Nashville Bound

Saturday, the kids and I hopped in the car and drove up to Nashville to visit with my family while Craig is on the mission trip. It's an annual trip that we take and it's a good time to just relax with my parents, sister and brother-in-law. Usually we simply drive straight through, except for a stop for lunch. However, this year I decided to make a small detour in Chattanooga. I had spoken to my dad and he had planned to drive down and meet us for a special treat for the kids. Craig and I decided to buy an annual pass to the Chattanooga Aquarium and Saturday would be the day that we bought the tickets and made our first trip in a few years. I was looking forward to surprising the kids, who had no idea.

We were eating lunch when Dad drove up in the parking lot to meet us. The trip was also a good "excuse" for Dad to get out and drive his motorcycle around for a while. Xander is completely enamored with motorcycles right now and he saw Dad drive up on his bike right away. Well, he actually saw the bike in the parking lot right away. I don't think he knew it was Dad until he came up to us in the restaurant.

The aquarium was great. We had so much fun checking out all of the undersea life. The girls got to pet a stingray - Xander kept splashing the water in the tank and was wondering why no rays were coming to him. We saw penguins, tons of fish, sharks, huge manta rays, alligators, jellyfish, frogs and turtles. A pretty good variety of wildlife to observe.

Looking out over the Tennessee River from the top of the aquarium

what cute kids Xander loves the turtles Gator sighting
Chillin with the penguins
Trinity pets one of the sharks
What an amazingly interesting leopard ray
Tons of fish
Splashing in the ray pool
Trying to pet the rays

They have a lovely butterfly garden which was lots of fun. The girls fully understood that if you moved pretty slowly and were gentle, that you could "pet" a butterfly. Xander (wanting to do everything the girls do) thought he wanted to pet a butterfly. Really, he just wanted to look at it and think about petting it. He would move his finger close to one and then suddenly pull it away. If the butterfly decided to fly away, it would freak him out, leading to a few screams and one very fearful sobbing episode. Yes, my son is afraid of flying butterflies.

No, she's not tired at all. Why would you think that?

Following our travels through the aquarium, we headed outside and let the kids play around in the concrete creek. We thought it would be one more way to help the kids get some energy out and cool off a bit. They had a blast!!! Mental note for myself - the next trip to the aquarium, we need to bring swimsuits, towels and a change of clothes. What a great detour!!