Downtown Museum Day

Yesterday was Downtown Museum Day, which meant several of the museums in Memphis offered free or discounted admission. I don't know why we haven't done this in the past, but I decided we definitely needed to take advantage this time since it was our last opportunity! We're poor so we only did a couple of the completely free ones, but if I had it to do over again, I would go every year and pick one paid one to do each time along with some free ones. Oh well, hindsight ... take note all you first years :)

There was actually one museum I REALLY wanted to hit - the Railroad and Trolley Museum. Madison is completely in love with the trolleys here and has gotten very into trains lately (hint hint for any grandparents thinking about Christmas!) I knew she would love this museum! It wasn't very big, which was good for my girls, and was a lot more train focused than trolley focused, but she loved all of it! They had several large train table displays set up and a big picture of the trolley. There were a couple interactive stations where you could make the signals flash and learn morse code. And of course, they had a kids train table that the girls loved!!!! There was even a model train big enough for the girls to sit on! I really wanted to get a little trolley for our Christmas ornament collection, but the only one in the gift shop said San Francisco. Lame! Hopefully we can find one in some of the other touristy shops downtown before we leave.

After the railroad museum, we met some friends at the park by the river for a picnic lunch. It was seriously a beautiful day and actually felt a little bit like fall is coming! The girls had a fantastic time running around on the grass, playing soccer and wrestling with each other :)

We then decided to head to Sun Studios, which is where Elvis, Johnny Cash and other music greats often recorded. We're not really into that kind of music, but we figure years from now when people ask us about living in Memphis, we should probably be able to say we went to Sun Studios. And what better way to do it than for free :) This ended up being kind of a fortunately/unfortunately situation (we just checked out a book from the library with that title ;) ) Turns out Sun Studios doesn't allow kids under 5 to take tours. Bummer. But they actually do something really cool to make up for it - parents can get free tours anytime!! You just have to split up. So basically we can go back whenever we want and each take a tour, while the other waits in the Sun Studios Cafe with the children, eating free drinks and snacks, by the way. Sweet, right?! Not gonna lie - this is the first time I can ever remember where having kids has actually gotten us something good from somewhere instead of just costing us more money or garnering us more hassle and dirty looks :) So we'll be going back for sure.

Since that was a bust, we headed to the Cotton Museum instead. Evidently, Memphis used to be the hub of all cotton trading in the U.S. and the location of the cotton exchange, kind of like the stock exchange in NYC. The museum was interesting, and they had a fun room with some pretty cool kids exhibits where we actually learned a lot about cotton. For instance, a single bale of cotton generally weighs about 500 pounds and can make over 3000 diapers or 2700 tshirts or almost 2000 pairs of jeans. Around 85 bales can fit in a standard shipping container. So basically, we may need to start growing cotton soon if we have any more babies!

By that point, McKinley was done! In fact, I didn't get any pictures of the Cotton Museum because McKinley was asleep in my arms the whole time! So we headed home. But we had a great family day together, and I'm so glad we were able to do a few Memphis things as we get closer to leaving!

The Railroad and Trolley Museum

Learning Morse Code

I was trying to take a picture of Madison and this random little girl really wanted to be in it too. I politely took like 6 pictures with the two of them until her Mom was able to persuade her to get out of the shot!

Happy girl and her trolley

Honestly, the best picture I could get of both of them - they just spied one of the train tables!

Um, excuse me ... did you just take my train?

Ringing the bell

This cute girl loves to kneel! She worked very hard to learn how so she can kneel with us at prayer time and now does it all the time!

Playing soccer with Dad

Checking out the river traffic

Hey McKinley, forget the raisin box! There's a big beautiful river behind you!

LOVE these girls!!

So they've started wrestling with each other. McKinley holds her own pretty well, but in the end, always ends up getting pinned. Sometimes Madison just walks up to her and plops down on top of her! Thankfully, McKinley thinks this is hilarious! I just have to watch her closely and tell Madison to get up when she starts getting frustrated. Jordan takes responsibility for that - he's sometimes not the best at letting the girls up when they want him to during tickle fights!

Seriously, it can't get much cuter than this!

This was our best family shot - it was windy down there!!

I like this one because it has the M bridge in the background :)