Memphis, chapter 2

Imagine Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, or Jerry Lee Lewis walking through this door.

Jerry Lee Lewis' guitar player is still making music. We saw his Lincoln Town Car parked outside a nearby studio.

 National Civil Rights museum

Memphis, chapter 1

A few scenes from our Spring Break trip . . .

Crossing the mighty Mississippi

First stop--Soul Food in the wrong part of town

Purchased by The King at the age of 21

Snapped this for decorating inspiration--it's my color scheme!

Stax was much more influential than I realized

Their humble and rather antiquated recording equipment

A little description of Stax

Their wall of soul

Homage to the Deuce

 And the award for Best Frog Face goes to . . . .



This one!

 Pop has already asked, "Where do I vote?!?"

Kindergarten is a magical year.  Kids learn to read, to coexist with wacky people, to love learning, to be away from Mama, and to celebrate the genius of Dr. Seuss.

Special shout out to the most amazing Kinder teacher ever -- Ann Fisher!!!!  (Seriously, look at how she's holding his hand.  She's a God-send!  He's already asked if he can repeat Kinder in her class.)

Geocaching

The Webelos had a productive afternoon of geocaching.  Most of the boxes were large, but they did manage to find a micro cache, too.  It was about the size of a spam can. 

The boxes mostly contained cheesey Happy Meal toys, but the kids got to sign the geocache logs.  One cache had been hidden since 2009.

The first one -- "Dingo Cache"

Connor and Bruce located this one.  (GPS in hand)

Armadillo carcass

Soaking after the 3-hour adventure

Mock Surgery Day at Brackenridge

Camden and I had a great time at Brackenridge Hospital today.  What was supposed to take about 2 hours stretched into almost 3.  He was incredibly focused the whole time.  One nurse commented that he had a "great bedside manner."  He spent the most time with the plastic surgeons.  Hmmmmmmm

Learning to give a shot

Human skin is much like a banana.  Great practice for suturing!

Performing an appendectomy

Practicing CPR

Waiting to intubate Plastic George

Performing an intubation

A little spinal surgery

Getting the skinny on plastic surgery

Today's the day I spatchcocked a chicken

Circle.
Snap.

Connor awarded me with the family trophy this week so I'm feeling confident, inspired, or maybe I just have ALOT of time on my hands and I tend to play in the kitchen when that happens.

But back to the bird -- I've done this before, but I called it butterflying.  Something about the term "spatchcock" makes it new and exciting!

It's lovely.  Especially the spine!  I think I'll freeze it until I get a few other chicken pieces and make a fabulous stock.

For the bird, I stuffed it with ricotta, herbs, lemon zest, salt and pepper.  

It's roasting to perfection right NOW!  

OMG -- isn't that the most beautiful, crunchtastic skin ever?!?!

I plan to serve it with fingerlings roasted in duck fat.  

I need to go hug myself.

Grateful

Twenty young children won't be coming home from school today.  My mind can't grasp the enormity of this horrific act.  About 2:00 this afternoon, I had to walk away from the computer and turn off the TV so I could compose myself before pick-up.

I arrived to see this -- our principal and assistant principal dressed in holiday costumes, delighted kids, lots of smiles.

Certainly a strange juxtaposition.

Also a reminder to be grateful.  We have today.  We have each other.