Memphis Vacation

Needless to say, we were surprisingly overwhelmed by the amount of comments we had on our Referral Video. I knew I had blog stalkers, but man....lol! Seriously though, we are so excited to have others excited as well. We got our call on Monday afternoon, rushed to the doctor's office to have him look at the medical information, then had money overnighted, packed and drove to St. Louis, all in about 15 hours. We had a vacation to Memphis, Tennessee already planned and just stopped by our agency to sign our papers in person.
On the adoption front, we officially accepted the referral of "Marley." Our next step is to wait for a court date. She is not yet at our agency transition home and we are hoping she'll be there soon. We know that she will be taken well care of. The Ethiopian courts are closing in a few weeks and will reopen in October. We will most likely have a court date in October. After we pass court, they will schedule a visa appointment and we will travel for that and bring her home. As for when that is, well that will be a mystery for now. We are anticipating late October or early November. We are just so elated to know who she is.
On to our vacation. Miles has really been wanting to see dinosaurs, so we went to the Pink Palace Museum. He had a blast with the robotic dinosaurs and fossils.
When in Memphis, we had to visit Graceland. We don't consider ourselves huge Elvis fans, but how could we pass up an opportunity to experience it? Surprisingly, it was pretty interesting. Expensive, but interesting. I tell you what, Lisa Marie is making a killing! It's cheaper to park at Six Flags...lol! Anyways, it was neat to get to see his mansion. I never knew he was such a giving person. We learned that he pretty much gave at least $1,000 to anyone who asked him for money or help. I admire that.
Then we had to visit the Lorraine Motel. We haven't started teaching Miles about Martin Luther King, or much history yet. We did want to visit the famous spot where he was shot. Neither me nor Brandon had ever been here and it is a very emotional and important part of our history. I get very emotional about racial issues and just don't see how much hate some people could feel for another race. I choked up just walking up to the spot. The Civil Rights Museum is attached to the Lorraine Motel and is pretty amazing. We walked up and got to see the actual room and then went across the street to see where his sniper was hiding out. I'm really glad we got to go there.
And totally random. We were at the base recreation center using the free Wifi and I looked over and saw this!

So funny! I'm not sure what this machine thing is? I took the picture on a military base so you never know...haha!