My Birthday!

Chris surprised me with a nice get-away for my birthday. He left me a sweet note on the counter around lunch time the day before my birthday that said, "Open Immediately!" Then inside it detailed a list of things for me to pack and said that my ride would be here in 3 hours.  He had arranged things with my friend, Audra, to watch our kids for 2 nights and had the kids all packed and everything. We dropped them off around 3:00 and he started driving north. After a while he told me where we were going: Memphis. He had hotel reservations at a place in downtown within a mile of Beale Street (the famous street that never sleeps where rock n' roll originated... or something like that). 

We got in with just enough time to set our things in the room and walk to Beale Street to grab dinner. We ate at one of the yummy restaurants with live music and were like 10 feet from the stage. It was loud and fun but we were tired and called it a night after dessert and walked back to the hotel and fell asleep after watching a show on Netflix on Chris' laptop.

We still had a heat advisory in place and it was uncomfortably hot even in the early morning so we didn't do any of the walking/exploring on the nearby mud island. Instead we slept in, got breakfast at the hotel and read some books before heading out to do a temple session together. We were too late to make it to the 10:00 session, so we went to IKEA and then came back for the 12:30 session. After that we grabbed lunch at a place en route to our hotel and took a nap. Then we woke up around 6:00pm and decided to walk to Beale Street again for a birthday dinner. We were too tired to stay out late or go see a movie so we just came back to the room and fell asleep. The next morning we shopped at Target for a bit then headed home, picking up the kids sometime in the early afternoon. It was SO NICE to get away for a little bit. We've had such a busy, work/project-centric summer that we needed to just hit pause and rest for a day or two. It was a great birthday present and I'm impressed and grateful that Chris would think to set it up for me. Big thanks to Audra for taking the kids!! (No surprise that the kids were super whiny about all the stuff they didn't like about the past 2 nights...especially about being made to play outside for periods of time... haha. Who is raising these hooligans!?)