Mississippi Roadtrip

Every year my very extended family on my mom's side have a family reunion.  The reunion site is the house that my great grandfather built!  It's also the house that my grandmother grew up at - even where my grandfather would come and visit her on his horse!

While I don't make it every year, it had been 4 years since the last time I was there.  And this year, since I'm not pregnant or nursing, or do not have a young baby I decided to go.

And get this - I threw all four kids in the car and took an all day road trip BY MYSELF!  I can't believe I've finally hit the stage where doing things like that are easy!  (relatively)

We played and ate.  Visited and caught up with everyone.

Then took the little hike down to the railroad tracks with the kids.  I have very fond memories of doing this when I was little. 

Then, after a few hours, we loaded back up and headed home!   Overall, the kids were great.  We had gone to the library the day before to stock up on books and movies.  The last 30 minutes, Rhodes was a little fussy, but it wasn't anything my ipod headphones couldn't drown out.  ;-)

We got back home to Robert, who put his head down and worked on the computer all day, and grilled out!!

I'm so glad the kids are old enough to do those kind of trips!  Not having to pack a bazillion contraptions and bottles/diapers/toys etc.  It makes things SOOOOO much easier!!

Favorite Shots

So here is are my FAVORITE shots of the weekend.







Don't these penguins look like the ones from Surf's Up!?













This fish (above) would just swim around with it's mouth open for a while. Then close it! Apparently, there's a lake near Ole Miss (that I used to ski/swim in) that you can catch these fish!! Ewe.



More sweet seahorses. The held on to anything with their little tails!



The coral was so bright and colorful!





Here's the spider crab again. Huge.



This is a cuttlefish. In the 3D IMAX, they talked alot about them. Very interesting fish.



Looking straight at me! :-)



The jelly fish were really cool too! These pics turned out great. They aren't upside down either...that is how they were floating in the tank! These were also pretty big...like the size of a big balloon!



Ok, so that's enough for Chattanooga! I hope you enjoyed these pics...and that it makes you want to go! What a fun/cute town! We definitely want to go back!

Chattanooga II

The next morning we started with the River Journey at the Aquarium! The first exhibit was a seahorse exhibit. They are so cute! There were some that were as big as your pinky fingernail! TINY! And they were full grown!


(Let me say that the aquarium is very dark inside...but the tanks are lit up. And you don't want to use a flash - it'll bounce right off the glass and glare up your pictures! So getting pics was very hard. I had my 50mm 1.8 which is GREAT for low light, but it's a prime lense so you can't zoom in and out - I was stuck at one focal length the whole time. But I still think I got some good pics. So if some are out of focus, it was because it was so dark in there the camera had a hard time focusing!)






They had ALL the Finding Nemo fish in this tank!



Landon wanted there to be a diver in the tanks SO badly - he saw it on the brochure! And low and behold, a couple guys got in while we were there and started cleaning the tanks! He even posed for a picture with the kids!! haha Smiling and all! (he took out his oxygen!)



Landon didn't want to leave him.





In the Ocean Journey building, they had a whole exhibit where you could touch stingrays! I think it was one of their favorite parts. And the kids had NO problem reaching in there - in fact, the stingrays wanted to be touched. They would come up the side hoping you would rub their noses!!





This is in the butterfly exhibit..they are tracking butterflies. I thought this was cute because they were all by themselves with their little pamphlet, trying to find certain butterflies! They didn't know we were watching them! :-)









It's the littlest things they like so much....riding the escalators! Which Landon managed to fall on once!



The penguins were SUPER cute. They would float right up next to your faces...they were so friendly!!



The crab you see in front of them in the pic above is a Spider Crab. It was the size of a small lab. And when it spread it's claws, I bet it was 4 feet in diameter! I wouldn't want to come across one of those in the ocean!!



Above, a sturgent fish - this one was probably 5 or 6 feet long. They live in rivers and streams! And they get even bigger! AHH!





Blow fish! This one was big! Definitely bigger than our poodle!







At this point in the Ocean Journey, the water was all over our heads with little peep holes all over the place. This one, they could lay down and look up at all the fish!



The last pic of the day! Behind them is the bridge we walked across! :-) We had so much fun and would LOVE to go back in the spring or summer when it's super pretty outside! It looked like a very fun place to keep visiting!

I have a lot more pictures coming up - they're my favorite shots of the weekend! I hope you'll like them too!! :-)

Chattanooga

Well, the trip was a success and our itinerary was PERFECT! And we were home a little earlier than expect (which was nice because the kids CRASHED on the way home)!

We started out seeing the Under the Sea 3D IMAX before lunch. It was so cute! I wish I could have videoed the kids watching the movie. They would jump around and reach out and try to touch the fish. At one point, I got so nauseous, I had to take my glasses off and look at something that was not moving! It was so real!

Then we walked across the Tennessee River to a great lunch spot! The kids enjoyed running up and down the longest pedestrian bridge! I was mad because I didn't have my camera! :-(

Then we hit up the Children's Museum!



The bubble machine!



Playing in the instrument section!



I have to say it was a lot like the McWane Center. It was better quality stuff, but the museum was overall a little smaller. AND because of the rain, we had to miss out on a few things...like the rooftop fun center. Oh well, we'll just have to go back!





So yeah, I took some pics in the mirrors. I don't know why I find this so fun. Partly because it's rare I hand over my camera (I don't shoot in the automatic modes and the effort to explain to a stranger how to work the manual modes just isn't worth it) and also, I think they make some cool shots sometimes. Plus, it means I make it into some pics! :-)





After the museum, we got some coffee and checked into the hotel. We settled down and cleaned up for dinner! We love hibachi grills and so do the kids. Our tummies were so full, we didn't even have room for dessert! (And that doesn't happen too often!)

So we headed back to the hotel to......

jump on the beds and swim in the pool, of course!!!! YAY! It's ALL they talked about all day!



I told them this is the only time it's okay to jump on beds...how fun am I! :-)

The pool was nice! By this point, I was fading fast. Though, I thought I made it very well for walking as much as we did (a TON) and being pregnant with no down time!



Of course, they found the jacuzzi much more fun!



Landon played it safe!



Olivia went back and forth from jacuzzi to pool!




Ok, so I made the pics so big, it's making the posts so long! I'll post the other half hopefully this afternoon! :-)