Our 1 Year Anniversary

April 11th, marked our 1 year anniversary!!! It's so hard to believe that it's already been a whole year since our big day. But we've had a wonderful first year of marriage filled with lots of love, excitement, adventure and beautiful memories. We spent our special weekend in beautiful Gatlinburg,TN located in the Great Smokey Montains (about 3 1/2 hours from Nashville) We had an amazing and very relaxing little mini break and really enjoyed exploring the east side of our new state.

Here are a few pics of our trip....

The Little Sparrow Cabin

On our Special Day

Mitch on our balcony...

he wrote a new song over the weekend... It's FABULOUS and called

"Heart On Fire"

We hiked to the beautiful Laurrel Falls in the Smokey Mountains...

(Baker got soaking wet and filthy, but had SO much fun)

It was a short trail... about 3.5 miles

Laurrel Falls (Not as pretty as the waterfalls from back home) :)

We attended St. Mary's Church for Easter Mass

And had a delicious Easter brunch at the famous Pancake Panty

Downtown Gatlinburg

My first show IN Nashville

Monday 9:45pm at the Millennium Maxwell House Hotel in northern Nashville-

So as we hurried back from Graceland (a 3 hour drive) my excitement for singing that night was growing. Earlier in the day I was very inspired as Erica, her Mom and sisters and I walked the estate of the late great King, Elvis Presley. It was an amazing experience and it was very fitting that I would, later that night, be playing a show back in Nashville.

The show went great. I was filled with with emotion with having my in laws in town and there to watch me perform my first show actually in Nashville. George's wife, along with some other friends (Shawn, Eric and Melanie) were able to make it as well and there was a small crowd of people there drinking and enjoying the music. I felt at home up there on the stage. I was very disappointed that we only were allowed to play three songs, since we have five down, (I could have sung 15 if we were allowed).

Well this is just the beginning, so we will slowly work our way into a larger set, bigger venues, and the hearts of many, many fans.

Tornado Warning!

Mitch and I experienced our first big Tornado Warning in Nashville this last Saturday... and my lucky mom and sister's, who were visiting from Washington State, got to experience it as well.   Saturday started out as a typical Tennessee spring day, mild and warm with some overcasts.  Mitch, my mom & sisters and I spent the day in downtown Nashville.  First we visited the Country Music Hall of Fame, then we checked out some souvenir shops followed by spending time in the Honky Tonk bars on Broadway, which are all ages until 7pm.  (Tootsies, The Stage, etc...)   We were just about to leave, and were snapping a few photo's outside on the sidewalks when all of a sudden a loud siren started blaring above us.  It was a Tornado Warning!  Then, literally within a minute,  it started pouring down rain, with thunder and lightening.  It was insane how quickly the weather changed!

My sister actually caught much of the excitement on camera, 

check out these videos... they're pretty funny!

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffk3h_iGYg

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at7ILMArAQU

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K727b18FiXA

(To check out the videos Part 4-7 go to my sisters you tube channel: WorldsFavPesticide's)

This was definitely one intense storm, though it could have been much worse.  The streets and sidewalks flooded, and the thunder and lightening was so loud and close, but thankfully, no tornados formed.  :)  Hopefully we won't have a scare like this again for a long time. 

It's been 2 months!

We've been in Nashville for two months now! It's unbelievable how times flies. Nashville is such an awesome place to live, we thought we'd share some of our favorite places so far...

The Centennial Dog Park - Baker has a blast when we take him here and we enjoy it because we get to meet and mingle with a lot of people/couples.

The Crow's Nest - A really cool sports bar/restaurant about a 1/2 mile from our house. It's one of our favorites! We like meeting Shawn and Renee here for drinks on Friday evenings after a long week of work.

Whole Foods - A grocery store only a 1/2 mile from our house as well. There is only one problem, they do not sell any soda, meaning no Mt. dew! Other than that it's the best grocery store ever!

The Bluebird Cafe - The legendary venue... the Bluebird Cafe is also very close to our house, within a 1/4 mile. We really enjoy attending an "In the Round" event where 4-5 talented singer/songwriters take turns performing their own music/songs as they sit in a circle facing each other in the middle of the cafe. It's a really neat experience.

Pei Wei - A fantastic restaurant close to our house serving delicious Asian cuisine at really reasonable prices.

St. Henry's or The Cathedral of the Incarnation - No matter how busy we are, (with work, unpacking/organizing, or cleaning) when we go to church here in Nashville it's so peaceful. More peaceful than usual. Maybe it's because we don't know anyone and therefor have no distractions allowing us to completely focus on God. But attending mass here in Nashville is like escaping from everything. Going to mass is nice because it's familiar, and calm and peaceful. It's really nice to share that together Sunday mornings.

Our house - Our cute little townhouse feels more and more like home everyday. And we love it even more now because the leather sectional we ordered finally was delivered this last Wednesday! :)

First Show in Nashville

On Fat Tuesday, I played my first show in Nashville... well it's technically not considered Nashville, it's a town 20 minutes south called Franklin. The venue is called Dan McGuinness. It was an open mic night and, in order to play that night, you have to show up early and sign up. We played four songs. Three were Kayle's and two were mine. Oh yeah, I guess no one really knows about my little acoustic band yet! Well let me introduce you to them. Back in October, I found a couple of guys in Nashville through a craigslist ad that they posted. We hit it off on the phone and when we moved here we finally got together and practiced. They are both very talented guitar players and Kayle has an arsenal of great songs.

We have been practing about twice a week and we plan on playing more and more as we learn and write songs together.

George, Me, and Kayle
Brittany and Kevin came and visited us from San Antonio and came to the performance. They are trying to move here in the next couple of months!

Finding a Church

So far Mitch and I have checked out 4 different catholic churches here in Nashville. We enjoyed all of them and they are all lovely in there own way, but one of the churches we don't plan on attending on a regular basis. Early one Sunday morning Mitch wanted to find a 10:00 or 10:30 mass, since most are scheduled at 8:30 or 11:00, so he went to http://www.masstimes.org/ and discovered that "Mary Queen of Angels" had 10am Mass, so we had planned to go there. We left our house around 9:45, typed the address into my phone's navigation and headed to church. When we made our final turn and arrived at our "destination" we realized that it was not the destination that we expected. We were at the Mary Queen of Angels Church... the only thing was that it was located inside the Mary Queen of Angels nursing home! We started busting up laughing and almost left to find a different church, but instead decided to stay since we were already there and mass was about to start. We walked into the little chapel and found that there were very few seats left. But we did find two seats in the 2nd row on the far right side, so we quickly walked over and sat down. It wasn't until halfway through the mass that we realized that the first two rows in front were reserved for handicap people! Haha! Then we felt even more out of place! And to make things even worse, after mass, on our way out we were politely stopped by three different elderly people telling us that we weren't supposed to sit where we sat. Of course we apologized and thanked them for letting us know, but we felt horrible and all we wanted to do was leave! Haha! There was one thing though that Mitch and I really enjoyed about Mary Queen of Angels and that was seeing a few different elderly couples attending mass together. We both noticed these older couples and talked about how one day we hope that will be us. :)

So far we feel that St. Henry's is a good fit for us. St. Henry's has a K-8 catholic school and many of the parishoners are young families. But we still have a few other churches that we would like to check out before officially joining one church.

Driving to Nashville!

Hi Y'all! Greetings from Nashville! We thought we'd share a little about our drive accross the country, our 5 day, 3,200 mile drive to our new home!

The morning of January 3rd was a hard moring.  Saying goodbye to our parents, sibling and close friends for the last time in our driveway, getting into our SUV and driving away as they all stood there waving goodbye was heartbreaking.  It was so so hard.  But we did it.  We put our lives into God's hands and made the leap, trusting that everything will work out and fall into place.  And so far it has! :)

Our Roadtrip Itinerary:

Day 1 - Bellingham, WA  to  Medford, OR  -  540 miles

Day 2 - Medford, OR  to  Barstow, CA  -  717 miles

Day 3 - Barstow, CA  to  Albuquerque, NM  -  690 miles

Day 4 - Albuquerque, NM  to  Fort Smith, AR  -  724 miles

Day 5 - Fort Smith, AR  to  Nashville, TN  -  500 miles 

It was a long drive but we had fun along the way.  We were both so excited the entire drive over, yet it still kinda felt unreal to us that we were actually moving.  We would driving and listening to music and then all of a sudden one of us would turn to the other and say, "Can you believe that we're really doing this?"  Then we would both bust up laughing talk about how unreal it felt.  The weather was great.  We didn't get even 1 ounce of percipitation our entire drive over.  No rain, no snow.  So that was good for hauling the U-Haul.  We drove for anywhere between 11-13 hours each day and when we started feeling tired we turned on one of the three books on CD that were given to us as a going away present (Thanks so much Tylor and Bethany!)  They really helped the time fly by, especially at night.

Here are some pictures of our trip...

Our Expedition served us well! We had a very comfortable drive over. It was perfect for us... well except for the gas mileage.. we spent a total of $690 on gas to get over here.

Mitch drove the entire way... we had planned on taking turns, but Mitch felt more comfortable driving (which was fine by me) :) He did a great job and even managed to squeeze the Expedition and trailor through a Taco Bell drive through. That's pretty good!

We saw some amazing sunrises and sunsets, and it was really neat seeing the lay of the land and how it changes from state to state. This picture was taken in Northern California.

Baker was such a good boy!  He was so easy going the entire time.  He never whined, he ate when we fed him, drank when we gave him water and pottied when we walked him.  I must admit i was worried about him and the long drive, but he was perfect.  I can't imagine moving here and not having him.  We think that he made the move over here a little easier.  

We love him to death!

Baker sleeping in his little doggy car seat.  We are happy we bought one of these, even though at first we thought it was a complete waste of money.

Snow in Arizona and New Mexico!  

We drove south down I-5 and East on I-40 (old Route 66) to avoid winter weather and still had to drive through the snow.  It wasn't bad though, just a pretty dusting of snow.

Just snapping pics at a gas station.  We liked stopping at "Love's Travel Stops"  and looked for them when we needed to stop.  They had the best bathrooms! 

Crossing the Mississippi River and you can see Memphis in the background.  

Almost in Tennessee!

Tennessee Welcomes You!

The Tennessee State line, in the middle of the Mississippi River Bridge.

We were SO excited to finally arrive in Tennessee!  Even though we still had a 3 hour drive to Nashville we were ecstatic to be so finally be in our new state and so close to starting our new lives in our new city.  This is Mitch's frist pic in his new home state.

My first pic in my new home state! 

We're home!  Us turning into our condo complex for the very first time!  

The Georgetown Condominiums of Nashville!

Our new home! Unit 9B!  We LOVE it!  And Baker loves it here too!  The condo's are in a park-like setting so there are lots of grassy areas around for Baker to run and play in.  

Plus there are ton's of dogs that live here in Georgetown.  It almost seems like we wouldn't fit in if we didn't have a dog! :)

We are so happy here in our new home!  It's not perfect... it's older and it's smaller, but it's perfect for us, its all we need.  We feel so blessed to have found this place, and are so thankful and that our friends (Shawn and Rennee) were able to check it out for us and help us lease it before we even left Washington.  We can't wait for everyone to come visit us.

Our New Address:

Mitch and Erica Mallahan

5025 Hillsboro Pike Unit 9B

Nashville, TN 37215