As I’m walking out the door to go back to work from lunch. Be a sick little girl who says, “Mommy I miss you. Please don’t go. I need you to stay with me.” “No, no, NOOOOOO!” Then grab ahold of my leg and wraps yourself around it so that I can’t take a step without dragging you on my leg with me.
It feels about like someone took my heart from my chest and stomped it on the ground. You would think that having gone through 3 children doing the same thing it would get easier. Sadly, it doesn’t.
Ok, the whole month of August is gone. Where did it go? I”m pretty sure that yesterday it was just Zoey’s birthday. She turned 8 a few weeks ago. Didn’t I tell you? No? That’s because she’s the middle child. I’m trying to make sure she has a solid case of “Middle Child Syndrome“.
Since her birthday is in the summer, we decided to skip out having a big birthday bash this year*. Zoey opted to wait until a a few weeks after school started and invite some of her good friends over for a slumber party. Oh my goodness. If you want to really appreciate how smart and sometimes well mannered your child is, invite a bunch of their hoodlum friends over.
The girls had a fabulous time. On their way home each one talked about how it was the “best party I have been to in my life”. For me the party felt like 4 girls who never wanted to do the same thing at the same time. It went something like this.
“How about we make some cookies?”
“Cookies? YES!!”
“Oh man, we’re out of eggs. Anyone want to make eggless cookies?”
“Eggless cookies! Gross! That sounds DISGUSTING! We’re going to play.”
Zoey and I thought it would be a fun activity to make friendship bracelets. I found out that some 8 year olds have really short attention spans.
“Miss Anna**, How did you do that again?”
“Does it go like this Miss Anna?”
“I’m just going to do mine this way”
“Oh, Miss Anna yours looks so pretty, will YOU make mine that way?”
For dinner we made some bagle pizzas. 2 of the girls thought it was the weirdest thing they had ever heard of and flat out refused to eat them. So, not only did we not have cookies, but they didn’t eat dinner either.
When it was time to settle down, the girls turned into pre-teens and giggled and talked the night away. I overheard one of the girls talking about people making out. I wasn’t quite sure how to handle that. I mean, they are only 8. They should NOT be talking about this kind of stuff yet but I didn’t want to make it so taboo they really wanted to talk about it***. Instead of saying anything about it, I just stayed in the room with them until they all fell asleep.
Funniest thing to happen at the party: One of the girls let loose a major fart. The other 3 started acting grossed out so instead of getting embarrassed she rolled over like she was queen of the world and announced, “Farting is one of my most favorite things to do”.
*we did have small birthday festivities at my dad’s house on her birthday
** We moved from the midwest to the deep south. I don’t think I will ever get used to being called, “Miss Anna”.
*** Anyone have any good advice on how to handle stuff like this?
On with Day 2 of the trip. Be warned, it’s another fairly lengthy post. I do have to make up for those many days without a post.
Because we had never stayed at a bed and breakfast, I thought this would be a good time to try one out.
The B&B was 130 years old and used to be a school house. Girls in this room, boys in that room. It was a very neat house. Greg and I are both pretty minimalistic when it comes to decorating. We like big open (clean) spaces that don’t have much clutter. The bed and breakfast was not that. There was so much stuff to look at. While it wasn’t our style, it was pleasant.
Our plans for the day were:
Breakfast
Visit a musuem
Watch a movie
Have some delicious lunch
Walk around and see the sites
Have dinner on the riverboat
At breakfast we met the other guests, a family from Australia. A woman, her brother and her 12 year old daughter.
She won some radio contest to visit all the places that Orlando Bloom traveled in the movie ‘Elizabethtown’. It was cool to talk with them about the differences here vs there, etc. They have much healthier choices at the fast food restaurants. They also commented on how Memphis really seems to love it’s motorcycles. That they were everywhere. Funny because Greg and I found out later there was some kind of bike convention going on. They will have the impression forever that Memphis is full of bikers.
After breakfast, it was off to the art museum. Which was featuring a teapot collection we didnt’ really care about. Some of the teapots were interesting, but when you have so many together after a while it was like, “Eh”.
The actual paintings were were amazing. It made me wish I had even just a smidgen of the artistic talent the painters had. Could you imagine having a real work of art hanging in your living room? This part is going to show that I haven’t been to many museums of art (there haven’t really been that many opportunities). They had a couple of originals by Monet, Pissaro, Degas, and some well known dead guys. There were maybe 300 pieces total. I’m sure they show more when teapots aren’t on display.
Here is the telling part of my museum going experiences. If I had a magic marker with me, I could have changed history. There were no ropes barring you from getting too close. No glass encasements, nothing. Except for a couple of security people in the hallways and a sign asking you not to gesture at the art with any sharp objects or pens. If I had been more daring, I could have been typing this from a prison cell instead.
After our eyeful of art, we drove back downtown and watched Talladega Nights. I’m going to have to watch it again, because even though I thought some parts were incredibly funny, I can’t remember most of it.
Then had about 3 hours to waste before it was time for this cruise/dinner thing. We decided to skip lunch because we had a sort of late breakfast. Ok, 9 am isn’t really late, but we weren’t hungry yet and dinner were only 3 hours away.
We walked around Beale Street, which has about 3 blocks of bars and nightclubs and restaurants and must be great at night. There were also has some shops and the whole street is all very bluesy and lots of live bands and stuff. We did some gift shopping for the kids. Nathan got a pair of Elvis glasses with the sideburns among other things.
There’s a hotel that has been downtown forever also, named the Peabody. It owns the mall and the car garages and basically a 4 block section of downtown. It seems like history grew up around it to some degree. It’s a kind of uppety 250 a night place. We decided to stop in and see their big attraction, besides tea in the afternoon. Since 1930, they have had these ducks in their main water fountain. At 10 am and 5 pm, a guy comes out with a red carpet that goes from the elevator to the fountain. He gives a big “Welcome guests and visitors.. let me tellyou our history….”.
Then they play some music, and these ducks are trained to climb out of the fountain and march down the red carpet and into the elevator (or the other way around). The guy just watches, doesn’t prod. Then they go up to the roof and into their home/cage area. There were hundreds of people watching these ducks. Crazy.
After that was over, we decided to check out the roof of the hotel. It was a welcome quite spot. It was also proof that we shouldn’t live in a big city. We would be the people with the telescopes watching other people in their apartments. See this picture? If you look closely, you can see a girl working out either in her room, or the hotel gym.
We tried to catch the Elvis impersonator for 10 min before we hotfooted it to the boat for dinner. We didn’t get to see the impersonator, but made it to the riverboat in time. By now we were starting to get hungry. It was a good thing we were early and had reservations. There were well over 150 people in line. We made our way to the front to the ticket office only to find out she booked us for OCT instead of Aug. All of the people were there for a private function so she couldn’t change our date to that night.
Instead we drove back across town for some mexican food and went back to the B&B. I didn’t mention earlier, but the owners are accomplished chefs. Like they have books published (I bought one) and her job is to go to hotel chains and consult on food selections. Our breakfast that morning was their signature dish. It was delicious. (I tried cooking it at home later it was ok, but not nearly as tasty. After breakfast we headed to Oklahoma for Zoey’s birthday and to pick up the kiddos (who totally did not miss us the entire week they were gone).
So, it’s only been 3 weeks right? Better late than never.
I had the brilliant idea to stay in a less expensive hotel just outside of Memphis on Wednesday night. We would be getting there kind of late and leaving first thing in the morning so just didn’t see the point in spending extra money for an additional night in Memphis. As we were pulling up, I had a feeling the place we were staying in also charged by the hour. That extra money may have been worth it.
We woke up bright and early Thursday morning and made the drive into Memphis to the river-side/downtown area (where everything is at). We got there about 8 and there wasn’t really much going on. I had planned on eating breakfast at the Arcade diner. We drove down some streets looking for the joint but never did find it.
After a while we gave up. I had ordered tickets on a tour and we didn’t want to miss it. We parked at a lot and walked about 6 blocks to the starting point of the tour. We were supposed to be there at 9 for a 10am ride on a DUCK which is really one of those military vehicles that can also cross water like a boat. Since we missed breakfast at the diner, we found a Starbucks at the mall which was right across the street. Grabbed a muffin and some coffee then headed back across the street to the “duck”.
The tour was maybe my favorite part of the trip so it’s also going to be what I dwell on in this post. If you don’t mind doing touristy stuff, and you are ever in a city that has one, you should definitely go for it. The driver had the headset on, could talk to the guests, had lots of music going that was all written in or about Memphis. We were given these dumb noisemakers that you blow on and it makes a quack sound. They look like the bill of a duck. It was cheesy and fun.
On the tour we drove by Sun Studio, which I guess is where Elvis cut his first album, and Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis also recorded all their stuff there. We drove by several very old ‘mansions’ that were the ‘first’ or ‘biggest’ in town 150 years ago. Then we drove by the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It’s run entirely on donation, costs like 6 million a day to run. It has Danny Thomas(founder) and his wife are buried near the entrance in a golden dome. Pretty neat story about how it was founded.
The other really interesting part of the tour was where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. If you don’t know already, he was shot on a motel balcony and it’s marked by a white wreath. The motel is now the National Civil Rights Museum. What’s interesting is that when they made it a national museum, they evicted the people living in it.
One of those people is a lady who decided to protest being kicked out to make it a museum. She feels it would be better served as like a shelter for women or something similar. So she decided to protest. She started 18 years ago, and every day she sits on the corner outside of the motel in protest. Pretty amazing.
We drove past a few more historical things then headed to the water. From the water you can see a stadium/arena that is called the Pyramid. Ok, really you can see it from everywhere, we just got an up close view from the river. The basketball team used to play there, but the pro team wanted a different stadium, so they moved out. It’s right on the river by everything else and is the 3rd largest pyramd in the world behind Egypt and Las Vegas. After it sat empty for like 3 years the city sold the pyramid to….. BASS PRO SHOPS.
After we were done in the water, we headed back to dry land and finished out the tour. After that it was time for lunch and then on to Mud Island. A historical museum about the Missisippi river. It was ok, a little boring though. Greg and I were both amused to see that Mike Fink was actually a real person and not just a character from the Orson Scott Card books. A really cool part of Mud Island is it’s to scale model of the Mississippi River. It was too hot outside for us to really spend much time at it though. It was also time to check into our Bed and Breakfast, which we eventually found after driving 30 miles past our correct exit.
I think that’s enough for one post, and pretty much finishes out Day 1 of Memphis. Hopefully it won’t take 2 more weeks for day 2.
Sorry for the lack of posts. With the start of school the 4 days ago, work, and being on the peewee football league board of directors, there hasn’t been much time to actually write anything. After things settle down a little (hopefully this weekend), I’ll get back to the almost daily updates. I really do have things to write about, just no time to sit and get them written.
I know, it has been so very hard to function without something new from me lately. You can try this place if you absolutely have some time to kill.
I’m going to take a break from the Memphis trip story (still haven’t gotten those pictures off of the camera). We’re getting ready for school to start on Monday. Last night was our night to meet the teachers. Let me start off by saying how extremely excited our kids were all day long. With their backpacks full of school supplies, we headed out to see just who their teachers are going to be.
This is where I performed the first of my 2 big parenting mistakes for the evening. I made Nathan, who is a pretty quiet, shy kid already, self conscious about bringing his supplies with him. “Your teachers might not be ready for them and we didn’t get a letter telling us to bring the supplies.”. I could immediately see Nathan’s cool, happy, excited attitude start to fade as he went into a shell. Even my attempts to reassure him failed. “No, no, don’t worry about it. See, there are other kids bringing their backpacks with them!”.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like he became sulky or anything, he was still pretty excited. He was just more withdrawn and quiet. That wasn’t even the big mistake I made. The big mistake was talking to the teachers about his demeanor saying how excited he was to his teachers and following it up with, “I guess he’s just being shy”, in an exasperated tone. All done, right in front of him, only causing him to withdraw a little more each time I said it.
All in all, not a great way for Nathan to be introduced to his new school (he moved up to a different school) and teachers. While I know he will be fine once school starts and he gets to know his teachers, I feel bad for how I handled the first impression.
So, on with mistake number 2. Probably not as big as the first. We knew the name of Zoey’s teacher because she sent a “Welcome to my class” letter last week. Being curious about her teacher I asked around. Most of the reviews weren’t pleasant. At Zoey’s meet the teacher*, one of the other moms strongly insisted we ask to be traded. Then we went on to swap what we had heard about the teacher. All in front of Zoey. How’s that for giving your kid a good feeling about going back to school?
The meeting with Zoey’s teacher went fine. She seems like a nice person and looked to be excited that school was starting. Even if she is a little strict, I’m positive that Zoey won’t have a problem.
*each time I typed ‘meet the teacher’ I wanted to spell it meat. Could you imagine if it really were meat the teacher? Would everyone bring gobs of hamburger and plop it onto the teacher’s head?
I’m wanting to do a write up about our trip to Memphis, but am waiting until I get the pictures off of the camera first. I’ll start with earlier in the week.
It was time for the annual kid vacation to Oklahoma. A week long event that was jam packed with fun for the kids and a slight touch of boredom for the parents. They did fun things like tour an ice cream factory, watched 3 big screen movies, went bowling, went shopping for new school clothes, and spent the rest of the time swimming in Grandpa’s pool.
Usually, we try to plan a big project while the kids are away. It helps the time go by and is much easier to do without the extra little helping hands. This year, not so much. We were basically counting down the hours until Tuesday night, when we figured our official break would get kicked off with a night at the movies. For the record, You, Me, and Dupree isn’t worth seeing in theaters.
From Saturday night through Tuesday night I think we talked to each of the kids for about 5 minutes, total. They didn’t have time to be bothered with talking to their boring old parents. We know that when they are home and grandparents or aunts and uncles call, they waver between not wanting to talk to chatting away for up to 30 minutes at a time. I should have known it would be no different for us. What am I, chopped liver?
I have lots of stuff to write about from the past 5 days. I’ll get to that stuff later though. For now I want to show you what I saw when I logged on to the beloved internet for the first time in almost a week.
First there was this image.
When I read the story my first thought was, “Wow, I can’t believe they couldn’t tell that photo had been doctored.” Then it made me think about the other news photos we see. How far is a photojournalist willing to go for a story. It’s one thing when magazine covers are touched up. It’s expected. I guess I’m just naive, because it hadn’t even occured to me that news photos would be doctored.
Then there was this image.
They have gotten many complaints about this issue. Claims that it is disgusting and borderline porno. What do you think of the cover? Tasteless? Should it be banned in 5 countries?
Having breastfed each of my children, I don’t see anything wrong with the cover. It is a parenting magazine for crying out loud.
Just a brief run down. The kids are in Oklahoma this week to visit my dad. Later tonight, Greg and I are going to head to Memphis for a quick 2 day mini-vacation before heading to my dad’s on Saturday to pick up the kids and have a little birthday party for Zoey who will be turning 8. Wow, runon sentence.
Nathan was really excited for Zoey’s birthday this year. So much that he used some of his allowance to win her a stuffed animal at the crane machine. He has uncanny crane skills. Then he very sneakily made her a card, which he left here because he didn’t want her to find it. Then asked me to pack and bring with us for her birthday.
When I looked at the card, I couldn’t help but laugh.
Here’s the front. Nothing really surprising here.
and here is the inside.
In case you can’t read it, it says, “You’re Eight. Here’s your money. From Nathan”.
Why didn’t any of you tell me how amazingly awesome iTunes is? That it isn’t just for people with iPods. Did you know that you can sample songs before you buy them? Then if there are only 2 songs on the cd you really like, you don’t get stuck paying for the whole thing. It’s pure genius.
Something else that’s genius, only charging 99 cents per song. Then you don’t realize that ‘Holy Crap!! I spent $80 on songs!” until you look at your credit card statement the next day.
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