Page 56 | A Small Snippet | A snapshot into the small snippets of life...to expose the Bigger Picture

Jul

27

Chattanooga :: day one

i am WELL aware that many-many-many of you do not visit this blog in order to see ump-teen photos of my family. i’m even gonna guess that a large majority of you don’t care a lick about where we’ve been or what we’ve been doing. if you are like me, then often times you subscribe to a specific blog cause you are in the market for cool crafts and recipes and party ideas. i get it. i’m with you. i don’t blame you one bit for taking me off your blog-reading lists

problem is, it seems as if our summer hasn’t really lent itself to crafts and new recipes! with school just around the corner…(insert really really really sad face with tears…i do SO dread sending the crazies off to school all day…even though they do drive me crazy at times…actually…a large majority of the time…i still just LOVE having them around…doesn’t make sense, i know!)

anyway…i’m hopeful…really hopeful…that the fall is going to bring more time for those kinds of things. but if you are still hanging in there with me, then maybe you can not think of this post or the next few as our boring life that you don’t really care about and maybe just view them as some kind of travel review…as in, i tell you cool things we got to experience on our trip so that you can consider maybe experiencing them for yourself one day!

cause the true reality is that one side purpose of this blog is for me to document life. so i can’t leave out these kinds of things!

but hang in there…you just might like what you see!

the second leg of our Tennessee tour was to hit up Chattanooga. we have really cool friends who live up on the top of Lookout Mountain…in a little town, literally called Fairyland, and trust me….it really is like living in a storybook. we hit up as much as the town had to offer (within our budget and time constraints) and it did not disappoint one stinkin’ bit!! if you are looking for a place to visit, especially with kids, GO TO CHATTANOOGA!!

okay….there’s my plug. and here’s why:

for starters, they’ve got an awesome ice cream shop called Clumpies, that of course was one of our first stops quickly upon arriving:

we rested up that night with full bellies and headed out the next day for a full day in the city:
we started off at the Tennessee Aquarium, which is one of the best in the nation, might i add. there were a plethora of creatures to enjoy up close:
and lots of places to interact with the animals:
the top floor is a butterfly garden, filled with multiple types of butterflies that you hunt around for using your handy dandy butterfly “map”, which the kids thought was a pretty awesome new take on the old fave of “I Spy”
we were very pleasantly surprised to find that the butterflies were in fact friendly:
and took quite the liking to our own little bug:
but didn’t think that the boy was all that shabby either!
bella will tell you if you ask her that the butterfly garden was her favorite part of our trip:

we headed over to the penguins, and we all got quick the kick out of them and how they seemed to come right up and want to talk to you!
the crazies made some friends:
before heading to the big tank to see our favorite kind of creature…you guessed it: SHARKS!

my little actor and actress:
i know where they get their convincing skills
this place is magnificent…truly!

love that i happened to catch Bug’s reaction to the big ol’ fat snake:
i LOVE this picture…she was giving the fish kisses:
the city has built these awesome places for kids to swim and play in the water all around downtown Chattanooga. good thing, too, cause we were caught right in the middle of the heat wave and needed to cool off!

downtown Chatt. claims that this is the longest pedestrian bridge in the world!

so we decided that we just had to take a stroll across:

and on the other side we found an awesome park with a carousel. our options were not limited to just riding horses either! i snagged a donkey and belle snagged a beautiful fish named Bob!

after a full day in the city, the kids still managed to show each other some love when we found this graffiti down an alley:

we rode back up the mountain, only to discover the most wonderful site to our Floridian eyes!!!!

we don’t have the pleasure of fireflies here down south at the beach. since you haven’t officially experienced childhood without catching fireflies, we didn’t have to think twice about using that opportunity to cross that rite of passage off our list!

the perfect way to end a great day!

if you can believe it, that was only our first day! more to come!

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Jul

23

Memphis

our adventures are still going…and i have about 700 pictures to show for it. don’t worry…i’m only gonna give you a very small snippet of those!

we aren’t quite done with our roadtrip just yet, but my mind has been swirling today with my growing to-do list that is accumulating items for me to cross off as soon as we get back. i have just enough time to unpack and repack for my next adventure (more on that later) and i’m afraid that if i don’t start updating this blog now, it’ll get WAY too backlogged for my little tired brain to handle! so here goes: Part One of our crazy adventures – the condensed version!

our first official leg of our Tennessee tour was Memphis to visit with some very very special friends. we had a mini kind of reunion with some peeps who we used to go to church with but who are now spread all over.

for one friend’s Big 3-0, we hit up some casinos in a small Mississippi town (sans kiddos) right outside Memphis called Tunica.

that was my first casino experience, and it did not disappoint!!

we got to spend lots of time with a dear dear family…who have taught us more about real life and being parents than anyone else!

the crazy next to me in the red shirt in the pic below was my youth pastor in high school and who went on to be my boss when he hired me to work with the High School ministry when i was in college (i told you he was crazy!) Jake took over his job when he moved back to his hometown of Memphis to continue to be in high school ministry at a church there. if i were home and had access to my wedding album, i’d show you a sweet pic of him performing our wedding ceremony, but i’m not, so i can’t! i could, though, tell you ample stories of him but i’m afraid that if i do, then i’d give away some of his secrets…and since he’s still in HS ministry, he might need to use some of them one of these days….and i might get payback, so i’ll leave it at that!

this pic just sums it up so well! (one family member is missing from this pic…Kelcie…but she’s picture in the casino pic above to the left of me)

when their kiddos were much much smaller than they are now, right after Jake and i were married, we used to spend tons of time with them…and we learned a ton about being parents through that time.

when these two below were literal babies – like going through packs of diapers and still taking bottles in the middle of the night kind of babies – we got to spend days, weekends, or even weeks at a time with them and their two older sisters. it was SO fun to see our kiddos interact with them cause they made us SO excited to become parents one day long before the crazies arrived!

we enjoyed one last dinner in Memphis with them, discussing Heaven and how fun its gonna be to get to spend eternity together!

Memphis has some cool stuff to do with kids, like watching the duck march at the Peabody Hotel downtown. twice a day, a parade of ducks marches off of the elevator, down the red carpet, and into the fountain in the middle of the hotel lobby. we got there a little early to get a good spot on the red carpet in order to see the ducks up close.

but those little stinkers forgot their manners and hightailed it so fast to the fountain that we barely had time to see them whizz by!

so we followed those little stinkers right up to the fountain to get a closer peek:

the duckmaster even let us hold his special baton

before offering to take our crew up to the roof of the hotel to see the duck palace. (if you couldn’t tell my the crazies, the sun was blaring in our eyes!)

i’m afraid to tell you that we pretty much ate our way through Memphis. i mean…when you have access to fried dill pickles, isn’t it okay to eat them for lunch AND dinner??

we went to this famous burger joint where you use straws:

to shoot toothpicks into the ceiling:
you can only imagine that to the crazies, that might just be the raddest thing one could’ve ever thought of!

we had to stop off at the famous Gibson’s Donuts

in order to stuff our faces with more fried food:

and we’ve been told that Memphis just isn’t Memphis without Jerry’s famous Sno Cones:

i had a wedding cake flavored snowcone, and it truly tasted just like wedding cake. and if you’re 4 years old, its virtually impossible to pass up a rainbow snowcone!
if you are ever in the Memphis area and you have your own crazies in tow, you have to check out Shelby Farms. they have this new playground that is by far the best playground i’ve ever experienced (and i’ve experienced quite a few!) it was too big and spread out to really capture the full essence of the park, but you can just imagine the best of possibilities for playtime!! (and the momma in me couldn’t help but notice how clean and well kept the area was, and how many safety features were obviously very thoroughly thought through!)

we did some climbing:

and swinging:

and sliding:

our sweet friends Tracey and Jeff were our gracious hosts. i went to high school with both of them…so we kinda go way back! they are the kind of people that you feel like you could invade their home for long periods of time even with crazies in tow and they don’t for one second make you feel like you’re a burden! in fact, they even make you feel like they are actually enjoying the fact that you’ve kinda taken over every square inch of their house!!

before leaving the park, we spotted a pond and as soon as some ducks caught wind that we were passing out rice cakes, they came in droves:

some were even brave enough to eat right out of our hands:

the hubs was insistent you most certainly can’t go to Memphis without checking out the famous Mississippi River.

this is one of those, “i’m gonna try really hard not to smile for the camera” kind of pictures:

the girls stayed busy picking the pretty wildflowers:

while the boys tried to see who could throw a stick the farthest:
and then competed to see which stick floated down the river the fastest…a very Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn-ish kind of activity, if you ask me…which i guess is fitting for the Mississippi River!

pheww…well…if you are still reading, that’s just the first leg of our trip! we were super sad to leave our friends in Memphis, but have had an absolute blast on the second leg of our tour, which is coming up in the near future for your viewing pleasure!

check back in soon,

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Jul

20

roadtrippin’

we’re continuing our roadtrip adventures…

but thought i’d take a quick minute to check in.

we’ve learned a few important things so far along our journey, such as:

its important to have all the necessities when traveling…

and you can’t let bad weather stop you, (unless, of course, its absolutely necessary)
but at some point, you just might want to call it a night and get some rest at a hotel just off the interstate….
cause crossing multiple states in a day sure can wear you out!
we are soaking up every minute of our jaunt along the south!