The Magic City

     
        It's just been a few weeks since I started this blog and already I have been to so many places and learned so much about this great city of Birmingham!  From Vulcan to Roebuck and back to UAB, I have had so many great experiences.  So far, my favorite site in Birmingham is Vulcan.  Vulcan, aka The Iron Man, is so huge and represents Birmingham as the Iron City.  The park that surrounds him is a beautiful place for citizens to visit!  Through the Alabama360 website, I was also able to take a virtual tour of Sloss Furnaces, another historical site in Birmingham.  Sloss Furnaces is over 100 years old!  During its decades of operation, the furnaces produced pig iron, which is a type of iron ore.  Sloss Furnaces hasn't been in operation since 1970, but it reopened in 1983 as a historical site.  Today, it is mostly used to host concerts, weddings, and other local events.
       I learned about the importance of saving money when I visited a local BBVA Compass branch for "Bring Your Child to Work Day" with my uncle.  I even opened my first savings account and my mom downloaded the mobile banking app on my iTouch so I can check the balance!  The app allows you to make transfers between your accounts, see pending and completed transactions, and even pay bills!  I will use the app to make sure deposits into my savings account go through.
       Also over the last few weeks, as summer has ended and fall has begun, I have enjoyed the warm weather at the local Star Lake.  I fed the ducks and had frozen yogurt with my cousins Abigale and Susanna, and even went to a beach wedding!  There are so many more sites in Birmingham that I hope to visit and learn about over the coming weeks.  I've already asked my parents to take me to Birmingham Zoo and they said we could go next weekend!
        To recap the happenings of the last few weeks, I used iMovie to make a montage of all the fun things I've done!  Click the link above to enjoy the show!

Beach Wedding

This weekend, my family went to Pensacola, Florida for a wedding. Usually, I think weddings are really boring, but this one was at the beach! We didn’t get to go to the beach this summer, so I was really excited to swim in the ocean and eat seafood! We left late Friday night after the adults were off of work, so we didn’t get to Pensacola until midnight. It was a long drive and I fell asleep in the car. Everyone was really tired when we got there, so we went right to bed.

Friday was a warm, sunny day and we spent most of the day on the beach! Abigale and Blake were there and we had fun jumping through the waves and finding seashells on the shore. My favorite seashell is one that you can hear the ocean in when you hold it up to your ear! For dinner that night, we went to a restaurant called Hemmingway’s. It was really nice and we got to sit outside and could see the ocean from our table! I ordered fried shrimp, which is my favorite, and everyone else ordered fish. Blake loves oysters, but he didn’t order them because they aren’t in season. I asked him why they weren’t in season and said there is a rule which says that you should only eat oysters during months that have the letter “a” in them. I thought it sounded like a weird rule, but he’s a diver and knows a lot about seafood, so I guess he knows what he’s talking about.

Rachel and Kenny’s wedding was supposed to be on the beach Saturday night, but unfortunately, it rained. So instead, the wedding and the reception were both underneath a huge beach house. It was really neat because they had lights strung up all underneath the house! They only invited about 75 guests and probably 50 people were able to come to the wedding. We all ate and danced all night long. It was a lot of fun!

"Take Your Child to Work Day"

Yesterday was “Take Your Child to Work Day” at my Uncle Robert’s bank. He doesn’t have a child, so he asked me to come to work with him! Luckily, my mom was okay with my missing a day of school for an “educational experience,” so I got to spend a few hours with Uncle Robert! He is a manager at the BBVA Compass Bank on Valleydale Road. The people he works with are really nice and I got to eat suckers!

I learned that the people who work the drive-thru are called “tellers” and I got a tour of the teller line! The tellers have a hard job because they have to keep up with all of the money that customers deposit and withdrawal through the teller line. If any money is missing at the end of the day, it’s the teller’s responsibility to find it or replace it! That is a lot of pressure, I think, so being a teller is not something I would want to do in the future!  

My uncle helped me open a Early Savings Account so I can start saving for my future, and I got some advice from a Financial Advisor named Mr. Brian. I learned that if I start saving money now, then I will have money to use when I need a car when I turn sixteen, or even to help with my college education. I also learned that my savings account will earn a little bit of interest each year. To say that my account earns interest means that the bank gives me a small percentage of the money that I keep in the savings account. It’s kind of like a thank you for choosing to use their bank. BBVA Compass also has an app (http://www.bbvacompass.com/mobile-banking/app/) you can download on your phone to access your online banking anywhere! I think that is pretty cool!

"New" Furniture!

        Here are the two pieces Abigale and Blake bought from Aunt Biddy!  The first piece is an old sewing table from our grandmother's brother's house and the blue cabinet is from Aunt Biddy's husband's grandmother's house!  Phew!  These little tables sure do have some history!  Abigale and Blake are so excited about finding a place for these in their new home, but for now they are living in the sunroom at Blake's apartment.   

"Thrifting" with Abigale and Blake

       Last night, my parents went on a date, so I got stuck with my cousin Abigale and her boyfriend Blake for the evening.  Her boyfriend is about to buy a house and needs furniture, so they took me thrift store shopping all over Birmingham.  Abigale and Blake weren’t exactly sure what they were looking for, but were hoping to find a coffee table, bedside tables, and a kitchen table and chairs.  First, we went to the Goodwill on Green Springs Highway, but they didn’t have very much furniture and what they did have, Blake said was “junk.”  

       So, we drove to the thrift store in Roebuck - it was was huge!  They had all kinds of clothes, furniture, dishes, shoes, jewelry, dishes and toys.  It reminded me of a giant yard sale!  We walked all the way to the back of the store where all the furniture was and started looking.  There were a few couches, dressers, bar stools, and headboards.  The only thing my cousin was really interested in was a piece with open shelves and cabinets called a “hutch”, but it had already been sold.  Abigale and Blake were disappointed, but we wandered over to the section of the store where there were lamps and vases and glasses.  Abigale bought a ton of little crystal vases for only thirty-nine cents each!  Thrift stores sure do have low prices!  

       After Roebuck, we drove to mine and Abigale’s Aunt Biddy’s house.  Aunt Biddy loves to buy furniture from thrift stores and yard sales and then cleans and paints the pieces to make them look new!  She has started selling the furniture that she restores, so Abigale and Blake wanted to see if she had any finished pieces that they liked.  Her basement was full of furniture!  She had two kitchen tables, a dining room table, two headboards, a hutch, a dresser, a rocking chair, tons of dining chairs and two coffee tables.  Abigale and Blake bought two side tables and claimed another table, the rocking chair, and the hutch!  They were so excited to find so many “new” pieces of furniture for their future home!

The Iron Man

Today, I watched a documentary about Vulcan. I have always noticed Vulcan from a distance while riding through Birmingham in my mom’s car, but I never really knew what he stood for or why he was built. My mom let me use her computer to research Vulcan’s history. Vulcan has his own website with a documentary film, fun facts, and a timeline of Vulcan’s life.

From the video, I learned that Vulcan was built in 1904 to represent Birmingham as the iron and steel capital of the South. The original plan was to erect Vulcan in Lynn Park, but one woman suggested that he be placed atop Red Mountain, since that’s where the iron ore that he was made from came from. Instead, he was first assembled in 1906 at the State Fairgrounds and remained there for 30 years until he was finally moved to Red Mountain, his permanent home.

In 1946, a traffic light was placed in Vulcan’s right hand. The light was green, but turned red if someone died in a traffic accident that day. Over time, Vulcan suffered weather damage and needed structural repair, so in 1999, Vulcan was taken apart and moved to Alexander City for restoration. During that time, updates were also made to Vulcan’s tower. Vulcan was returned to the top of his tower on Red Mountain in 2003, where he still stands today. One of the neatest facts I learned about Vulcan is that the tower he sits on today is 123 feet high! 
If you want to see Vulcan park, you can take a virtual tour here.
You can watch the documentary here.