The Goodrums

We had a seriously good time hanging out this weekend in Memphis with my family. We had so much fun that my youngest sister, Teri, might even use her trademark phrase, "Shut Up!!," to describe it. (*Disclaimer: I don’t know the exact usage rules for the phrase, "Shut Up!!" but I do know that if you give her a gift or do something she really likes she will use it. Hope it works in this context too…)

My family was in Memphis to visit Teri's boyfriend, Wes, who spent his summer there working at an inner city mission organization. Wes is an awesome guy and we were so glad to get the chance to meet him. Wes’ birthday was last week so the whole family trekked out to Memphis to help him celebrate.

We started our day in Memphis on Saturday with a tour of Binghampton, the area where Wes’ mission and outreach group does most of their work. It was really cool to hear their vision and see where their outreach and ministry has created glimmers of hope in a mostly dark area. After our tour, we began an afternoon of playing hard – in 100+ degree heat at that.

First up was a fueling stop at P.F. Changs (one of my favorites). Then we headed to downtown Memphis and toured Beale street, visited the Rock & Soul Hall of fame (ok, we didn’t end up going through it because the tour guy had like absolutely no personality), rested at Peabody Place, took a trolley ride past the Pyramid and Mud Island, watched the ducks at the Peabody, ate dinner at Rendezvous (a yummy BBQ place) and walked along the Mississippi River. We took a ton of really random pictures (coming soon!).

We stayed that evening at the Embassy Suites – complete with a picture tour of Peru and the online purchase of ‘off da hook’ Slang Flashcards. These things are hilarious folks! Michael and Wes spent half the evening cracking up over them. They explain street speak using suburban, middle age white people illustrations and suburban, middle age white people contexts. So funny!

For example, to explain “crib” – the picture on the flashcard is of a group of white suburbanite tourists standing in front of a castle, pointing to the next castle, and a girl saying to her friends, “How much cheddar do you think it takes to heat a crib like that?”

My absolute favorite flashcard was for the word “cold.” It was a picture of a bunch of white business types in a boardroom with a bunch of charts and graphs. They were pointing at a bar on a graph and the quote said, “This bar represents the day we cold dissed the shareholders.” Ha ha ha ha…

By the time the night was over, we ended up purchasing two sets of flashcards. They are somewhere in transit right now – and will be showing up to Helm Court in the very near future.

Sunday morning we slept in, spent a little more time hanging out and then piled back in the cars and scattered our respective directions toward home. I don’t think anyone wanted to leave – but all good times must come to an end. Until next time anyway… :)