Frequent Diners Card

As most people know - we live in Bumble and so when we want good food we pretty much have to drive into Nashville which is a minimum of 25 minutes or so driving time. When we want "I really dont' want to cook tonight and my children are hungry" food we have to settle for the fare in Smyrna which is limited to several not very good chains, a scary pizza joint, and even scarier Mexican restaurant and a Japanese steak house. We usually end up at the Japanese Steak House.

Yesterday I came to the conclusion that we might eat there a little too often. Quinn, Greyson and I were upstairs playing and I asked if they wanted to play restaurant. Yes they cried so Quinn and I became the diners and Greyson was going to be the chef. He brought us menus but then informed us what we were going to have - steak. Then he said that we would be right back and went into Quinn's room to put on his imaginary big white hat. Then he went over to their little play stove/oven. I assumed that he was going to 'cook' our dinner there and bring it to us but no. He started pushing it to the table and informed me that it was his cart and then proceeded to get out his pots and pans and bang them together and throw all the food up in the air and try to catch it on his spatula. Thankfully we still have all of our eyes and no one was seriously injured. Then he had to go and turn all the lights out so he could make 'fire.' After he was done he proceeded to wipe our table down and push his cart away.

Perhaps we need to find some new restaurants around here....

The Erim Hilton

The guest room was filled again this past weekend. This time our crazy friend Keith decided that it would be a good idea to get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning and run a half marathon. While I think that this is completely nuts it did make Keith and Susanna drive up to Nashville from Atlanta and stay for the weekend so Keith could run the Music City Marathon so I can't really complain. We enjoyed a very relaxing weekend of catching up and enjoying the first really warm weekend of the season. Greyson impressed Kinley with his driving ability by driving her all around the neighborhood in his red Mustang. It was hysterical to see him drive up to the curve where she was waiting and have her hop in and watch the two of them take off. It was sort of reminiscent of a 50's movie - bad boy, cool car, young girl running away together. Then Quinn got to have her first 'sleep over' with Kinley which I think they both thoroughly enjoyed though perhaps not as much as Keith and Susanna getting the guest room to themselves.
Now if this isn't an ad for a Power Wheels I don't know what is

Future best friends...

Stem Cell Advances and Other Toddler Topics

We are having a bit of trouble around here with going potty. Now Quinn is doing great with her potty training and I think is almost there. Our problem is how we go potty. You see Quinn and Greyson always have to do what the other is doing. So when one decides to go to the bathroom the other feels the need as well. (Try fitting yourself and two little ones in a stall - not fun). So inevitably Quinn sees Greyson going to the bathroom and now has started to make a speical request - "Mommy I want to pee standing up." Trying to explain the physics of why this would be a total disaster didn't seem to work as well as I had hoped. So I streamlined things a little. "You can only pee standing up if you have a willy. Boys have willys and girls don't." This lead to the following conversation last night while on the potty.

"Mommy, if I grow a willy can I pee standing up?"
"Yes, I suppose if you grow a willy you can then pee standing up."
"OK, then I am going to grow one." (thoughtful pause) "Mommy, how do you grow a willy?"

Hmmm - that was a good question. I thought about telling her about DNA and stem cells and beginning her fascinating journey into micro-biology and anatomy but it was almost bedtime so I opted for this:

"I don't know because I never grew one for myself."
"Oh.....Greyson how did you grow your willy?"
"I don't know."
"Greyson, will you share your willy with me?"
"No"
(Crying and screaming) - "Mommy, Greyson won't share!!!"

There are many topics I figured I was going to have to discuss with my children - sharing private areas was never among them. Who knew peeing standing up was so much fun - I guess we ladies are really missing out.

Why I LOVE Greyson's School

OK - so I am no preschool expert, seeing as how with the exception of the preschool I went to when I was 3, I have only been exposed to Greyson's school. Despite that fact I think I can tell when a school rocks and I am pretty sure that Greyson's school rocks. This week is National "Week of the Young Child" and Greyson's school has a special event every day. Yesterday's event was the best. The school brought in the Vanderbilt marching band including the flag girls. The kids all made their own instruments - paper plate tamborines, paper towel kazoos etc. and kids and marching band all went outside on a beautiful spring day and marched through the Peabody campus (Vanderbilt's education school). Many of the teachers and students at Peabody came out of their classes and cheered the kids along. I was invited to come along for the event and bring Quinn and had a great time. It was hysterical to watch and listen to a marching band backed up by sixty some preschoolers banging away on their instruments completely out of tune. Greyson, of course, as he has to relate everything to sports kept telling everyone that that was the band from the football games. I just can't imagine many other preschools that have the ability to do things like this. We love Susan Gray!!

Friends, Dogs and Lots of Loud Cars....

Raif is considering a 'side project' with a Classic Mustang car shop in St. Louis. The owners of the company were down in Birmingham for the 45th anniversary celebration of the Mustang so we decided to go on a family road trip so Raif could meet them and talk a little business. I was THRILLED because as everyone knows there is nothing that I love more than a muscle car show :). The bonus of the trip was that we got to see our friends Ashley and John who live in Birmingham and were generous enough to put up the whole entire Erim clan (dogs included) for the weekend. I frankly don't know what part of the trip my kids loved more - Ashley and John's dogs or the actual car show itself. From the time they got up in the morning all the kids wanted to know was "Where are Duncan and Arthur (pronounced Ar-fur)?" They chased them around the house and loved on them and petted them and drove them insane. The day at the car show provided hours of entertainment crawling in and out of cars and 'driving' them all over the place. They even got to see a several Mustangs race around Birmingham's new IRL track. All in all it was a great weekend even though I was at a car show. Thanks to John and Ashley for their tremendous hospitality.

Hmmmm....

I saw this sign on a restroom stall door in a gas station in the middle of nowhere Alabama. Do they really need this sign - I thought this was sort of understood.....

The Project

Last year I had my first foray into vegetable/herb gardening. I got a couple of terra cotta pots and planted a few herbs and some tomatoes. I actually enjoyed it and we saved so much money (one package of basil cost as much as my basil plant which gave me more basil than I could ever have imagined) and the herbs tasted so much better right off the plant. Because of this I decided to go big and bold this year. With A LOT of supervision and a little (OK maybe slightly more than a little) help from my husband I made a vegetable garden in the backyard. We rented a tiller from Home Depot and I tilled the dirt, made a border for the garden including sawing it into place and pounding in the ribar. Here it is....

Next week the kids and I are going to start planting our vegetables. They seem really excited though that may be more that they get to play in dirt than anything else. I will keep you posted on how it goes.