There's No Place Like Roam

Graham and I went to see Thomas the Train this weekend at the Tennessee Valley Railway. We went with my friend Gayle and her 3 year old son, Brody. The boys had the best time and were ecstatic during the train ride. They were shrieking "ALL ABOARD" during the entire ride!

This past Sunday was Mother's Day. It started out for me with breakfast in bed. (Eggo waffles on a paper plate and an orange Capri Sun squeezed into a glass.) So cute! Around 10:00 I convinced the guys to take me to The Chattanooga Market . I had been seeing advertisements about the market since Jason was interviewing with Volkswagen and I couldn't wait for May to get here so I could check it out! It was better than I hoped for. So much to see, eat and buy! And we didn't even stay until the music started! Hunter and I bought some HUGE pretzels from the Bluff View Bakery . Carter bought three heirloom tomato plants for his garden, and Jason bought a huge SLAB of hummingbird cake. We also picked up a gallon of strawberries that had been picked that morning. Below you can see a picture of part of the market, along with a bowl of the berries that I have all ready to be baked into a cobbler. YUM! We can't wait to go back!

Oh. My. Goodness. These people were obsessed with wallpaper. Most of you know that I am not working outside of the house right now. Ideally I would be able to start a job when the boys start to school in the fall. Right now my goal is to get this wallpaper removed before school is out for the summer. Its not looking like I'm going to make my deadline. Its not the wallpaper that you can see that is the problem. It's what lies beneath. I've started working on two rooms so far and both of them had double layers of wallpaper and borders. Not only are there two layers, but the bottom layer has been painted over, which makes it virtually impossible to remove! ARGH! That's ok though, because we got a good deal on the house and I'm not working right now. At least the completed projects will add value to the house. I'm usually not so good about taking pictures of before and after, so I went through the house snapping pictures of the "before" so you can at least...

Well, this Easter was not traditional by any stretch of the imagniation. Well, we had a ham, and hunted Easter eggs, but that was about it as far as traditions go. Since my grandmother passed away, the Hammonds no longer get together for Easter and since we don't have a church family yet in TN, we just celebrated at home. Luckly we had lots of company. Jim & Jackie came up and so did my brother and his family. We had a good time and the kids were glad to be able to play with their cousin Patrick.

During our spring break excursions we visited Harrison Bay State Park . By the way, Harrison Bay is the OLDEST state park in Tennessee. I believe the park has 1200 acres, along with 40 acres of shoreline on Lake Chickamauga. I'm sure we didn't see the entire thing, but they have an Olympic-sized pool, tennis courts, fishing, camping, a playground, ping-pong tables under a pavilion, shuffleboard, you name it. It was not very crowded while we were there, but I bet it gets pretty busy in the summer! This park is about 15 minutes from our house, so maybe our friends will be able to tie in a visit to the McKinney's with a family camping trip some day!

While we were in Collegedale, TN visiting the Imagination Station we tried out one of the walking/biking trails which lead us to the Veterans Memorial Park . The kids were blown away at this neat little park which has a massive American flag in the center, surrounded by all 50 state flags on the peremeter of the circular path. I've included some photos below. We did most of our exploring during spring break, so I hope we get to do a little more over summer break, before I find a job.

For those of you that clicked on my Facebook link thinking you were going to read my opinion on college football, get on back to Facebook. You obviously don't know me very well and are just being nosy. Ha! Anyway, Jason and I were laughing yesterday about how the differences in living on acreage vs. subdivision living had not turned out quite like we thought. At our last home in Alabama we had about four acres, and both of our neighbors had at least 20 acres, so we felt like we were in the middle of the country. Horses in the front yard and coyotes howling at night. The whole shebang. When we moved to Tennessee we were able to move into a comparable house, but we couldn't afford the same type acreage in the school district we wanted. So we eventually found a home with a decent sized lot and a few trees in a semi-private backyard. While we were in Alabama, we only saw one snake. A 8 inch garter snake that I stepped on barefoot. That's it. Not even after they came through the...

We found the neatest little park about 10 minutes from the house. The wooden play structure is huge and each part of it was donated by different people in the community. They also have miles of walking/biking trails. Below are some pictures of the boys during the week we discovered the park.