No pretty picture today.  Just a reminiscence on where I am blessed to live.  The USA.  Tennessee.  Franklin.  Tonight my family had the pleasure of introducing a dear friend of ours to Main Street.  We met Joe in Manhattan Beach, California where we frequently took walks on The Strand by the beach watching the sun set on the Pacific Ocean.  I had followed my husband’s career with him to LA and made the best of the beach (of course, it wasn’t that difficult!) while we were there.   However, I always had a yearning to return to Williamson County.  The week we found out that we would be moving back here we also found out that we were expecting our first child.  Although I would have raised my family in Manhattan Beach, my prayers were answered that my girls would call my home their home.  So, ten years later I relish in the memory of beach walks at dusk but bubble over with the joy I feel walking next to my husband of fifteen years, my two girls with ice cream rings around their mouths from the Ben & Jerry’s cones, and a friend from the beach days gone by.  The quaint, retail boutiques.  The curiously sniffing pups.  The sidewalk cafe chatter.  The passers-by.  The short wall in front of the old Presbyterian Church.  Coach Gentry talked of WWII days when the young men of Franklin sat upon the wall waiting for the bus to take them to army camp; today on Sundays, young and not so young men and women bikers enjoy a rest upon the wall with a cup of Starbucks.  Tonight, my daughters climbed the wall and imagined it to be a trapeze as they carefully balanced upon the rocks.   What those WWII boys gave us and the generations of Franklin people who have worked to preserve Main Street for us to stroll.  I will take the starlit, albeit humid, nights over the crashing waves today.

I know that this blog has nothing to do with the wedding industry in the greater Nashville area, but I find it important that in the midst of looking toward one’s future  to, quite trivially and frankly, smell the roses.