How to Build A Deck

1. Tell your husband you want a deck.

2. Save money for many months.

3. Remind your husband you want a deck.

4. Repeat step 3 as necessary.

5. Buy lumbar.

6. Call Ryan for help.

7. Take a siesta (only applicable if you're a cute 3-year old girl)

8. Work like crazy into the night. (Only applicable if you're a big strong man)

9. Enjoy the fruits of your labor with a BBQ!

We are loving our deck! Dave did a great job and worked so hard! We still have a few more things to do with it - stain, steps, railing. But at least we can use our patio furniture and enjoy the backyard a little more as it is. Dave is hoping for a new grill for Father's Day now!

Pink Palace Museum...finally

It seems like most people I know are having exciting experiences and changes to their lives right now. I feel dumb anytime someone asks, "So, what's new with you guys?!" Ummm... nothing. Really. So I feel like I talk about (and blog) the same old trivial day-to-day happenings, but that's our lives and we like it! (we can't all move to Singapore:) So here's a little blurb about something fun we did this week!

We've lived here almost a year now, and just made our first trip to the Pink Palace Museum on Memorial Day! I thought that it was going to be mostly a museum about Memphis, displaying local stuff only, but it's really much more than that - we were impressed!

If you don't know what the Pink Palace is, here's a quick explanation (if you do, skip it!) The man who invented the modern grocery store concept with the Piggly Wiggly was very famous and rich. He started building a huge mansion made of pink granite. Before it was completed, he went bankrupt. The home and land was donated to the city to use as a museum and there you have it!

The humongous mansion is only part of the museum. It's since been expanded and includes an IMAX theater and a planetarium!

My favorite part was the old-fashioned grocery store. I loved looking through the shelves and seeing the old products and packaging.

They have a lot of taxidermy animals, fossils, bones, and historic displays.

Caroline's favorite part of the historic displays were the old pageantry clothes! Very fancy and sparkly!

And yes, they have dinosaurs!

We'll go back sometime and check out the planetarium. I love that there's so many things to do here! When we have a free Saturday or something and we're trying to figure out what to do, there's always places to go and things to see. After living in smaller towns that have 2 or 3 attractions, this is such an exciting change!

On our list of places to go is: The Children's Museum, The Art museum, The planetarium,a Memphis Redbirds game, and the Botanical Gardens. But I add something new to the list any time I hear about something else!

Spot of Tea?

Caroline was so excited to attend the "Mad Hatter Tea Party" at our library this weekend!

It was an Alice in Wonderland theme and all the kids wore hats and did a Mad Hatter parade. It was so cute!


They had punch and snacks, listened to a story, and played games. Caroline had been looking forward to this for weeks and it did not disappoint! Our library is wonderful and is always doing great activities like this - I LOVE it!

Caroline is playing croquet with her flamingo club, just like the movie!

It was so cute to see all the little girls dressed up with their fancy hats - it was definitely right up Caroline's alley!

BBQ Festival

Last weekend (or two - can't remember) we went to the Memphis in May BBQ festival with Ryan and Courtney!

Great picture of Ry there :) hehe You have to park pretty far away, but the scenery is pretty and you just follow the heavenly smell!

They've got a pretty neat set-up, right along the Mississippi River.

For some reason this had to have been the hottest and most humid day we've had so far. The festival is outdoors and mostly just a bunch of tents that belong to the different BBQ contestants. If you're lucky enough to have an in with one of those contestants, or their sponsers it means lots of free food and drinks by some of Memphis' finest! Oh, yeah - we had the hookup!

Yummy ribs. Yummy BBQ nachos. Yummy hotwings. Yummy pulled pork.

However, other than pigging out (heh - get it? pigging out? sigh) in our tent, there wasn't much else to do that I could see. We walked around and there were a lot of vendors and sponsor booths, but that was it.

If you don't have a VIP wristband, the only way to get BBQ is to buy it at a Corky's stand (expensive) or pay to be a "judge". This sounds very cool. You pay $4, and go to the huge judging tent and they bring you BBQ from 5 different contestants! What a deal! The catch is - the Wait! The lines were ridiculously long. I don't know how those people did it just standing there for hours in the heat, smelling all the food and watching everyone in the tents eating!

So overall, I'm glad we went. It was delicious, but I'm not sure if we'll go back next year. If we do, we'll dress comfortably and wear walking shoes (the parking is way far). And we'll check the weather channel! Honestly, with heat, humidity, hundreds of smokers and grills, thousands of people, no AC or misters, and very few fans, it was really uncomfortable and I showered again as soon as we got home!
... but it was yummy, free food. And I love food. So it's a toss-up!

Quiet Time Victory!

As some of you may know, I've been having a difficult time with Caroline and nap time. A couple of months ago, she stopped napping and starting messing up her room when she was supposed to be sleeping. So we decided to throw in the towel and switch to "quiet time". I told her she could read books, do puzzles, or color but she had to stay in her room and be quiet, and most importantly, not make a mess!

She. Freaked. Out.

She threw fits when it was "quiet time" and it wasn't "quiet time" at all. I was getting SO frustrated.

So I decided to bribe.. uh, I mean use "incentives" and a chart.



I have always been a big believer in using charts for kids. I made a chart for Caroline when she potty trained and when she was having a hard time going to bed at night and they work great! For Caroline, it's a good visual reminder and I like that it highlights what she's doing right, instead of wrong.



So I decided to make a chart and if she would follow the quiet time rules for a week, she would get a new princess dress!



Ok, I confess. We were going to get her a new one anyway. Caroline has several dress-up dresses, but only one that hasn't been stained or fallen apart, and that's the Snow White dress Grandma made! The others were all hand-me-downs, so we decided to make her "earn" this next one!


And it worked!



Hooray! Caroline has been doing Quiet Time like a champ and has even taken a nap twice in the last week! Victory!





She has been SO excited to buy a new princess dress. She told every random stranger we met today that's what we were doing for family night tonight! She knew exactly what she wanted: Cinderella.



Naturally, we went to Target and they were out of Cinderella's dress!



So we had to go to Walmart and there it was!!!



Now we have one happy princess and a happy mommy who gets a break every day too!
Normally, I only use a chart once or twice to develop a habit, but when we were in the store, Caroline saw the matching crown she said, "and I get that next week!" UhOh.

And so it begins...

Caroline had her first "school program" last night!

Her Thursday school had an end-of-semester program with a puppet show and some singing by the kids and preschool diplomas for the 4 year olds! I know, I think the whole diploma thing is a little silly, but I'll probably feel different next year - right? :)

Well, in case you couldn't make this exciting production, I'll give you a little taste of what you missed:

Caroline is a sing-y, dance-y, performer at home, but when she's supposed to sing and dance, she yawns and picks her nose. She seems completely unaffected and above the whole silly spectacle.

I took a video also, but I'll spare you. It's pretty shaky since I was trying to suppress my laughter the whole time.