Dr. Jessica Rutledge

When we flew in from Vegas, we were on a very short schedule because my sister was being hooded that night as a doctoral graduate in Occupational Therapy from Belmont University.  So, yeah, she's the DOCTOR!  All of the family came in to see Dr. Smarty Pants walk across that stage!  We are all so very proud of her.  It took a lot of hard work and many many tears, but she made it! 

During the hooding ceremony, they asked the graduates to go outside for a group picture.  As I was snapping pics of Jess walking down the aisle, I had taken my eyes off Mary Haddox for less than 5 seconds.  When I look up from the lens of my camera, I spot her....walking up the steps of the stage.  She gets on stage, and does a few ballerina spins, and I'm about to have a coronary.  She sees my face and immediately knows that may not have been the best decision she's ever made.  She gets down and tells me "But mommy...it was my turn to be on stage".....Needless to say, it was very cute, but oh wow...my blood pressure.

VIVA LAS VEGAS!!

At the end of April, Nick and I went on a much needed trip, just the two of us (well, 3 if you count Baby Tucker) to Las Vegas.  IT WAS PHENOMENAL!  I have been once before, but it was on a bachelorette trip for my BFF and we will definitely leave it at that.  Nick had never been.  I knew it was going to be an experience and I could not WAIT to see Nick's face when they handed him the "business cards" late in the afternoon on the strip! hehehe

My parents kept MH and she never even knew we were missing.  We tried to FaceTime with her, talk to her, etc and she could care less.  This was the longest we had been away from her and it was miserable, but good for everyone.  We left on a Saturday and came  back the following Friday. 

While in Las Vegas, we decided to do the whole "tourist" thing and see the Grand Canyon(which is only like 2.5 hours away) and also the Hoover Dam.  Both were breathtaking and unbelievable.  We rented a car to drive to the Grand Canyon and asked for directions from the rental agent.  They got us there, but forgot to include some very small details....like....there is absolutely NO LIFE FORM the entire way there--no convenient stores, no fast food, no neighborhoods, NOTHING.  And another small detail they left out was the last 9 miles were offroad.   Yes, offroad, meaning no pavement, no slag, just very loose gravel and dust.  Thank goodness we opted for the rental insurance because we each got a turn playing Dukes of Hazzard with the car in the mountains.  We had a ball!!!

And as our Tucker luck would have it, we ended up on an Indian reservation were we had to pay $44 a piece just to SEE the Grand Canyon.  Good one.  The rental agent didn't bother to tell us there was no way to get to the canyon without going through the reservation and using their charter buses.  Oh well, memories...thats what we pay for these days!  And, again as our Tucker luck would have it, by the time we got to the Hoover Dam they had sold out of dam tour( :) ) tickets so we had to do the small one.  And yes, there were many "dam" jokes during the tour!  And the last thing that is just hilarious is I have always wanted our picture in front of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign.  After a $10 monorail ride, a free tram ride, and a $30 cab ride, we make it to the sign to see there are lights out on the sign and you can hardly read it PLUS its nighttime and you can hardly see anything.  Well good.  Dumb picture, dumb sign. 

While in Vegas we saw lots of sites (some we wish to forget) but we saw three shows: O by Cirque du Soleil, Le Rev, and Dancing with the Stars.  All completely awesome.  In my next life, I'm going to be one of those acrobats.

Here are a few pics from the trip:

We had a phenomenal trip, but this was the best of all:

We had a SUPER awesome piece of luggage waiting at baggage claim in Nashville when we got there!!!!  Thanks Jess for bringing our cargo to the airport!