Author: Elsa

We stayed the night in Chattanooga. In the morning we headed to Ruby
Falls. I have seen the signs for Ruby Falls and Lookout Mountain so
many times in my life on drives to Florida or trips to the Smokey
Mountains. I had no idea the falls were 1100 feet underground
literally within Lookout Mountain. You start the trip by taking an
elevator down into the mountain. The cave has no natural openings so
it was only found when Leo Lambert started drilling to get to Lookout
Mountain Cave. That cave was used by both the North and the South
during the civil war for a variety of reasons including a hospital.
Ruby Falls Cave ended up being far more scenic and popular than the
Lookout Mountain Cave.

Maggie made us reservations at Sunflower Cafe, one of the vegetarian
restaurant's in Atlanta. We met Mat's friend Jason for dinner. My
salad and the sesame chicken were great. The tofu/ratatouille dish
pictured was presented very nicely but overall not too tasty.

Rosa takes advantage of some down time at the airport to continue her
game of Scrabble on the iphone with Joe. She did not like all the
vowels she had to deal with in her turn. Monti came down with Hand,
Foot, and Mouth disease before we started our trip to Tennessee. Her
mouth was full of sores which made in near impossible for her to eat.
She was on constant Motrin and could only eat shakes and popsicles.
The sores in her mouth lasted about three days in total. Luckily she
didn't get the sores anywhere else so it was easier to keep the virus
contained. Dahlia never ended up with it.

We stopped at the Atlanta airport to pick up Maggie. We had an hour to kill before she arrived. The airport was full of soldiers who we figured must not be returning home because none of them looked happy. The ants paraded the ceiling beams of the baggage claim area.

We headed off to Tennessee for Joe's grandma's wake and funeral. It
was a nine hour drive from The Villages in Florida. I was thrilled to
find an actual outlet in the back of the van I could plug into. I took
advantage of the time to finish up some previous blogging posts. Monti
listened to the audio book James and the Giant Peach as we headed
through Georgia. Rosa was an attentive co-pilot keeping Joe and Carl
entertained by reading them Trivial Pursuit cards. Joe's ability to
recall names and dates on a variety of topics only angered me. He
always claims his memory is just not as good as mine when he can't
remember a conversation we had the week before. I guess our
conversations are just not as important as knowing the name of Sir
Edmond Hillary's sherpa.

The girls had a chance to see GG before she headed off to Tennessee.
Dahlia wasn't sure what to think of the whole body in a casket. At 4
years old she seemed more curious than sad. Besides experiencing
Lumpy's death a few months earlier this was their first exposure to
death. Monti seemed to watch the adults to determine how she should
act. I was glad they had the chance to say goodbye to GG in a smaller
setting before attending the larger wake.

This poor guy had been waiting too long to catch his delayed flight.
The late Duane Hanson is the artist who created this very lifelike
sculpture. His home state of Florida was a perfect place to study one
of his favorite subjects, tourists.

My dad has been retired for about 9 months now. He has taken over some
of the household chores that my mom has been doing for 40 years. He
believes he has perfected many of the typical kitchen skills
including loading a dishwasher and making ice. His boasts would make
you believe that loading the dishwasher is a technical skill requiring
years of training. Many would think it is impossible to screw up
ice… not my dad. His ice cubes go through a thorough quality control
process. Ice cubes are rejected if they exceed a certain height and if
they crack up during the removal process.

While traveling you eat at a variety of restaurants but usually the kid’s menus only vary slightly. Last week I read an article criticizing the high amount of calories in an average kid’s meal so when the kids browsed the menu at the Irish Pub we ate at I was not surprised to see a crazy fried concoction called cheese macaroni bites. They took the default mac n’ cheese and fried up spoonfuls of it to make little cheesy macaroni nuggets. Unfortunately the girls really enjoyed the chef’s creative creation.

Gabe has grown about 6 inches in the last year. I think the next time
I see him he will pass me up. When Gabe was two he was our ring bearer
at our wedding. He never made it down the aisle due to a typical 2
year old tantrum.