Nashvegas Bound

Back in Decemeber, at the beginning of the month, we took just a quick 2 day trip to Nashville. We wanted to just get away for a couple days and this seemed to be all we could fit in our busy schedules. So we left on a Wednesday and came back the next night. The morning we got up to leave, we were a little surprised to white stuff on the ground. That's a pretty early snow for Memphis! We let Bella play for a bit, but we had to get ready to leave town and take Bella to her friends, The Howse's. We had a packed agenda once we made it. We went to see the ICE show with the Madagascar characters. That was an experience... we got dressed in the huge heavy coats and got to walk around and see all of the different ice sculptures. At the end, there was a slide made out of ice that you could slide down... it was so fun, so fun that I slid twice! Such a kid! :)





Later that evening, we went for our second General Jackson Showboat dinner cruise. Back when we first started dating, Eric surprised me with a quick Nashville get away and we went and did the dinner cruise then too. There is a full course meal served along with a singing and dancing show. I figured it would be memorable and what better time to go watch a show than Christmas!? It was fun and most definitely brought back sweet memories! Later that night, we came back to the hotel (we stayed at the Opryland). I had never been there at Christmas and so I wanted to see all the lights and glory! So we walked around the hotel for a while before coming back to the room.







The next day, we had breakfast at the hotel, just a small bistro type breakfast and then were on our way to shop and The Cheesecake Factory! Since the OpryMills mall was down from the flood last spring, we went on to the Greenhill Mall instead. And we didn't even buy a single thing! Since there wasn't much left to do in the time we had, we went ahead and ate lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. That was Eric's first time to have eaten there, but I'm sure it won't be his last! We were so stuffed from lunch, we had to bring our cheesecake home!
Here are a few pics of our getaway!

Work Christmas Party

My work Christmas party was on December 17. We had it for the second year at Amy O's. house... we didn't have as many this year as last, but it was still fun! We had some yummy finger foods and also did a dirty santa gift exchange. I actually went home with a decent gift this year, compared to last. I got a cinnamon candle and a Christmas towel/potholder set. Later on in the night, the girls ended up having some fun dancing in the living room... here are some pics!

Meet Chef Eric and Laci

Last Christmas, Mom got us Viking Cooking School gift certificates. We knew we were going to have to use them soon prior to the end of the year. So, we booked a romantic date night. We were a little "iffy" about going but once we got there and warmed up a little, we had fun! We made some different and unique things... including some type of sauteed mushroom appetizer, sweet potato crusted scallops (which I didn't like), a tossed mixture of greens with apples and a homemade vinaigrette dressing and a seared pork steak. For dessert we had some delicious chocolate covered crepes with strawberries.
It was something fun and something different for us to do together besides eating out.



Mom had gotten us these cute aprons last Christmas to go with our gift cards. We hadn't used them until now. Of course, Eric didn't really want to, he felt dumb but once we got there, they had aprons for us all to put on prior to beginning to cook. Once we found out we would be the styling chefs, it made it all the better! :)