Memphis

our adventures are still going…and i have about 700 pictures to show for it. don’t worry…i’m only gonna give you a very small snippet of those!

we aren’t quite done with our roadtrip just yet, but my mind has been swirling today with my growing to-do list that is accumulating items for me to cross off as soon as we get back. i have just enough time to unpack and repack for my next adventure (more on that later) and i’m afraid that if i don’t start updating this blog now, it’ll get WAY too backlogged for my little tired brain to handle! so here goes: Part One of our crazy adventures – the condensed version!

our first official leg of our Tennessee tour was Memphis to visit with some very very special friends. we had a mini kind of reunion with some peeps who we used to go to church with but who are now spread all over.

for one friend’s Big 3-0, we hit up some casinos in a small Mississippi town (sans kiddos) right outside Memphis called Tunica.

that was my first casino experience, and it did not disappoint!!

we got to spend lots of time with a dear dear family…who have taught us more about real life and being parents than anyone else!

the crazy next to me in the red shirt in the pic below was my youth pastor in high school and who went on to be my boss when he hired me to work with the High School ministry when i was in college (i told you he was crazy!) Jake took over his job when he moved back to his hometown of Memphis to continue to be in high school ministry at a church there. if i were home and had access to my wedding album, i’d show you a sweet pic of him performing our wedding ceremony, but i’m not, so i can’t! i could, though, tell you ample stories of him but i’m afraid that if i do, then i’d give away some of his secrets…and since he’s still in HS ministry, he might need to use some of them one of these days….and i might get payback, so i’ll leave it at that!

this pic just sums it up so well! (one family member is missing from this pic…Kelcie…but she’s picture in the casino pic above to the left of me)

when their kiddos were much much smaller than they are now, right after Jake and i were married, we used to spend tons of time with them…and we learned a ton about being parents through that time.

when these two below were literal babies – like going through packs of diapers and still taking bottles in the middle of the night kind of babies – we got to spend days, weekends, or even weeks at a time with them and their two older sisters. it was SO fun to see our kiddos interact with them cause they made us SO excited to become parents one day long before the crazies arrived!

we enjoyed one last dinner in Memphis with them, discussing Heaven and how fun its gonna be to get to spend eternity together!

Memphis has some cool stuff to do with kids, like watching the duck march at the Peabody Hotel downtown. twice a day, a parade of ducks marches off of the elevator, down the red carpet, and into the fountain in the middle of the hotel lobby. we got there a little early to get a good spot on the red carpet in order to see the ducks up close.

but those little stinkers forgot their manners and hightailed it so fast to the fountain that we barely had time to see them whizz by!

so we followed those little stinkers right up to the fountain to get a closer peek:

the duckmaster even let us hold his special baton

before offering to take our crew up to the roof of the hotel to see the duck palace. (if you couldn’t tell my the crazies, the sun was blaring in our eyes!)

i’m afraid to tell you that we pretty much ate our way through Memphis. i mean…when you have access to fried dill pickles, isn’t it okay to eat them for lunch AND dinner??

we went to this famous burger joint where you use straws:

to shoot toothpicks into the ceiling:
you can only imagine that to the crazies, that might just be the raddest thing one could’ve ever thought of!

we had to stop off at the famous Gibson’s Donuts

in order to stuff our faces with more fried food:

and we’ve been told that Memphis just isn’t Memphis without Jerry’s famous Sno Cones:

i had a wedding cake flavored snowcone, and it truly tasted just like wedding cake. and if you’re 4 years old, its virtually impossible to pass up a rainbow snowcone!
if you are ever in the Memphis area and you have your own crazies in tow, you have to check out Shelby Farms. they have this new playground that is by far the best playground i’ve ever experienced (and i’ve experienced quite a few!) it was too big and spread out to really capture the full essence of the park, but you can just imagine the best of possibilities for playtime!! (and the momma in me couldn’t help but notice how clean and well kept the area was, and how many safety features were obviously very thoroughly thought through!)

we did some climbing:

and swinging:

and sliding:

our sweet friends Tracey and Jeff were our gracious hosts. i went to high school with both of them…so we kinda go way back! they are the kind of people that you feel like you could invade their home for long periods of time even with crazies in tow and they don’t for one second make you feel like you’re a burden! in fact, they even make you feel like they are actually enjoying the fact that you’ve kinda taken over every square inch of their house!!

before leaving the park, we spotted a pond and as soon as some ducks caught wind that we were passing out rice cakes, they came in droves:

some were even brave enough to eat right out of our hands:

the hubs was insistent you most certainly can’t go to Memphis without checking out the famous Mississippi River.

this is one of those, “i’m gonna try really hard not to smile for the camera” kind of pictures:

the girls stayed busy picking the pretty wildflowers:

while the boys tried to see who could throw a stick the farthest:
and then competed to see which stick floated down the river the fastest…a very Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn-ish kind of activity, if you ask me…which i guess is fitting for the Mississippi River!

pheww…well…if you are still reading, that’s just the first leg of our trip! we were super sad to leave our friends in Memphis, but have had an absolute blast on the second leg of our tour, which is coming up in the near future for your viewing pleasure!

check back in soon,