What We Did This Weekend: Memorial Day and the 100th Post

Before I get into what we did on our glorious three-day Memorial Day weekend, allow me to point out the obvious (or for you folks still using RSS feed readers, the not-at-all-obvious): In honor of Todd and Brookie's 100th post (which is this one), we've redesigned our blog! The overall look and feel is based on our home, and hopefully it's a little easier on the eyes than the hypnotically-bright stripes from our last theme. There may still be some bugs here and there, but we'll be correcting those as we go. Here are a few cool things you'll want to check out and keep an eye on:

The Stickers: You'll notice a pair of pictures on the banner that should look like stickers. One features Frank Lloyd Wright and the other, a baseball. Those are links to our other blogs. Click Frank's face and you'll be transported to Brookie's Frank Lloyd Wright travel blog entitled "Finding Frank" (on a side note: due to circumstances beyond our control, Brookie has no additional pictures or stories and may be unable to update her blog for a period of time). Click the baseball, and you'll be treated to a heap of baseball-related minutia when you arrive at Todd's blog, "The Perfect Game."

Some Pictures: Scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page, you'll see something that might look familiar if you've been in our home. It's a reproduction of the IKEA message board in our kitchen (and there will be a link at the bottom of every post to take you right there). Kept there by cyber-magents magnets are a few select pictures of Todd and Brookie, which we hope to update on a fairly regular basis.

Our Menu: Next to the pictures will be our weekly menu. And we'll be including links to any exciting new recipes we try out (but it just so happens that this week's menu is kind of dull, so there are no links this week).

Adoption Links: In the lower portion of the message board, on the left side, are a list of links dealing with our adoption. There's a link to the LDS Family Services adoption homepage (It's About Love), a direct link to our profile, a link to our Adoption Collage, a link to some good articles and books about adoption (currently it's an article from February's Ensign that you should all read if you haven't already), and a link to contact us about adoption (so if you know anyone that's thinking about it, you can send them here, and they can get a hold of us via LDSFS).

Comment of the Week: We weren't sure what to place in the last section of the message board, so I came up with the Comment of the Week. Each week, I'll be selecting a comment we liked and highlighting it as the comment of the week. So be sure to join the conversation and start commenting.

Oh, and by the way, I hope no one was too worried if you tried to check the blog this morning. I took it offline while I got the new theme up and running. Enjoy!

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Big weekend for us. But, I like that our three-day weekends are usually packed. That's probably the way it should be. We were worried that it was going to rain the entire time, but we lucked out and only had to endure some light rain Monday afternoon.

Does anyone know how long it takes to establish family traditions? This was the third consecutive year that we've attended Kansas City's "Celebration at the Station" and it has definitely been solidified as a Reynolds Family Tradition. Each Memorial Day weekend, the Kansas City Symphony puts on a free concert out in front of Union Station. Last year there were over 40,000 people in attendance, sprawled out on blankets and lawn chairs on the hill between the symphony and the World War I Liberty Memorial tower. This year they said there were even more.

Brookie and I have a problem. We really can't keep secrets when it comes to the great things our city has to offer. So, knowing how amazing this concert is, we invited some of our friends to come along. I don't know if they will be looking forward to this event every year like we will, but we all had a great time listening to patriotic music and honoring those men and women that serve our country. The fireworks are always fun too.

Saturday was quite possibly the birth of another family tradition: The 3-Story Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake. The scouts in our ward were having an auction at church Saturday to raise funds for their upcoming high-adventure camps. They provided a Spaghetti dinner for $5 a person. Besides the cover charge, Brookie and I were pretty sure we weren't going to be making any purchases, so to help out, we made donations of items to be auctioned. One such item was a dessert.

We wanted to bring something amazing, so I literally Googled "best cake ever." It's hard to describe this creation. We were extremely thrilled with how it turned out, and very glad when it sold for $37. In the auction the cake was described like this: "Sumptuous triple-layer chocolate cake with cream-cheese-peanut-butter frosting and a chocolat-peanut-butter glaze. This cake is so naughty it had to meet with the Bishop before being allowed in the auction." I say this may be a new tradition because it may very well become our family cake. I know it's what I want for my birthday. I can't really speak for Brookie, but I can't imagine she would be disappointed if she had it for hers two weeks after mine. And we're going to make this for my parents as a belated birthday cake when we visit in July.

So basically our Saturday was very, very busy as we made this cake. The cake alone wouldn't have been too bad. But I also had to finish another donation. I hand-painted a pair of three-foot decorative signs. One said "A happy family is but an earlier heaven," and the other stated, "Real love stories don't have an ending..." The auction started at 6:30pm on Saturday, and we were putting the final varnish coat on the last sign at 6:20pm. We were a few minutes late, but luckily our donations were well accepted.

Memorial Day provided another opportunity for tradition-forging. The Royals had a day game at the New Kauffman Stadium yesterday, and we got some upper-deck tickets with a few friends. It's just too bad that the Royals lost 13-1 (that one run they scored in the 8th inning was awesome... but the four runs they gave back in the top of the ninth kind of killed the momentum). This Memorial Day massacre at the hands of the first-place Detroit Tigers left a bad taste in my mouth and I wondered if maybe just going to see a movie every year might be a better tradition).

One thing that really surprised us on Memorial Day were how early the stores were closing. After the game we tried to do some shopping, but found nearly all the merchants at Town Center had closed at 5:00pm. We thought that Memorial Day was a big day for sales and stuff. And maybe it still is, but apparently only between 12 and 5.

Friday night was our weekly date night. We introduced more friend's to RC's, one of our favorite restaurants in the area, and left there thoroughly stuffed. Like I said, we just like sharing when we find something good.

And that's what we did this weekend!

**By the way, I saw a number of people taking pictures this weekend, so if anyone out there has any pictures of anything that goes along with the post (auction, Celebration at the Station, the baseball game), send them to me and I'll post them here. We haven't replaced our camera yet, which is why there has been an absence of picture for the past month.

Go to the board!