Family Visit!

So, my mom, brother Makaeden, and Grandpa Darnell came out to visit us!  They got here on June 16th and left on the 19th.  They arrived on Tuesday night at about 6 and I had dinner waiting for them.  We ate chicken enchiladas and then headed out to see downtown Memphis!  Nate was working that night so he didn't go with us.  We rode on the Trolley and walked down Beale Street.  I haven't done much sightseeing myself so it was a lot of fun!

This is in front of the FedEX Forum.  It's their events stadium.

The next day Nate was able to get work off!  We went to Graceland first.  It was really neat!  It was a lot different than I expected though.  His house was not anything like I had imagined, and they had a ton of museums and exhibits to go through.  That took a good portion of our day.  I took a million pictures but I'll just post a few.  

This is the living room.  This is the first room you see when you walk in the front door.

Here is the kitchen.  Not at all what I was expecting!  Pretty much just an average 70's kitchen!

This is the "Jungle Room".  Probably the most famous in Elvis' home.  This is an awful pic but it was the best I could get.  You weren't allowed to use flash and it was dark in there...

This was in front of Elvis' plane "Lisa Marie"

After we were done at Graceland we grabbed some lunch and then headed to Mud Island!  Mud Island is a 5-block long replica of the lower Mississippi River, from Cairo, IL, to New Orleans, LA.  

You can take a tram from the mainland over to the island.  

On the island they have a museum about the transportation that is used on the Mississippi River and how it has changed over the years, exploration and settlement, music, the Civil War, etc.  They even had a life size river boat you could walk around on!  It was actually really neat.

Kaed loved the cannons

Outside playing in the "river"

It was SOOO hot and we were all pretty exhausted!

Afterwards, we drove by the Civil Rights Museum.  Unfortunately, it was closed so we didn't get to go in.  But this is the hotel that Martin Luther King was assassinated at.  The wreath on the railing is where he was standing.  I have always really admired him and actually was able to meet his widow and to talk her for a little bit in Little Rock a few years ago!  She was such a sweet lady and it was so interesting learning a little bit about her.  We were in the Civil Rights Museum there when we met her :-)  Anyways, I really want to go inside the museum next time, but for now I will have to settle for just driving by.

When we got home that night Nate and Kaed went swimming!  (Kaeden had been begging ALL day long!)

Isn't he so handsome?!

This picture cracks me up!  They were SO tired by the end of the night!

The next day we woke up early and went to the Fire Museum.  It's the same one Nate and I went to for my birthday, so I won't really post many pics.  

Nate and my grandpa were good buddies that week!

After the museum we hurried over to the Peabody Museum to watch the famous "Duck March" that was started in 1933.  The story is actually quite amusing.  They live on top of the hotel in fancy duck cage and every morning at 11 o'clock they are led down to the lobby fountain.  Then at 5 o'clock every evening, they are led back up.  It was kinda fun to go and watch!

After that Nate had to head to work so we split up and headed to the Memphis Zoo!  It was a really big zoo, but not the greatest on in my opinion.  It was REALLY hot so it made it not as enjoyable as I'm sure it could normally be.  A lot of the zoo was empty (I'm assuming it was because we went on a weekday) so it was a little bit eerie in some parts!

This was out in front of the zoo

Waiting for the tram to take us to the next exhibit

They had a fun little fountain you could swim in to cool off!  Kaed took full advantage of that :-)

Grandpa was pretty hot and tired from all the walking!

After the zoo we went to a park that we have nearby.  It looks almost exactly like "Castle Park" in Kaysville.  For those of you who don't know what that is, I apologize but I didn't take any pics of the park :-(

Then we finally got to eat dinner!  We went to Buffalo Wild Wings.  I personally don't think it's the most amazing restaurant in the world, but they have some pretty good wings!  

Kaed found a hunting game and just HAD to play it, LOL.  

It was so much fun having them here!  It was good to see them and it was SOOO nice being able to get out of the house and do some much anticipated sight seeing!  Luckily, they were able to stay with us since we have a 2 bedroom apartment.  It was nice to be able to return the favor to my mom for letting me live with her for 18 years and my grandpa for letting me live in his basement apartment for 2 1/2 (although I still have much more to do to show my gratitude)  You guys were great house guests!!  Love you!!

RIP "Grandma Jonathan"

So, this past week was not a great one.  My grandma passed away on Friday.  She was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer only 2 weeks prior to her death.  It all happened so fast none of us were ready for it.  The funeral was today and unfortunately, I was unable to fly home for it.  It was really hard realizing that I was going to have to miss my own grandma's funeral, but there was just no way we could make it work.  

She was actually my mom's aunt (her mom's sister), which technically makes her my great aunt, but my mom lived with her for a while when she was growing up.  She was more of a mom to her and a grandma to me.  I love her so much and even though we're all so sad that she's gone, we're so happy that she's finally with my grandpa and her parents again.  She left behind 4 children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  We will all miss her very much.  

Every Christmas Eve since before I was born, our family would get together for our family party.  She would always play Christmas carols on the piano and we'd all sing along.  She absolutely loved playing the piano and was really good at it!  I've never had a single  Christmas Eve without her.  Christmas Eve will never be the same without her.  But even though she's gone, I know that she will always be with us in spirit.  We love you and miss you Grandma!  We will never forget all the wonderful memories you've left for us.

Finally 21!!!

(Readers beware-long post ahead)

So, yesterday was the big day!  It was my 21st birthday!!  I was really hoping that Nate would take the day off, even though he had told me before that he was going to be working.  But on Thursday night, he broke the bad news to me and I wasn't very happy.  I was really sad because I really wanted to go and play all day since I'm stuck in our apartment every other day.  

So Friday morning came and he was supposed to go and install an alarm at like 9 am.  (Luckily, they cancelled, but he didn't tell me that, so he used that time to go and get my presents.)  Before he left, he dragged me out of bed into the family room.  Let's backtrack real quick a week or so.  Nate decided to do the "21 Days Until My Birthday".  He left a present somewhere around the house for me to find everyday.  I thought it was so much fun that he would do something so creative!  It was a blast finding little things all around the house!  He stopped like a week ago and I was all sorts of confused.  But yesterday morning when he brought me into the family room, I saw that he had laid out on the floor all the gifts that he hadn't given me yet.  He told me to get ready while he was gone because he had another surprise for me.  

So I hurried and got ready.  When he got home he made me lunch while I finished getting ready.  When I walked out to the family room so that we could leave, I found another surprise in there!

He put a bow on Memphis since he was 

technically one of my birthday gifts...

My cute birthday cake!

We were in a hurry to leave for the next surprise since he had to work that afternoon.  So we saved the presents for later and hurried out the door.  In the car, he told me that he had been planning on taking me to see the Memphis Fire Museum.  I had seen a Fire Museum a couple of weeks before and had wanted to go there.  (For those of you who don't know, my daddy is a retired Fireman and EMT)  It ended up being a different museum than the one we had seen, but it was really neat!  

They had a huge collection of patches from all over the 

country and look what we found!  They also had a Park City one.

The first building had a toy fire engine collection with thousands of little fire trucks!  They all belonged to one man, whose name I don't remember now.  

These are just a few. There were tons more! He had a lot of big ones too.

There were a few antique trucks on display there-they were so neat!  I know my dad would have loved this museum!

Following in my daddy's footsteps...

Check out the name on these!

This one is too small to see, but this badge and keys belonged to Henry L. Brenner.  (For those of you who don't see the irony here, my little brothers name is Brenner.)

So, they had a fire simulation room.  It was like a really cheap version of Back Draft.  We went in with a group of school kids that looked like they were maybe in 1st or 2nd grade.  I felt like such a baby.  They were all oohing and ahhing, and I was just praying that the room didn't really catch on fire, lol.  I am SUCH a wimp when it comes to fire!

We found this gorgeous fountain while we were walking 

around town after we were done at the museum.

Nate found this statue and we decided that it belonged to 

us since we are going to be very prosperous in this life :-P

Then we went back home and opened presents!!

The first one was a squeaky toy for Memphis!

This bottom one was a new kennel for him!  He hasn't been sleeping at nights in the carrier we bought him so we were hoping that by getting him a larger kennel that we could put his bed in, we could get him to sleep better.

After that, Nate had to go do a couple of service calls and then we were gonna have the rest of the night to ourselves!  He begged me to come with him so I didn't have to sit home alone.  So of course, I had to document it with a couple of pictures of him hard at work!

On our way back we finally snagged some pics at the stateline!

But the day was still young!  It's pretty much the law that you have to hit the casinos on your 21st birthday.  So that's exactly what we did!  We headed down to Tunica which is about 30-45 minutes away from our place.  

We stopped at Chic-Fil-A and grabbed some yummy milkshakes on the way down.  (Their new peach ones are AMAZING in case you were wondering!  Nate loved the strawberry one he got too.)  Anyways, they put cherries on top and I totally tied my stem in a knot with my mouth for the first time!  I guess turning 21 turns you into an amazing kisser!

I was not really into the whole gambling thing.  I played a couple of bucks in the slots, but didn't really get into it.  We spent most of our time walking around and just exploring the casinos.  It was pretty hilarious how bad all the guards sucked at math.  When they would look at my ID they would sit there forever trying to figure out how old I was.  I told the one guy that today was my 21st birthday (this was at like 11:30pm) and pulled out his phone and looked at the time and was like "well it looks like you have about 3o minutes until you can go in".  I just rolled my eyes and said, "Um no, TODAY is my 21st birthday.  The 5th, not the 6th."  He was like, "Oh ya, I guess you're right."  I wanted to say, well no duh I'm right, I think I know when my own birthday is.  But I just laughed and walked in.

This was the first casino I ever gambled in!

  

Here's a pic of my first time at the slots!

We ate dinner at a fancy little restaurant in the casino called The Atrium Cafe.  My traditional birthday dinner is chicken cordon bleu and mashed potatoes.  I was sad that I wasn't going to be home to have my mom make it for me :-P  LOL  But guess what the special of the night was at the restaurant?!  Chicken cordon bleu!!  Unfortunately it came with pasta and they couldn't substitute potatoes, but it was still really good.  The waiter even gave me a free slice of cheesecake since it was my birthday!  Can anyone guess what my favorite dessert is?  Yup, cheesecake!  I didn't even tell him that, he just brought it out!  I was really happy!!

So, that was how I spent my 21st birthday!  It was such an amazing day and I only have my husband to thank for that!  I love him with all my heart.  He never ceases to amaze me!  He is definitely Mr. Romantic.  Thanks for making it such a special day Honey!  I love you!!