I haven’t put out a blog in a long time because I’ve been so busy getting ready to release my new children’s book.

I’m really excited about it, but it sure is a lot of work.  Daddy’s friend, Rachel is busy drawing illustrations for the book, so I have to pose all of the time for her to draw cute pictures of me.  I am pretty cute so I kind of take care of that part for her, but she still has to draw the pictures for me.

I think that I’m going to make the people who read my book really happy.  My goal is to have everyone who reads my book smile for a really long time after they’re done reading it.  Yep, that’s my goal, to give even more smiles than what I do in person!

Enough about me though, I want to tell you about all of the things that me and mommy and daddy have been doing since my last post.

Me and mommy and daddy sure have been to some really neat places since my last blog at Lazy Days in Houston.

Mommy and daddy have been busy too.  They helped with a volunteer project for two weeks in Lake Charles, Louisiana and then had a week off in Memphis before volunteering in Roan Mountain, Tennessee for another two weeks.

Mommy and daddy were helping with another A Year to Volunteer project at Sam Houston Jones State Park.  I liked that park because daddy and I would walk like three miles every morning.  It was a really big park.  The park was really hurt by the hurricanes back in 2020 though.  Ninety percent of the trees in the park were destroyed.  That made me really sad.  But I was really proud of my mommy and daddy and all of their friends who were there to help get the park opened up again.

I really liked getting to meet so many new people in Lake Charles.  I met Janet and Amy and Dave and Stan and Eric and Marty and Barrett and Cody and Brittany.  Barrett and Cody and Brittany even came to visit me in the house on wheels.  They all said that they were there to do a podcast with daddy, but I know that they just used that as an excuse to hang out with me for a little while, but I’ll let daddy think that they were there for his podcast.  I even got to talk a little bit on the podcast that daddy did with Barrett.  Daddy didn’t seem really happy about that, but I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that I was there too.

I also loved getting to see people that I already knew again!  I got to see Phil and Shar and Mike and Terri and John and Karen and Orien and Jeff and Susan again.  Phil and Shar and Mike and Terri all came to visit me in the house on wheels too.  I made sure that I really rubbed up on Phil and Shar so that Domino knew that his mommy and daddy were with me.  I had more visitors in the house on wheels during this project than ever before!

I also got to see Lori a couple of times again when we were in Lake Charles, she even came to the park to visit me in the house on wheels.

It was the greatest thing ever!  I love getting visitors in the house on wheels because they all pet me really good.

Mommy and daddy and their friends really worked hard for the two weeks that we were there.  Mommy and daddy and some of their friends even stayed a little longer after the project ended.  Mommy and daddy only stayed until about 4 o’clock on Saturday, but some others stayed even longer to make sure that the boardwalk got finished.  In true Y2V fashion, they got the boardwalk done later that week.  Phil and Shar weren’t about to leave without that boardwalk getting finished.

Once we left Lake Charles, we were on our way Memphis!

The plan was to drive to the Mississippi Welcome Center to stay for the night and then drive the rest of the way to Memphis on Sunday morning.  Sometimes things don’t go as planned.  We ended up driving longer that night and stayed at a Wal-Mart that was about an hour outside of Memphis.

Mommy went shopping in the morning and then we hit the road again!  We stopped at a Camping World before we got to the Graceland Campground in Memphis.  I like Camping World because I can go shopping with mommy and daddy when we go there too.  Of course, I had to make several of the employees and some customers smile while we were in there.  I just walked up to them and said, “Would you like to pet me?  I guarantee that it will brighten you day and make you smile.”  And, I was right.  Everyone who stopped to pet me smiled and I know I made their day brighter.

Once we got to the campground, we were right next to Graceland.  Mommy did lots and lots of laundry when we first got there and there were all kinds of people from Canada around us.  Canadians must really like Elvis!

Mommy and daddy did all kinds of tourist things in Memphis.  They worked hard for the previous two weeks and they were going to be working hard for the next two weeks, so I thought that they deserved to have some fun.  I told them that I would hang back in the house on wheels and listen to music and they could Uber into town each day and see all of the neat things that Memphis has to offer.

Mommy and daddy went to the National Civil Rights Museum, Rock and Soul Museum, Stax Records, Sun Records, The Pyramid, and Graceland.  They were always so happy when they would get back to the house on wheels.  They really liked hearing all of the music that Memphis has to offer too.

Mommy and daddy really like the blues and Memphis is home of the Delta Blues, they listened to a lot of blues and Memphis Soul music while we there.  I didn’t get really long walks when we were in Memphis, but I did get some nice little walks while we were there.  I do like long walks, but honestly, as long as I get a little walk every day with mommy and daddy, I’m ok with that.  It’s not so much about the walk as it is about the company and I love when I have my mommy and daddy as my company.

We celebrated mommy’s birthday in Memphis too.

Daddy did a podcast with his friend Toni Reece in the morning.  It was the 100th episode of daddy’s new podcast and Toni was the person who got daddy into podcasting all the way back in 2012, so he thought that it was only appropriate to have her on episode number 100 of The Journey of My Mother’s Son.  It comes out on April 22, so make sure that you check it out.

After the podcast mommy and daddy went to Graceland to celebrate her birthday.  Daddy bought mommy a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich for her birthday.  When I heard that, I was like, “Wow, big spender daddy – way to pull out all of the stops on that one!”  But then mommy said that was all she wanted and it was a really nice present from daddy.  I think mommy was just being nice and didn’t want to tell daddy that he was a cheapo, but what do I know.  Daddy did say that the whole week in Memphis was a celebration of mommy’s birthday, so maybe that’s why he went El Cheapo on the birthday lunch.

It might just be me, but it did seem like mommy and daddy ate a lot in Memphis.  They always came back smelling like something good, but never brought me any left-overs.  Can you believe that?  They even had a guy in a pink Cadillac come pick them up for dinner the one night, but still nothing for me when they got back – the nerve!

We left Memphis on Saturday morning to start our drive to Roan Mountain State Park, which was all the way across Tennessee.  If you ever saw the state of Tennessee, you know it’s really wide, so that was going to be a really long drive for us.  We weren’t doing it in one day, but daddy wanted to drive about five hours on Saturday to get us close.

Me and mommy with Tina Turner, the Queen of Rock and Roll.

About an hour into our drive, we stopped at the Delta Heritage Center in Brownsville, Tennessee to see the Queen of Rock and Roll, Tina Turner.  I guess mommy and daddy wanted to make sure that they could say that we saw both the King and Queen of Rock and Roll that week.  I mean, we didn’t see them in real life, but we saw stuff about them.  I loved the Delta Heritage Center the most though.  Do you know why?  Because I was allowed to go inside with mommy and daddy!  As soon as I got inside, I started making the workers smile.  Then we went into this one room and I started to freak out a little bit because there was a really scary bobcat in there.  Daddy said to me, “It’s stuffed goofy!”  I don’t know what that means, but it still freaked me out.

After we left the Delta Heritage Center, we drove about another hour to visit mommy and daddy’s friend Annette. Annette used to live in Pennsylvania, that’s how mommy and daddy know her.  It always amazes me with how many people mommy and daddy know all over the country.

We visited with Annette for a while, she gave me a lot of treats because I’m so cute, I just seem to have that power over people.  They see me, want to pet me, and then give me treats.  I make sure not to take advantage of my super power though.

Well, it’s time for me to go now, I have a lot more to tell you about how I celebrated my birthday in Roan Mountain and I promise that I’ll post about that real soon, but for now, I want to take a walk with mommy and daddy.