My reaction to my first Memphis in May: eh.

That’s the best, and nicest, way I can put it. I’m not sure what else goes on besides the two events that Meri, Aaron and I participated in went to. We went downtown to see the BBQ festival and two weeks later we went to the Sunset Symphony.

We were pretty excited to go to all of the offerings of the “international” even. When we got to the there, we wondered what all the excitement was about. The BBQ fest was especially crappy, from our perspective anyway. We found a babysitter ($25), bought our tickets online ($6 each), drove downtown ($gas), found someplace to park ($10), walked the entire BBQ area ($sweat) for 40 minutes, got a fresh sqeezed lemonade ($6) then looked at each other and said “um, now what?!”. So then we left and went to Bealle street to get Meri’s dad another t-shirt ($20) from the BB King store and then ate at Ponchos ($25). All in all, the best part of that was going to Ponchos and sitting in the air conditioning. I’ve been told that the only good reason to go is if you know someone down there and can get into one of the booths. Well that sucks a big one!

The Sunset Symphony was actually kind of cool, with one exception: the music. We got there at 2pm, expecting to spend an hour or so there since it was so hot. We packed a big cooler with drinks and food and stuff for Aaron. We went out there and found a place to sit and sat and played. Aaron was the life of the area, literally running circles around us; pushing his umbrella stroller around; walking away from us, turning around and telling us “bye bye” while waving his hand; playing with some other kids and attempting to hijack their hula hoop. Some people actually came up to us and told us that we have the cutest little boy. I tend to agree, Aaron’s the bestest kid ever! But anyway, back to the music. One thing that I did not realize was that the Memphis Symphony didn’t actually start playing till 6 or 7pm (I forget exactly). But up until they started playing, the event had a different name: Praise in the Park. That’s right, it was a whole lot of praise and worship music for a very long time. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with praise music, but the groups they had up there weren’t exactly “singing” as much as they were screaming! It was pretty fun though. Aaron got to get out and romp around and we all had a little picnic. I would do that again except next year, we’ll go later so that we can actually hear the Memphis Symphony.