Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween!

Blogger dropped out numerous times tonight trying to upload, so here's just a couple of cute ones from tonight.

Eagerly anticipating "show time"!Prince Eric, the evil witch Ursula, Princess Ariel and her best friend the lobster Sebastian!
We had a great time trick or treating as the "crew" of The Little Mermaid, Lilli's current favorite princess movie. She got right at 3 pounds of candy and we probably covered about a mile and a half. Halloween is always insane in this neighborhood and we got lots of good pics of the craziness. Lots more pics to come!

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Bake-fest 2011

Not the best weekend we've ever had, but not the worst either. Friday I came down with a nasty cold, Saturday afternoon I picked up the stomach virus Lilli had last weekend. It's not the worst stomach thing we've ever had, just a bit inconvenient at times.

We did still bake our annual Halloween cookies on Saturday morning. I'm sure all my germs baked out. Here's just a couple of pictures, Brent took LOTS of great ones!


We did do a little Trunk or Treating close to home tonight, I was feeling a bit better after an afternoon nap, up until we had dinner! Ugh! She is way too excited about Halloween for her to miss out. I think even amidst a germ-y weekend we have our family costume sorted out for this year and I think it's going to be one of our best ever!

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Chattanooga, Part 5

The Final Chapter of Chattanooga!!! We made a last minute decision as we were leaving that we would have time to do Rock City and still be able to pick up Pippin before his doggie daycare closed. We knew she would really appreciate it, but she's still free and even though I knew I'd probably have to carry her through most of it we decided to go for it. And, since it's technically in Georgia and Georgia was a new state for her it was a good activity. This made state #12 for Lilli! (Tenn, Virginia, W Virginia, Kentucky, Kansas, Illinois, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Maryland, Delaware and Georgia!) I think early next year we're going to be adding Florida and the Caribbean, but that's another post!We got there fairly early but it was still pretty crowded (although nothing compared to when we left.) People seem to enjoy practically running through it (ridiculous since it's $19/person), so we were constantly letting people go around us so we could enjoy our adventure and take pictures. Princess was in an ever changing mood, so sometime she was hamming it up and other times a sulky little diva.
It's probably been about 12 years since Brent and I have been, and it really hasn't changed a bit!
She liked all the caves and the narrow passages, we'd say "Get Skinny!" and suck it all in. I'm really not sure how some people make it through!
She wasn't a bit scared of the swinging bridge, but that didn't surprise me. She isn't scared of much and just wouldn't even know to have a fear of something like that.
Our only family photo and she was in a funk. It's always interesting handing people Brent's massive camera. Most of the time there's not even good candidates of people who might be able to use it, so we don't have very many good ones of the three of us.
See 7 states!

Get skinny! A woman behind us was all worried about fitting through, and she wasn't even large.
Her favorite part was by far the "underground" Fairyland Caverns. She has a big love for wishing wells and loves throwing coins in there.
I remember seeing all this stuff when I was a kid, I think there's even a picture of me similar to this in front of one of the windows somewhere in a photo album.

We spent forever in the big fairytale glow room at the end. It's really quite odd, that room. We read each and every fairytale, a lot of them she already knows and sings about at home.
We came and we saw! It was a great little vacay and we definitely plan to do more long weekend trips to areas in driving distance. It was nice not messing with delayed flight and baggage restrictions for a change, although we will for sure not be cutting back on flying.
I am about one month away from another free flight with my Southwest Visa points and as Brent can tell you that will burn a hole in my pocket until I have it spent!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Chattanooga, Part 4

After we watched the penguins and sharks for a while we headed back to our hotel. It was a little windy and Lil is vigilant about keeping my hair in place.
After a brief nap, we headed back out for dinner and to walk around the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel.
This train ride scared her to death but she wouldn't admit it. It was awful - it just slung her around.
They had a train you could walk around on, a fine dining restaurant in a car, a pizza restaurant in a car, a restaurant with singing waitresses and then a regular restaurant. The singing waitress one had a twenty minute wait, so we just ate at the regular restaurant.
They also have turned the cars into hotel rooms. It would have been interesting but they're super overpriced and in the middle of all the shops and restaurants so I think it would've been a bit noisy.
We had a great day in Chattanooga and all slept so well that night!!

Monday, October 24, 2011

Chattanooga, Part 3

After we had some lunch we walked over to the Creative Discovery Children's Museum. This is the third Children's Museum Lilli has been to (Chicago and Baltimore) and the smallest, but it was still nice. The first area is a water play area, nothing like getting them soaked before they do all the other exhibits!
She didn't enjoy the 4 and under play area all that much, it was pretty juvenile.
Of course the annoying thing about a children's museum is all the other kids whose parents let them pretty much run wild and get up in your space. I think Lilli's face says it all. She's not much on the older kids who try to "baby" her. She's way too independent for that.
They had all kinds of musical instruments, play stages and areas for kids to be creative.

This pair of kids came through things like a tornado.
They even had a working bee area showing how bees make honey and run a hive.

On the roof they even had some play spaces complete with hula hoops.
In the lobby we saw a brochure for the Moon Pie store. It made it seem like a neat place, but it was just a small storefront with candy and some toys. Pretty disappointing, but we still got some Moon Pies and RCs!
When we were walking back towards our car we passed a theater. She got SO excited to see the Lion King poster. Last night she was telling me we were going to go back to the theater and see Lion King again and eat more popcorn. I tried telling her next time we'd see a different movie and she thought that was just hilarious.

Our aquarium passes were good for in and out all day, so we asked her if there was anything she wanted to see again and she wanted to visit the penguins. It was SO much more crowded than before, but the penguins were really active and putting on quite a show, zipping in and out of the water. We just sat back and let her watch as long as she wanted to.

We had a great time visiting the aquarium and downtown Chattanooga.

Tomorrow is DATE NIGHT!! We're going to see Wicked at TPAC, it's the Wicked Witch's side of the story and we've never had a chance to see it yet. Lilli has a big evening planned too - Stephanie is coming to watch her and they're going to make homemade pizzas and carve pumpkins. Brent said he might skip the musical and hang out here at home!!

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Chattanooga, Part 2

It's probably been about 10 years since Brent and I last went to the aquarium in Chattanooga. They've made the area a little campus, and now there's two buildings instead of just one. The new building has all of the penguins, sharks and some other big exhibits.
Lots of big windows with a great view of the River and downtown Chattanooga.
Hamming it up. Most of the exhibits had nice low seats to enjoy the fish.
Sometimes on some of the bigger exhibits she wouldn't touch the glass because she didn't believe it was real.

So mesmerized she had her nose pressed up to the glass. Fish/water animals really are her favorite.

Petting the sting rays
We found it! The Nemo tank!
Practically every kid had their own cameras and one boy had his IPad he was taking pictures of the fish with. So then of course Lilli wanted to take pictures with my IPhone.
I like how you can see she's mostly taking pictures of the shark and just a little bit of me...
And now I travel with two photographers everywhere I go....