Monday, September 29

Memphis Monday: GROWING CLIMATE?

Memphis, fortunately, stays warm longer than any place I've lived. This gives us new gardeners a bit more time to figure out what the heck we're supposed to be doing.


I have been growing tomato plants since April in buckets on our porch. I lovingly planted the seeds, repotted them twice, and have watered them every few days. My level of success depends on how you measure success.


Do you measure success by the height of the plants? I'VE SUCCEEDED! These plants are well above my head!
Do you measure success in the amount of time you spent relaxing while watering, planting, and taking your child's fingers out of the dirt?
I'VE SUCCEEDED YET AGAIN!
Or, do you perhaps measure success by the amount of tomatoes actually produced and eaten?

Here it is, my one and only tomato! I am quite proud of it, and hope it ripens so we can actually eat the fruit of my labor! Mmmm... Thank you, Memphis.

Saturday, September 27

video bananza!

These are Addie's new tricks. Enjoy!


Monday, September 22

Memphis Monday: GOOD FRIENDS

Memphis is full of good friends! I am lucky to live near many friends who are always happy to have me drop by and stay for a while. As a stay-at-home mom, their friendships literally keep me sane! Thanks, friends!

Monday, September 15

Memphis Monday: DELICIOUS WATER

Us Memphians are privileged to have award-winning water flowing from our taps. It is delicious! Pour me a great big cup, especially after having been sitting in the fridge, and I'm one happy girl! This is the best drinking water I've ever had straight from the faucet. Mmm...


I just did a little preliminary research online to find out why we have such great water. It seems our city sits on top of the Memphis aquifer. My sister-in-law Heather could explain this much better (she's a hydrogeologist), but an aquifer is a layer of permeable rock beneath the surface that contains water. The more porous the rock, the more water it contains. Wells are dug into the natural aquifers and water pumped out. The Memphis aquifer is HUGE (it contains over 100 trillion gallons of water, by some estimates) and is known to hold some of the best water in the nation. Many industries located in Memphis have moved here just because of our wonderful water supply. Lucky us!

Saturday, September 13

clarification

The book list on the right are the books that I have read or am reading. Several of my friends do this and I liked the idea. Jason thought it was a list of books I would recommend, but that is NOT the case. I definitely WOULD NOT recommend Breaking Dawn (sorry to many of my friends), but definitely WOULD recommend Peace Like a River. I'll have to come up with some sort of rating system.

Friday, September 12

necklaces!

Addie LOVES necklaces. I bought her some cheap ones a while ago and she has really grown attached to them in the last week or so. She is great about sharing them as well, which means I am often sporting a plastic necklace or two! Here are some recent pictures of her looking elegant in her jewels.

The only annoying thing about the necklace phase is the amount of untangling to which Jason and I are subjected.I attempted to get an action shot. She isn't in pain, this is how she looks when she's pulling the necklaces over her head.

Tuesday, September 9

Memphis Monday: THE PLEASANT EFFECTS OF HURRICANES

Hurricanes are horrible, no debate there. Memphis, however, is fortunate to be happily situated far enough away from the coast to miss the storms, but close enough to enjoy the pleasant rain they bring. This morning was such, and it left the rest of the day breezy and cool. Addie and I enjoyed a porch swing for nearly an hour with a new friend, and we talked about how nice it was to be in Memphis on days such as these. Thank you, Gustav.

Saturday, September 6

the debate can now rest

We have been surprised by how many of you actually did look for Jason's head in the picture from our last post. Well, yes, it really was there. Here is the answer so many of you seek! He was that white little blip on the red pole. I know it is nearly impossible to see, but there nonetheless!

And here he is waving at us all!


Monday, September 1

Memphis Monday: PROXIMITY TO NEW PLACES TO VISIT

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JASON???
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI!

Last Monday Jason, Adelyn and I drove 4.5 hours to spend three fun-filled days in St. Louis, MO. The first day we met up with my sister, Kari, and her family and went to the zoo (which, might I add, was FREE). The zoo was spectacular! Every habitat (for the main animals, anyhow) was well done. The penguin house was amazing (just like being in Antarctica), the elephant habitat was HUGE, and the hippos had their own underwater viewing area with tons and tons of fish. We loved it, and were plenty tired by the end of the day. It was also great spending time with Kari, Eric and Noah. We're glad they're closer now!

Addie and cousin Noah with a Mexistache


We're twins!

Tuesday morning we went to the St. Louis Science Center (ahem, ahem...also FREE) and learned about building structures, space, the body, dinosaurs and computers. Addie had fun with legos and Jason and I had fun watching them use liquid nitrogen on Peeps candies.

Under the St. Louis arch that we built!


Addie absolutely LOVED this lego wall. She played with it forever.

Our hands. How tender.

For lunch we walked around downtown St. Louis (which we have since learned is the nation's second most dangerous city, glad we didn't know that then) and spent time under the famous arch and played in one of the cities numerous park fountains.

A cool shot of the arch, by Jason.


Addie's cute little toes and pudgy knees, playing in a fountain.Whew! We're finally heading back to the car!

That afternoon we went to the Anheuser-Busch headquarters for a FREE tour. For two non-drinking Mormons and a one-year-old, we realize this is not what you would expect, but we had a great time! They took us into the famous Budweiser Clydesdale stables (more elegant than many a hotel I've visited, trimmed with gold) and into the brewery to learn about the process of making a Budweiser. The most interesting part to me was the packaging plant. I only counted five people in the room with the packaging machines, nearly everything is done remotely from a control room. It was amazing. Fun fact: they have a machine that filles 1200 bottles per minute. Whoa. Afterwards, in the hospitality room, visitors are given any kind of two free drinks they want. Jason and I had lemonade. Mmmmm...

The gold trimmed stable.

Fun fact #1: Budweiser owns 250 Clydesdales in all, 50 are in St. Louis.

Fun fact #2: To be a Budweiser horse, it must have a tan coat with a black tail and mane, four white socks, and a white blaze on it's face.

Fun fact #3: The horses live like kings. The phenomenal packaging plant.

That night we crashed at our hotel. It had been a long day.


Wednesday morning we visited Laumeier Sculpture Park (free, free, free). We didn't have enough time to see it all, and we didn't wear the right kind of shoes, but even with those set backs, we had a great time. The sculptures were amazing, and some of them large enough to physically explore. It was interesting, I wish we lived near a park as cool as that. We want to buy this sculpture one day and put it in the lobby of Jason's practice. What do you think?Can you find Jason's head in this picture?


After lunch, we ventured over to The Magic House, one of the nation's premier children's museums. This, sadly, was the only thing we spent money to do, but it was well worth it! There were plenty of things targeted towards very young children, so that kept Addie busy, and plenty of other stuff to keep Jason and I entertained as well. We had a great time.

Addie shopping at Schnuck's Market.

I love this picture, it is so sweet.

Now this is truly one unruly perm!

On our way home that evening we stopped at Lambert's Cafe, recommended to me by several friends. It was an experience not to be missed! They are famous for their signature "throwed rolls" which they toss across the dining room at the customers (and boy, were they delicious!). The waiters also walk around the dining room hollering at you, wondering if you'd like any of their pass-around side dishes (fried ocra, fried potatoes, macaroni and tomatoes, etc). Everything there is all you can eat, so if you want more, feel free! Not that anyone could actually order more, Jason's piece of ham was bigger than his head, much much bigger! Lambert's is loud and crazy, and we loved every minute of it.

What a ham!

So, that's it. We really jam-packed as much into this little vacation as we could and had a fabulous time. Jason starts school again tomorrow, so this was our last hurrah before he gets his nose back in the books. St. Louis is a great (and inexpensive!) place for families to visit, it comes highly recommended! Hope you enjoyed the bazillion pictures!