Travellers Rest Field Trip

I should earn a Mother of the Year award. No. Really.

I don't know how other mothers do it. PTO meetings, school fundraisers, baseball practices, piano, volunteering for every holiday party at their kid's school, Scouts, laundry, paying bills and buying groceries, etc. Maybe they just have one kid? Maybe their houses are trashed constantly? Maybe they drink copious amounts of alcohol to dull the pain of being around kids all the time?

I try. This spring has found me in my car almost every afternoon, carting Blake or Trevor to practices and appointments and Scouts. We had dinner as a family exactly zero times last week. I have had to seriously cut back on my almost non existent "me" time and just "take one for the team[s]." While it has been good for the boys to be in team sports, I am just ready to be done.

Wow. What started as a post about a field trip turned into a major whine fest. No. Not a wine fest...don't call the Bishop yet!

Back to the original purpose here. On Friday I broke out of the fog I have been living in for the past few months and volunteered to go on a field trip with Blake's class to a place called Travellers Rest Plantation. I have to confess...I have never in his three years of school volunteered to chaperone a field trip. Partly because I can't take Kade on any of them, but mostly because I send him to school to have a break from him. There. I said it.
{I can hear you marching to take my Mother of the Year trophy back...you will have to fight me for it!}

When the permission slip for this field trip came with Blake, I got a little excited seeing that it was to go to a plantation in Nashville that I'd heard of, but never been to, called Travellers Rest. I quickly called my mom to see if she'd take Kade for the day and then I filled out the form and the check and sent them back to school.

Friday was the big day. I was pretty pumped for it, even getting lunches packed the night before and getting up super early to get Kade to Mom's and over to the school in time to leave with the group.

It was so much fun for me! I don't know if Blake had any fun...he seemed to be happy to have me there. I was talking with one of the other mothers and she was saying something about wanting to go on all the field trips with her daughter before her daughter doesn't want her there anymore. I thought to myself, "Is that possible?" Blake is always thrilled when I show up at his school for whatever reason, and is still willing to hug or kiss me in public. It will be a sad day when he doesn't do that anymore.

As for the plantation, they had various stations set up with authentically dressed people doing demonstrations like basket weaving, candle making, soap making, lace making, a blacksmith, a Colonial doctor, a gunsmith, etc. We were also able to go on a tour of the house, built in 1799 by a man named John Overton.

The boys got to make corn husk dolls and started dipping candles...they didn't get too far on the candles because the line was super long and we had to get back to the bus. I am pretty sure that the gunsmith was their favorite, but the blacksmith was cool too. Blake likes reading and history quite a bit, a trait he gets from me. (He gets his well developed ego from his father...but that is a WHOLE different post!)

They weren't all that impressed with the house tour...but they humored me. Blake has been on more plantation tours than most kids his age, since that is one of my secret passions. In fact, he was six weeks old the first time I brought him to Tennessee to visit my parents, and Mom and I took turns holding him on three or four tours.

So how do my earlier ramblings and whining tie in with all this?

I kept asking the boys to look for any clues as to why the place was named Travellers Rest. As much as we looked, there were no signs or anything that explained the unusual name for what was a private residence, not an inn. It wasn't until I looked at the website when I got home that I found the answer.

John Overton was a busy guy. He was a circuit judge, so he travelled extensively around the Nashville area. He had quite a few political ties (he was a good friend of President Andrew Jacksn) that kept him away from home as well. When he decided to build his own plantation he named it Travellers Rest because he hoped that it would be a place he could relax and enjoy life and his family.

From now on my house will be named Mothers Rest. If you want to come visit Mothers Rest you have to leave all angst and stress on the other side of my front door. Of course, if you come with any kind of goodies that rule will be null and void and I will feel compelled to sit and listen to you whine about your troubles for a while...at least until I get back in my car to take one of my kids to practice!