Thursday, November 30, 2006

Ducks

Saturday morning we decided to go see the ducks at Peabody Hotel. For those of you who don't know what this is, the Peabody hotel has 5 ducks that live in a duck mansion on the roof of the hotel in downtown Memphis. Every day at 11:00am the DuckMaster rides the elevator to the roof, herds the ducks into the elevator and brings them down to the lobby. When the elevator door opens the ducks walk down a red carpet from the elevator to the lobby fountain. They stay in the fountain, then for the entire day. At some point the DuckMaster brings them back up the same way (I assume).


Its a really cool thing for the kids to see because they're not roped off from the red carpet or the fountain. The fountain is shin-high for me, so it is a perfect height for the kids to stand at and watch the ducks swim. They can touch them (if the ducks allow), splash the water, and just sit and watch them from that close - they're not separated by anything.


Nora and I had seen the ducks on our trip out there in 2004. This was a perfect opportunity for our whole family to experience the magic of the ducks at Peabody Hotel:)


We arrived around 10:30 and the lobby was pretty busy, but there was plenty of room to move around and to find a spot next to where the red carpet was going to be rolled out. I asked BFWW and Dave to hold our spots while I took Nora and Ryann into the gift shop to find some souvenir ducks to remember our trip. Nora chose a duck that plays really annoying music for $12, Ryann chose a tiny (and I mean tiny) plastic duck for $2.50 (Yea Ryann!), I got a small duck with a G on it for Georgia and I bought a coffee mug for myself. $40 later we were on our way back to the red carpet. It was 10:50 and by that time we could barely walk through the lobby. We had to "excuse me" our way through the lobby to get to Dave and BFWW and then we had to fight our way back through some of the crowd to find better seats along the red carpet.


While we were waiting Nora and Ryann wanted to take pictures of their ducks walking along the red carpet:

Nora's Duck:

Ryann's duck (I know its hard to see it because its camoflauged so well, but if you look carefully I think you'll be able to make out the outline of a duck in there):

And finally after waiting for 10 long minutes while the DuckMaster told the history of the ducks, they came out of the elevator:

I think I was much more excited about the whole thing than the girls were. We watched them at the fountain for a little while and then went home (to BFWW's).

When we got home we started getting lunch together for the kids. We also noticed James and Joy walking by to dump their yard waste in the woods behind the house so Jer helped them and then invited them in for lunch. We made ourselves plates of leftovers and I had corn casserole, sweet potato crisp and applesauce souffle (I may or may not have had more than one helping of each). We put Georgia and Elise to bed and Dave, Jer and James took Nora and Ryann on a walk to the store to buy bread and to the park.

BFWW and Joy and I sat around and talked for a while and I may have had another helping of corn casserole - or maybe not.

After Joy left BFWW and I sat down on the couch to finish Grey's Anatomy. We got two minutes further than we had the day before and started talking again and never finished it.

After everyone came home it was time to get ready for the babysitter to come and to get ready to go out. BFWW had lined up a babysitter so that the four of us could hang out that night and do something fun. We were all about that:)

Savannah and Shelby arrived right at 4:45 and we gave them dinner and bedtime instructions which were met with "Yes Ma'am" over and over. Very polite, these southern teenagers... BFWW and I decided on the way to dinner that we liked that and perhaps I would be sending my girls to finishing school since Elise would naturally learn that stuff while living in the South. (my secret option, which I considered in my head, was to just leave the girls with BFWW and Jer and accidently change our phone numbers so they would be raised in the South).

The rest of the night deserves its own post, so be sure to tune in tomorrow for our experience on Beale Street and the night that Dave almost peed his pants laughing at me.

5 comments:

kkoois 11:37 AM  

you'll have to post another picture of ryann's duck. i couldn't see it at all. it must be that tricky camo its dressed in...

wasn't it great when the guys kept taking the kids for walks? i'm so happy my husband loves to take walks with kids...

Jen 2:08 PM  

Ah, the ducks. We love the ducks. Our newest goal is to be Junior Duck Master but I hear that is a hard gig to get. My girls see ducks anywhere and go nuts~~"Uncle Jer's DUCKS!"

Can't wait to hear about BEALE!

one hot momma 3:12 PM  

Can I have your corn casserole recipe? yes, that's what I took from this post, not big on ducks, they poop alot! But glad you loved them, I still didn't find the tiny duck on the red carpet!

Lisa @ Heaven Sent 11:11 PM  

At first I thought this must be a joke, but then realized you were totally serious. Duckmaster???!!! How strange, but totally cool at the same time. Who needs the zoo when you have ducks in hotels!

Carol 7:53 AM  

WTD! I couln't see that duck!

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