Nashville Bootie Time.

Have I kept you hanging? She promised a post on Nashville. Where is it? It’s coming. Apparently people here need food because they’re huuuuuungry and shirts ironed to wear to woooooork…the cheek if it all! Ok, I better stop before I’m fired!

What can I say? Nashville was fun. We flew there and stayed in a huge resort/convention centre called the Opry Gaylord. (Yes you can snicker just a little). The resort has a covered in dome with this artificial city, lake and shopping town built into it. It’s huge glass dome ceiling gets alot of natural light and then they make this artificial climate so that it’s warm, but comfortable, even with it’s own artificial breeze blowing through. There is a lake that you can take a boat ride around in with cascading waterfalls.
The town itself is this mixture of neon lighted signs, old buildings with the faded painted signs, newer buildings mixed in, one which is called the batman building as it really does look like the outline of a batman helmet and another that looks like the outline of R2D2, which the boys found amusing. There are music shops, eateries and pubs galore, museums and live music entertainment and buskers. There is also this walking bridge over to the football stadium. The boys cackle and giggle with laughter as I try to run up it in an attempt to burn off some of the southern breakfast i’d enjoyed.
I take the boys to an old style 1920’s original icecream parlor. I can tell it’s an original because by todays standards the booths are tiny. Later on the waitress tells us that sadly, the booths were going to be replaced due to accessibility issues. We have old fashioned icecream sundaes and it is a well needed morning break as Hamish has just finished meltdown no.1 and I know Fletch wants to look in an old printing press shop for posters. So this way everyone is occupied and happy.

There are lots of cowboy and cowgirl boots shops here and they are cheap. Can you see the sign in the photo below that says buy one pair get 2 for free? Yes, that’s right. Beautiful leather boots with coloured embroidery and intricate stitching. I try them on. They do make my legs look slim (also thanks to the exercising blitz before holiday). But still, I have no where to wear these when I get back to conservative, careful, vanilla-plain-serve Canberra town. Actually I nearly broke with my sensibilities and bought a pair. They were exquisite, but then I looked at the price tag $789 – and that was on sale with $100 off.

But that’s not to say we did not get boots. The boys chose 3 pairs. One for Dylan and Hamish, and a next size up for when Hamish grows out of his. Kids boots are really fun, with all sorts of patterns and colors. We see a pair with pistols embroidered on the front which Hamish called Woody boots. There were also some spiderman ones that he quite liked.

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Since coming home Hamish has put his red lairy boots on every day. He comes down dressed for school in orange floral boardshorts and the red boots. A clash of color would be an understatement. But he LOVES them. I make him take them off as I don’t think they’ll be appropriate for running around on a playground at school. Dylan asks when they can wear them. I tell him when it’s Winter or Autumn with jeans. He looks a little forlorn. Will he be able to wait that long?

Today brings no words, and no cowboy boots, unless you are a little cowboy in Nashville and it’s standard issue to wear your boots to school.

Looordy, the food’s good y’all.

Sorry, but there’s no calorie counting going on here y’all. There are things that I really want to try while we’re here in the south. So far I can tick off fried green tomatoes and okra, a proper macaroni cheese, and pulled pork. I’ve sipped out of jam jars and tomorrow we plan on finding a proper southern breakfast fryup. My aim is to tick off grits and a breakfast casserole.

Today in Memphis I tried a toasted sandwich with peanut butter and banana. I am not sure if it had extra sugar and salt in it, but you could certainly taste them both. Hamish, who eats a banana every morning when he first gets up, takes a bite and gives me a look that says “I can’t believe you ruined a perfectly good banana.” Perhaps if it had bacon on it, it would have been received better by both kids.

I want to tell y’all about Graceland and share pics. (How many times can I fit y’all into this post). They’re a’coming. Y’all be patient. I need to get the pics off the camera. Sorry. I’ll stop saying y’all now. But they really do talk like that.

Today brings no words, just a sandwich fit for a king. Thank you, thank you very much.

Pretty Little Bubbles.

Hamish is going through a bubble phase at the moment. I figure if it gets him outside he can have as much bubble mix as he wants.

But he holds onto the bubble mix in one hand then tries to swat the floating bubbles at the same time so the solution goes everywhere, making an awful slippery back deck mess.

And then I found a bubble bucket. Unspillable the label on it says! Great. Get it home, fill it up. How long do you think it takes the unspillable bucket of bubbles to spill?

In his defense, I think he kicked it over while bubble swatting.

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Today brings no words, just some great bubbly fun.

Elvis Gangnam Style

Tomorrow we are off to Nashville, Tennessee. Now when you say it, you have to use the native tongue “nahh-shvi-hillle, ten-e-sseeeee” and get a bit nasally up in there. I am not really a Country and Western fan, but how could we come here and not get a bit of a feel for the whole music scene. At the local camping shop here called “Bass pro” they are always playing songs with lyrics about tractors and deers and country things. There’s only so much that I can take of this music and it usually makes we want to bolt for the door.

We are going to drive to Graceland, and my goal is to get a pic of us all doing an elvis pose on the lawn. I’ll have to show the boys some pictures of elvis tonight so they know how to do an Elvis move, otherwise they can just “gangnam style” and I guess it may not look too out of place. I would also like to try one of Elvis’ banana bacon and peanut butter sandwiches, but I don’t think they fit into the Michelle Bridges nutrition plan, so maybe just a bite or two.

While we are away we are getting the outside of our house sprayed to get rid of mosquitos. They use a pyrethum spray which is safe for the kids and I am happy about this because as you know there is a really long summer break coming up over here and it would be torture for them (and me), to not be able to play outside. Last year the mozzies would swarm around us in clouds and it was awful. Why not invest in a bug zapper? I would if I was allowed. They have home owner associations over here that dictate what you can and can’t have and do to your property. Bug zappers are one of those things that are banned, apparently too noisy. I find it ironic that you can own a gun for any rare intruder situations that may or may not ever happen, but lets not have a bug zapper that eradicates everyday virus carrying pests – nooooo.

Back to the tale – Perhaps we’ll see Nicole and Keith. We can sit on their front porch in our rocking chairs and drinking Mint Juleps from our jam jar cups. These are all the rage at the moment and I am determined to come home with a set!

Today brings no words, and some coming challenges about sticking to any kind of healthy diet when there’s southern comfort food on the menu!

A Jar of Black Gold.

I am into day two of my health kick and on the menu for breakfast is a boiled egg with Vegemite toast fingers. As I am spreading the Vegemite I notice we are down to the last smattering. What to do. I had raised it with Fletch to get some next time he was at the embassy but on his list of work things to do, sourcing Vegemite comes as a pretty low priority. He doesn’t eat it and whenever he spreads it on the kids toast he screws his nose up in disgust, like he is being forced to eat it himself.

It makes me proud when Dylan asks for his Vegemite sandwich to take to school. “Good little Aussie,” I think to myself. And today while looking around the international section of the gourmet supermarket that I’ve shown you before, I find a small jar of the stuff. Right next to Marmite. It doesn’t have a price label on the shelf but the Marmite which is the same size is only $4 so I am sure it’s only going to be the same.

As I reach the checkout I run into an Aussie friend whose husband works with mine. Look! I found Vegemite I excitedly tell her. She asks me how much, and I tell her I don’t know as there’s no price tag. We go on our way, I pay for the groceries and go home.

I think to myself wow that was not a cheap shop, I did buy some meat in bulk so I knew where some of the cost was, I go to check to the receipt and I think to myself I wonder how much the Vegemite was. This is what I see:

$7.99 !!!! No wonder there was no price tag on the shelf! Unbelievable. I quickly send my friend a text telling her the price. I would hate for her to have gone to the shelf to get one only to be ambushed like I had.

Today brings no words just complete disbelief that I was suckered into paying $7.99 for a tiny jar of Vegemite.