shared a waffle bowl with Salted Caramel and Cake Batter ice cream, and yes the headache the next morning was totally worth it. Jett had Superman Ice cream and obviously loved it. I wonder if he would have gotten mac and cheese ice cream if they made it? Hmmm..
All in all, this whole trip to Nashville was a total success. It was our first real family vacation and I’m so glad it was full of so many awesome memories and milestones. I’m already thinking about where we can travel to next!!
