We're back!

Hello blogosphere! It's been a few months since we've shared our adventures with you. I'm sure that most of you are aware of at least a few topics in this post, but probably not all. So, enjoy this update from the Davis household! Brace yourselves. This is a pretty legit blog submission.

For starters, we are going to be staying here in Nashville for a few more years!  I'm sure everyone has already heard....but Tim has been accepted to the Ph.D. program at Vanderbilt! Graduation from the Au.D. program is in just 2 1/2 short weeks and then we are FINALLY moving to a new home at the end of May.  We had been thinking about moving out pretty much since the first week of living here. Long story, but it took us two years to actually make the move. We'll be moving into a much nicer duplex down the road and are really looking forward to living in a nice neighborhood.

We took a short overnight trip to Memphis to visit our friend Brittany in February (oh my goodness that was forever ago - this is what happens when we don't post for 4 months).  Much to Heather's delight, we did the Gibson guitar factory tour! Sorry, no pictures were allowed.  But, we got to see the parts of a guitar in various stages of assembly which was really cool.  We also stopped by the famous Peabody hotel for the duck ceremony .  Wait, a ceremony for ducks? Yes, it's a real thing. Allow us to explain. They have these ducks that are trained to march down to a fountain in the lobby in the morning, swim all day and then march back in the evening.  Apparently they have their own suite in the hotel where they sleep at night. We caught the evening show where this guy comes down into the lobby, gives a speech about the history of the ducks, and gives them a signal to get out of the fountain and march into the elevator.  It was a little lot corny, but fun... And when in Memphis, right?!?!? The trip was mostly about the good company, and it was definitely great to see and spend some time with Brittany.  

In mid March, Tim and I decided to pick up and take ourselves to Chattanooga for a day trip.  It is 2 hours away from Nashville and we hadn't really had a chance to explore south of Nashville yet.  The main things we had in mind were to check out the aquarium and the historical Incline Railway.

Turns out we enjoy the aquariums!  We knew the one we visited in Atalanta would be hard to beat, but Chattanooga was great!  The first two pictures below are of the butterfly room.  You can't tell from the pictures very well, but there were butterflies everywhere flying around,  landing on you, and sitting on nearly every plant.  It was beautiful and a really cool experience. Some of you may be wondering why they had an exhibit on butterflies in the aquarium. So were we...

This exhibit was like the exercise facility at your hotel, with mirrors on most walls to make it seem much larger. It would have been really cool to have a tank that stretched for 100+ feet full of jellies, but it was actually about 20' long.

We spent all morning at the aquarium, had lunch, and then headed to the Incline Railway.  It is a 1 mile long incline railway car that takes you up to Lookout Mountain.  It was been in operation since 1895 - with new trains and technology along the way  - thank goodness.  The views from the train and from the top, were beautiful.  The track starts out quite shallow in slope and gets steeper as you approach the mountain. At the top, the track is on a 73% grade. It felt a lot like being pulled backwards up the big drop on a roller coaster. Fortunately they let us down pretty easy...

The view from the top was fantastic!

Here's the motor that makes it all possible. 

A quick video showing the wheels starting to turn.

One more shot from the top before we head back down!

The windows in the ceiling came in pretty handy!

Finally, 2 weeks ago we went to Anaheim CA for the annual American Academy of Audiology conference. This time, it doubled as a mini vacation for Heather and a great little reunion of almost all of Tim's classmates.  We were also fortunate to get to spend also got to spend half a day with Tim's sister Cami, husband Dave, and sweet little nephew Jack.

Loved the palm trees outside the convention center!

Tim's favorite flower, bird-of-paradise.

Cami and Dave were nice enough to drive us all the way to Long Beach to the Aquarium of the Pacific. I loved how the natural light shined through into the water here

Isn't he cute??

And that, our friends, is pretty much all for now! Graduation is rapidly approaching and we are all so excited to have Tim's family here for a few days. I'm sure that we'll put a post together after that! Until then...