Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Memphis work and play

William has to work in Memphis this week so we tagged along.
He's working hard, and we are playing hard.

Today I learned that bringing blocks on a trip to play with in the hotel room is a traveling must.



Monday, July 29, 2013

Pancake Joe

 Joe is a seminarian for the Diocese of Nashville.  Last year he was send to our church for his summer assignment.  When he found out I was Celiac and therefore Gluten Free he offered to come over and make me biscuits and gravy. Gluten Free of course. It was an offer I couldn't refuse.

This summer Joe is in Franklin and found this great pancake restaurant with a Gluten Free menu. It's called The Pfunky Griddle.


It's basically like Korean BBQ, where you cook your own food at your table, except it's pancakes.
You can also order all kinds of fun toppings. We ordered bananas, strawberries, chocolate chips, butter fingers and reese's pieces. 
The reese's pieces were my favorite. Rosie liked the banana with chocolate chips pancakes the best.

After we'd all eaten more than we had room for we then decided to make one huge pancake with all our left over toppings. Joe called it a "cob salad of pancakes".

It was lovely...




until we tried to flip it over.  Then we had what Joe called "scrambled pancake".
All in all it was quit delicious and fun. The coffee was good too. Which is always a plus.  It was work to stay on top of the pancakes so they didn't over cook and it's a little hard to eat while you're cooking AND trying to make sure the kids eat. But such is the life of a mama.
The atmosphere was very cute and the staff was amazingly friendly. They even let us in even though I showed up 15 minutes before closing due to my mad skills at getting lost... yes even with a gps.

I'd probably go back again but I think it would be more fun in the winter when it's a little cooler to be sitting over a hot skillet at your table.  It's great for kids and adults alike, especially with all the fun candy bar toppings.  I would recommend it for a fun something different to try.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Fabulous Fourth

We had a fantastically fabulous Fourth.
An incredible Independence day, if you will.

First Nana played silly games with the kids...


Nana always makes the babies smile.
Then we had fire works!
We got some fountains because they are fun, nastalgic and sparkly and we got some that shoot up in the air because those are illegal where we grew up so they were extra fun to buy.
Obadiah ate a whole sandwich all by him self for the first time. He's growing up so fast!!
And best of all, Julie came to visit for the weekend!
We took Julie black berry picking because we'd been wanting to do it.
It sounded fun, and we are trying to embrace and enjoy everything we can about living in this area, and living in the country. And we took Julie because she's fancy and from New York and we wanted to do something "country" with her.
Blackberry picking was SO. MUCH. FUN.
I will now post way too many pictures of our black berry picking day because it was so much fun and because we all look so cute doing it.
Obi slept for the first half...
Rosie was great at picking berries. She kept inspecting our buckets to make sure we didn't get any with any red on them.
And the bushes were so beautiful.
Rosie shows me what a ripe black berry looks like and tells me not to pick any with ANY red on them.  I got in trouble for that a couple of times.



Obi woke up and did a good job helping test to see of the berries were ripe enough.
Berry inspector
very thoroughly inspecting
aren't they so adorable!
very serious berry pickers
Very Best Friends
Cutest boy in the world
Silly girls...

Rosie and her Fairy God Mother (Julie's official title as of this trip)
William tried desperately to get us all looking at the camera and smiling
We gave him such a hard time. I love the face Obi is making in this one.



Obi and his Fairy God Mother


Julie did a good job showing the kids the geese (because Mommy is afraid of them) and talking to the kids about the chickens.
After a wonderful day at the berry farm we took Julie to THE place in town to eat... Dairy Queen!

Rosie waits patiently for her ice cream.


And the most popular restaurant in town is a hit

Then it was time to go home and do something with the 4 gallons of black berries we had collected. After eating a bunch of them, we decided to make black berry jam.

Nana was asked to keep Obi busy while we worked with the hot jam and boiling water and hot jars.
This is how that turned out.

Nana ended up pulling Obi though the house in a box. He was the happiest kid and just laid there contently for a good hour. Nana got a good work out that night.
And that was our fabulous fourth weekend.



Thursday, July 25, 2013

Last Day of VBS


Oh the glorious last day of Vacation Bible School!
 Even the kids seemed a little slap happy and overly tired. To be sure the adults were all very exhausted. But that didn't stop us from having fun.

Friday was mustache day and you can't go wrong with mustache day.


Unless of course your mama makes you wear one for a picture. Poor little adorable tortured Obi.


Mustaches obviously need to be groomed, we all went to the cowboy barber.

Each of the kids got shaved and then they had a lot of fun shaving Miss Katie (Who was responsible for all the fun crafts and actives all week). 


Even Obi got a shave. He took it very seriously. 


Did I mention the adult leaders were a little slap happy and goofy this day?


Friday was also water day. The kids got to play in a little kiddie pool.  It was so adorable how much they were looking forward to it all morning and then how much they enjoyed it.


The sand boxes were also a big hit.


And of course Obi found a few hats to wear and show off to us. He sure does love hats. Little Cutie Monster.

So that's it. We all survived our first VBS and have some fun and happy memories from it.

Rosie came away with a pile of crafts and I learned a lot about Rosie and how well she does on a structured schedule.

I also came away with so much respect and in awe of my mom who made so many Vacation Bible Schools for us such wonderful experiences. I never realized how much work and energy she must have put into them and how exhausted she must have been.  Thank you mama for such a wonderful childhood and always making our summers so magical.