Spring Break - Chattanooga style

Dear Abigail,

This week, Mimi and Emily and Katie were all on spring break and so Aunt G planned a little trip to Chattanooga! They (all those mentioned plus Aunt G and John Michael) came to our house Monday night and spent the night. Mimi got to put you down and a taste of the 'new' Abigail sleep patterns. Yes, we're still adjusting to your change of pace for ways to go to sleep, but it's slowly but surely getting better.

Tuesday morning we got up and got going super early, well, by 8, but still, early for this crew to hit the road! We arrived by 10 to a beautiful day! Unfortunately, we had planned doing the aquarium that day, which means we were going to be indoors mostly, but we were still able to embrace the pretty day a little at lunch and dinner!

You love the aquarium! You loved running with Emily and going from one fish to another, or whatever creature it was. You did NOT want to pet Mr. Ray or any of his friends, and instead preferred to just look in on them. You also preferred to run the other direction when the big shark swam by! You didn't quite get it that it was in a tank and couldn't get you, but you did get that sharks are super scary. Maybe Nemo has a little more impact on you than I thought!!

After a couple hours in the first part of the museum, we headed out to get our bellies full. I just knew you'd fall asleep on our walk back, but no, no - you had to keep up with Em, no doubt! And you did! We went through the second half of the museum and by the end of that Mommy needed a nap, but not you!! So instead we headed over to the Imax theatre to watch "Born to be Wild". You did so good in the movie and every time the screen went black (like changing scenes) you'd say "What happened?" After the movie we headed to our hotel, and when I say hotel I don't really mean "hotel" - I mean more like a train car. Not even "like", I mean a train car! That's right - we stayed on a train car!!! We stayed at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Resort and our room was an actual train car, like step on the stool to get inside, all metal frame, little bitty windows down the side, train car!! It was quite unusual, but fun nonetheless.

After we got comfortable with our new surroundings, we decided to take a little swim in the indoor pool. You were super excited to swim and had no problems jumping on in! And again, and again and again! You jumped off the side and swam all by yourself all over the pool - minus the 10+ 17 year old guys that took up a lot of the room in the pool, and made Mommy (and Mimi) very nervous as they were rough housing just a little too much for my liking. Yes, Katie was excited about that, and I think Em was too, unfortunately!

After a good swim, we headed back to find some pizza for dinner but the pizza place was closed. We DID discover an ice cream parlor though, and you insisted we eat ice cream. It was getting late though and we had to find dinner, so I told you we'd get it - eventually... Not sure if you heard the eventually part though.

After a quick dinner at Panera Bread, we headed back to the 'car' and we all crashed fairly quickly. It rained really really hard that night and it sounded extra loud on our metal roof, but it was kind of nice, after your nerves calmed down a bit. You slept just fine, or well, you slept like you normally do, and of course, go to sleep with Mimi. Poor Mimi got you a cute little Bunny pillow pet but all you wanted was Emily's penguin one! Go figure...

Wednesday morning, we woke up and headed out to the Children's Museum where you played on a ship, and did sketches, and dug for dinosaur bones, and played with a lot of different music instruments and lots and lots of other things. After many hours of play, we headed to get lunch and finally found our pizza, and better yet, Mommy's favorite pizza - Mellow Mushroom! We had a yummy, and filling, lunch but right beside the pizza place, guess what we saw? A Ben and Jerry's - that's code for Ice Cream! So, of course, we HAD to get some because you were so good both days and listened to both me and Mimi so well and all your poor heart wanted was ice cream, so - you got your ice cream. You and Mimi split an ice cream, but according to Mimi, you ate most of it. You even called Mimi out when she took too big of a bite!!! And your clothes and mouth proved that you loved it! Slowly but surely that sweet tooth is popping out! After lots of hugs and kisses, we told Mimi and the gang goodbye and me and you got in the car to head back to Nashville while they headed back to Memphis. You were asleep before we even got out of the parking lot and slept the ENTIRE way home - all 2 hours. You've never slept that much in a car - never. I'm pretty positive you were worn out, no doubt!!

We had such a good time and we're so happy Aunt G thought of this little trip! Me and you and Daddy need to go back for a little mini vacation soon, and we'll make sure to get pizza and ice cream, again, for sure!!!

Oh, and I am sure you are rather shocked right now that I don't have any pictures, but that's because we used Mimi's camera. Mommy hates when every single one of us has a camera and we're all trying to get teh same exact picture, at 3 different times! So I surrendered my camera and Mimi promised to send me all of hers!! I did get one on my camera, as we were walking in...

You had so much fun with Mimi!!! You were so sad to see her go and even cried Wednesday night because you wanted her to put on your jammie jams... Never fear though baby girl, she's headed back in a few days!!!

Love you!!!!!