Live from the Grand Ole' Opry

For Jackson's birthday present and as a birthday gift to my mom, we booked a room at the Gaylord Opryland hotel in Nashville, TN. It is a beautiful HUGE hotel with cascading waterfalls and lush green gardens throughout the hotel. Just to clarify, when I say HUGE I mean walk nearly 2 miles to the car and back Huge. And you have to pay $18 just to park you're stinkin' car there but I won't even go there.
During Christmas, there are TONS of lights throughout the hotel and it is a spectacle of beauty. Lucky us, they were also holding an ugly Christmas sweater convention here so we had the added bonus of poking fun at unsuspecting aging women AND men wearing their finest Christmas sweaters with pride. One man we spotted wearing a sweater depicting the story "Twas the night before Christmas."
We also witnessed a form of child abuse as a foreign family (likely European) paraded around a small child with a full blown mullet. Poor kid was having pictures made at every spot. Those will be useful as blackmail when he finally comes of age and decides that it's NOT cool.
In one of the atriums, there was a line of children at the mic singing Christmas carols and various other children's songs. The lineup included the ABC song, Row-Row-Row your boat and Twinkle, Twinkle. Jackson decided he wanted his 5 minutes of fame and he approached the mic to sing his best rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle. He was VERY loud when asked his name and proceeded to sing his song with a couple of repeat versus. I guess we all learn it differently. Then he told the lady he was from North Carolina and his Daddy was in Afghanistan. He got a round of claps and a special song, "This land is your land". I don't think I've heard that one since fourth grade. Jackson and Nana ended the night with a boat ride around the Delta atrium. I opted for the 'walking' tour of the boat ride so I could photograph. I'm pretty sure the guy beside Mom and Jackson thought I was stalking him (or "stocking him") as another funny shirt said today. Tomorrow we will visit the ICE display featuring the characters from Charlie Brown. The website for it is WEFROZECHARLIEBROWN.com