Since my dog bite has limited my physical activity this week I’ve been making it up by doing other fun activities. Since I had to miss a softball game and volleyball game this week I figured I’d at least have some other fun!

Friend Party! Taco Night!

That’s why I declared Friday Taco Night and invited a bunch of friends over for tacos my roommate and I prepared. It was hugely successful and everyone had a great time hanging out – especially Juju who made friends with everyone.

She’s just one of us! My friends thought it was hilarious that she sits on the couch like this.

A lot of my friends had still not met Juju in person so this was a great opportunity to have them all meet her while hanging out. She was thrilled with all the extra attention and the opportunities to get tummy rubs. She’s such a ham.

I threw together this get together on Friday inspired by a post I read on Carla’s blog about crappy dinners to create community. I’ve found that as my friend group has gotten older we have more strict schedules and less time to just hangout together. We used to always hangout and have dinners and parties but those have faded as we got busy and had kids and all that. Hosting a random dinner where we could all spend time together sounded awesome!

My roommate and I bought all the food and prepared some really easy stuff by putting out a taco bar spread complete with:

• tortillas
• meat
• lettuce
• sour cream
• guacamole
• cheese
• tomatoes
• onions
• chips
• rotel dip
• sangria

My awesome friend Cynthia even made mini lime cupcakes for everyone because it fit the theme of taco night.

I’ve decided to do monthly or bi-monthly dinners where I make something easy and cheap and invite a ton of people. Whoever shows up shows up and we all have fun and eat together! The first was super fun and I can’t wait for the next one.

Brother’s Birthday Party!

This weekend we also celebrate my lil bro’s birthday with a party at Shelby Farms!

For his birthday he really wanted to do the Go Ape ropes course with ziplining at the park. I went ziplining once in Honduras and loved the experience so I thought he would really enjoy it as well and he did!

I couldn’t join in because my hand is still healing from the dog bite, so I hung out by the lake shore with everyone else. We had a picnic spread along with lots of drinks and watermelon because it was incredibly hot outside. I ate more watermelon than actual food because it was the most appealing item when it’s 100+ degrees outside.

It was really fun to see my brother Ronald get birthday presents that doubled as presents for his soon-to-be-born daughter. His family has grown a lot in the last year and I’m obviously very excited to welcome the newest member later this fall. It’s going to be a fun time for everyone in our family.

Community

Overall this weekend has been really fun! It centered around my favorite things: friends, family, and Juju!

All of this might not seem very special or important to anyone else, but it was so special to me. It was special because it was all about community and building relationships with people here. I feel rather rooted and happy in Memphis these days and the community I feel here is part of it. Yes, it is taking some work to make new friends and pull together old friends. But it’s worth it for sure to have community surrounding my life. It’s something I highly value and keeps me feeling whole and healthy and oh, so happy.

There are some more ways I plan to continue building community here through things like volunteering and maybe a healthy meetup group to go hiking or make healthy foods together. Right now it’s all just ideas but I’m always thinking about ways to bring people together these days!