Crosstown Concourse Exploration

We had such a great time last Saturday exploring the new Crosstown Concourse (also called the "vertical village"). The building used to be the home of a gigantic Sears store and distribution center. It's been vacant for several decades. Here's a bit of history on the building (pulled directly from their website): 

The Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog order plant and retail store officially opened to much fanfare on August 27, 1927. It was the 14th Sears retail location in the country and welcomed almost 30,000 shoppers on its first day of business. More than 1,000 people were employed to staff the original 53,000 square-foot retail store and to process the 45,000 orders that came into the catalog center each day.

From 1927-1965, five separate additions to the original tower building expanded the facility to 1,500,000 square feet.

By 1993, Sears closes the Crosstown distribution center. The building is left vacant. As a result of the decline in the mail-order business, Sears begins to shut down warehouses across the country.

The Crosstown neighborhood is one of the city's most ethnically diverse and economically-challenged, but also includes a burgeoning creative community. After the building sat abandoned for 17 years, Crosstown Arts, a 501(c)3 non-profit, is formed (2010) to facilitate the redevelopment of the Sears Crosstown building using arts and culture as a catalyst for change.

The Crosstown Development Team announces commitments from eight local Founding Tenants in arts, education, and healthcare who will lease approximately 600,000 square feet of this historic property. In contrast to typical commercial real estate projects that fit tenants into generic spaces, the Crosstown Concourse founding partners participated in a collaborative planning and development process, resulting in a place distinctly well-suited to serve their operations and missions.

The renovations are amazing and we had the best time checking it all out. The new site hosts restaurants, health care clinics, a YMCA fitness facility, a new high school, apartments and much more. It's super cool to see what the city of Memphis has come together to do. Such an inspiration! Making this city an even cooler place to live! We LOVE Memphis!

First Day of School (1st and 3rd Grade)

And they are off...to 1st and 3rd grade. The house was very quiet this week. I missed them but was unbelievably productive. Praying for a great year for all! 

Miss Brenda the principal

Case's 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Powell

Emery's 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Douglas

After school Ben & Jerry's treat (this was actually after the 3rd day of school). We've had a busy week. 

Emery's whole class

Case's whole class

Case's 9th Birthday

Wowzers! What a day we had celebrating our big 9 year old! Kicked it off opening a few presents before James had to head off to work for the day. 

A new Bible (The Action Bible)

The 10th Wings of Fire book

Gaming headphones

Star Wars Battlefront XBox game

After James went to work, we hit the road for the Tennessee Safari Park. Oh. My. Goodness. What an experience. I don't think I was quite prepared for what we were in for and I'm just devastated that James missed out.

Basically, it's a drive-thru zoo where you can buy buckets of food to feed the animals from your vehicle along the way. I knew this going in...I just didn't realize how aggressive some of the animals might be.

We were greeted at the gate by a couple of camels. Emery was so excited to roll her window down and stick out her food bucket. Well, the camel grabbed the food bucket and ripped it right out of Emery's hand and then stuck it's head all the way in our car wanting more. Emery was screaming and crying, the camel spit in the cupholder and down the side of the door and the smell was awful. It was darn near traumatizing for us all. I was in such a tizzy when we finally got the windows back up that I headed the wrong way through the park. A guy in a Polaris had to run me down to tell me to turn around.

We eventually recovered (it took Emery a good long while) and enjoyed feeding more of the animals. But not without loosing one more of our food buckets to a zebra.

The llamas were the tamest. They would walk up and eat nicely from the buckets. Even Emery enjoyed feeding the llamas.

And then our favorites were the ostriches (despite the fact that they were the creepiest looking and were all originally scared of them sticking their entire heads and necks into our car like the camels.

We didn't feed too many of them though because they go through food so fast. They were hilarious. Emery begins screaming when she can see ostrich #2 running full speed for our food bucket. He/She was on a mission. So funny! 

We didn't even attempt to feed the bison. I was afraid they might damage the car. 

All in all, it was a fun morning and quite the unique experience that we aren't likely to soon forget.

Then last night, Case had his first-ever (and possibly his last...just kidding...sort of) sleepover with some of his friends. Those kids had a great time but didn't get much rest.

Emery got to have a friend too (Piper)

Nate, Carter W, Carter C., Aiden, Liam and Cole

Case, happy 9th birthday, buddy! We hope you had a great one. It's hard to believe that we've been your parents for 9 years. They are going by too fast. We think you are pretty great. This year you have grown and changed in a lot of cool ways. First of all, you developed a tremendous love of reading this past spring and summer. You've already polished off the entire Percy Jackson series, the first two Harry Potter books and 9 of 10 Wings of Fire books. You get that from your Dad! He loved to read as a youngster too. It's fun to see how much you enjoy it. Pretty sure you spend most of your down time daydreaming about some of those books.

Let's see...your favorite food is Chipotle, you still enjoy soccer and video games and you have a deep respect for the rules (which I love). A few weeks ago I had to have my car worked on and this guy needed to take some photos. I was inside the shop and you and Emery were out in car. The man came out and opened the door to take a pic and said to y'all "who wants to get out of here and go get some ice cream at McDonalds?" Emery said, "Ooh, ooh, I do!!" And you said, "....well....I'm going to have to ask my mom about that." This is such a perfect illustration of your personalities.

We love you and wouldn't change a thing about you! We pray that you will continue to grow into the person God created you to be and be confident in who you are. Here's to your last year in single digits!