Mini Memphis Trip

So Darin and I took our first family vacation as a married couple (outside of our honeymoon of course - and not counting the few education conferences we've been to). He was asked a few months ago if he would do a 8-3 math workshop for the West Memphis school district. With the money that they paid him, we decided it'd be neat for the kids and I to tag along and turn it into a mini-vacation. His workshop was on Wednesday, so we took off Tuesday morning and drove in.

As soon as we got there we got ourselves checked into the hotel room. Y'all - the room was AMAZING! My husband booked the room. We knew that taking Zoe with us (since she can't sleep on a bed without a rail), we'd have to take our air matress. And we also knew that a regular hotel room would definitely not accomodate that. So he tried to find one that had a "living room" attached. So this is what I see when I first walk in the door.


NO WAY - are you kidding me? A jacuzzi tub...with jets? Awesome!! A nice relaxing spot for when the kiddos are sleeping (don't let your mind go wandering...remember, we had two kids in the room!) Guess where I ended up when Zoe went to sleep? That's right! In the jacuzzi...Watching TV. Again, I say...AWESOME!

Look at this space! This is the living room part complete with a table, and chairs, a couch, a mini fridge, and of course your typical dresser with tv. You can see the amount of space it has b/c we had Zoe sleeping on the queen sized air matress behind the couch and there was still a few feet between her bed and ours.

And of course the bedroom part. Awesome, I tell you! He had the biggest grin on his face when he saw my reaction to the jacuzzi tub. What a sweetheart! So after checking in...we went to the CMOM (Children's museum of Memphis). And we did a little of this...

Personally loved the flying over Tokyo bit...gotta love those green screens.

So back at the hotel - this is what we dealt with for about an hour - we had a wound up kiddo.



Not that we advocate her jumping in her bed - but she discovered the fun of jumping on an air matress because it's so low to the ground. Mama had to let her two year old be a two year old for a few minutes and not worry about her falling and busting her head open.

And after the long but fun day...and just following a whole lot of jumping up and down on the air matress, we finally saw this!

Wednesday was Darin's conference, so the kids and I just took the day to rest up. She was exhausted from the busy day before, so we just hung out at the hotel until Darin came to pick us up for lunch. Can you guess where we went?

And of course after lunch came naptime for Zoe. So basically, until about 2:30, we just vegged. The botanical gardens were our stop for the afternoon - and it was a free entrance day! Yay! Free's always good. So there, we did a little bit of this...

And on Thursday, our final day in Memphis, we went to the Memphis Zoo. Fantastic zoo, and a hundred times better than the LR zoo.

That's one flexible elephant! :-)







Yeah - so I don't think I want to make this guy mad! Look at those teeth!!

This guy either!

Look closely - on the end of the stick you see a bright yellow blob. That's a bird eating some bird food on the stick.

Umm - so that's me apparently practicing a roar. Who knows?

Great trip - just three days, but a perfect length of time for a 2 year old and 3 month old. Zoe was totally exhausted by the end of it, but despite that, we only had a couple of meltdowns over the course of the three days. One was a mistake on our part. Never take a two year old on a vacation and forget one day to give her a snack becuase you're caught up in the hustle and bustle of checking into a hotel and going to a museum. NOT a good combination. Now back to the reality of living the normal life. It sure was good to get away from that for a while!