Would you like to know where the gassiest place was this weekend? Anywhere our trip took us!!!! On to the weekend update! I know you are all waiting with baited breath to find out how it went. As the weekend goes by you will see just how gassy it got…..
Starting with Thursday since everything was up in the air when I left you.
My husband hates me or wants me in a nut house ASAP! After a lot of figuring and hair pulling, mine not his, it was decided we would go. What the hell, we are always broke and this would be about the last weekend to go before school and such starts back. Well, this is when my darling, sweet husband decides he will see how insane he can make me how much I love him how much I love Little Miss if I cared if the littlest Hellion went with us. I got the whole but she would have more fun with another kid along, he would entertain her, he won’t cost that much more, I will make him mind, he will be my responsibility. I just cringed, but I knew there was no winning this. So he invited Littlest Hellion, who is 5 years old, to go with us! I knew his mom would agree, hell, that means she wouldn’t have him. So she gave us $40. to help out with feeding him and getting in to the places.
Littlest Hellion stayed with us Thursday night, because we were leaving EARLY on Friday morning! Oh, how funny, this group up early, yea, right. So the excited kids finally went to bed and went to sleep around 11 and the adults got in the bed around 12, last minute details to get together. I set my alarm for 6am. We were to leave at 6:30…..latest!
My alarm went off at 6am, I growled but I got up and had my coffee. I got dressed, I got completely ready. I was quick! I was done by 6:20! I was ready and waiting. And I waited, no need to get the kids up until hubs is up. I waited 6:30….6:45…..7am- Little Miss gets up scratching and saying, UH, Chattanooga! …..7:15…….7:30 hubs finally gets up…..7:45 he finally gets in the shower……7:50 Littlest Hellion gets up…..8:30 we are finally out the door! 2 hours late! I could have slept and drank my coffee in peace but NO we were leaving early!
So we are on the road, have to stop and get Littlest Hellions clothes. We also get snacks and a couple of portable DVD players….Thanks Red! So after another 30 minutes we are off! Before we got to Tennessee, it is decided the kids need headphones for said DVD players and a few more snacks. So we stop. Two different stores and finally we are off again. This is about the time both of the kids got gassy!! Every few minutes we heard *giggle* “AH, THAT FELT GOOD!!!!” * giggle* About every couple of miles and at every spot we stopped!!! I have never heard so much farting!!!!! And they thought it was hilarious!!!!!
About Signal Mountain, TN, I remember my camera will only take about 30 pictures before it runs out of memory, so stop we must. I get a memory card for my camera. Get to the car and find out it won’t work. But we were already on the road, so I will just deal with it! So we finally get to the Zoo, our first destination. It is a small zoo, not many animals, but I love animals so I am excited. The kids? Not so much.

Does this give you an idea of how the animals felt about me? Yes, every time I got out the camera, they ran to hide! How is this one……

The peacock that had escaped……hid from me, but I fooled him, I hunted him down and got the damn picture! This is the only animal to pose for me……..

The wanna-be porn star! Laid out all spread eagle begging to be photographed!
So how was the zoo? I would have enjoyed it if the kids would have allowed it! All they wanted to do was find a hotel with a pool and get there NOW! They damn near ran through the place! They had no interest in the animals finding anything out about them, nothing! Oh they did want to ride the carousal and get refreshments. Both they saw coming in!

Best picture of the day. They sat still for it! And they were doing what they wanted to do. The Refreshments, they did not get, we fed them like 15 minutes before we got there. So we were off to find a hotel with a pool!
We rode around, the first one……not a dump but not really nice either….100 bucks a night. The next place a fairly nice place……200 bucks a night! We moved on. The third place, hubs took, fairly nice, indoor pool and only 110 bucks for the night. He has no sense of adventure! I told him let’s drive around look some more! He said he needed to shit and was tired of driving. So we had a hotel. We disappointed the kids, we were off again. Raccoon Mountain……

The kids didn’t want to go cave crawling, they did not want to pan for gold, they didn’t want to do anything but go back to the hotel and get in the pool. So we traveled on! We went to another Hel-Mart to exchange the memory card that wouldn’t work. Turns out my camera is old and couldn’t handle the extra memory. So we bought disposable cameras. Three of them. Then it was off to Ruby Falls…..

We decided not to put out the 70 bucks to go through the cave, but we looked around and pissed the children off. It was really fun! I could get them to smile on occasion for the camera anyway. So the kids were ready to head back and we were not so we moved n to the next attraction! Rock City!!!

Waterfall picture courtesy of Little Miss. She had to have a picture of it!

Ignore how bad we look! We were hot and had been chasing children. I was still fine at this point, it was a little higher where my fear of heights come in to play!!!!
There was a few tight squeezes. My darling Little Miss chose this time to entertain the people in front of us, by saying, ” Let’s send Mom in first, if she makes it through we will all fit!” The people in front of us had to see how big Momma was and laughed all the way through! This is not the tightest squeeze we had….

I have a irrational fear of heights, I can not take it, I get dizzy and my fear for all around me goes into OVERDRIVE!!!! I spent the next little while yelling, ” Don’t climb on the railing!” “Don’t lean over that railing!” ” Slow down, don’t run! Look at how far you would fall!!!!” And I hate to admit it, but I didn’t keep it to the children who were with me. I yelled at other people’s children, other adults, my husband, even dogs! But I really did well considering…..

I couldn’t take the picture, I couldn’t go near the railing! I was hugging the rocks! I had to move along to a rock and sit down far away from the edge!! But hubby got this for me so I could see it! Isn’t it beautiful!!!!
The following pictures are not very good, but it was all in black light and glowing. I had to goose the hell out of all of these to be able to see them.






The pictures do not do this place justice, it is spooky and beautiful all at the same time. It is pitch black and all you can see is the figures.

This is the last picture I have, the rest are on the disposable cameras and they are now in the film cemetery! It is the area of the desk where all film goes and never gets developed! I promise you this, I have 2 disposable cameras from 2 years ago, a trip to Guntersville Lake. And 3 rolls of film from before I got my digital camera, 4-5 years ago!!!! So, hubby wouldn’t go yesterday and swears we will go tonight, we will see!
So from Rock City, we did manage to get the kids back to the hotel. We just had to torture them one last time…….Dinner first! To keep the great hissy fits down, we went to the Waffle House right next door to the hotel. This would have been the biggest mistake we made all weekend. We ate waffles, eggs, and sausage. Hubs had a burger, it cost us over 30 bucks!!!!! For freaking breakfast!!!!! I almost choked on my waffle.
So we finally got to the pool, hubs and I chose to sit on the sidelines. The chlorine smell could choke a horse! To say it was strong would be an understatement! We all ended up with headaches! The children got in the pool and were in it all of 30 minutes, they were done! Neither liked it. All day long all I heard was pool, and after 30 minutes they wanted out! I could have killed them. We went back to the room and changed and just rode around. We went to Hel-Mart and picked up more snacks and more disposable cameras, went back to Rock City and rode back down the mountain and looked at the city lights, we explored the city of Chattanooga, we just ran out gas.
We got back to the hotel around 10pm. We told the kids to go to sleep, it took them til about midnight, by that time I had developed a massive migraine and all I wanted was to go to sleep. Hubs had other ideas, but he was disappointed.
At 6am the city of Chattanooga decided to empty the dumpster right outside our window. So guess who was up again? Yes, that would be me! I had my coffee and sat and waited for my wonderful companions to finally get up. They did about 9am. Did I mention, check out was at 11. Breakfast was only served until 10am and all we could get was a NON SMOKING room!!!! Did I mention, I love my morning cigarette with my morning coffee? So we had to get 4 showers, packed and downstairs for breakfast. We somehow managed to get showers, packed and out of there with 15 minutes to spare before breakfast was gone. The kids ate and we were off.
The Tennessee Aquarium!!!! I hope the pictures from this place turn out! We went in the Ocean one first. The penguins!!!!!! My favorite. Only the kids wanted to see everything NOW and couldn’t wait for me to look at much!!! That and the people who took up residence at the windows. They weren’t taking pictures, videos, nothing! Some were just standing there and talking to each other. And I was having trouble seeing anything. I hope to upload pictures from it tomorrow. We did see sharks, a bunch of ugly fish, and I was able to pet a small shark and a stingray. The tank was deep and the stingray and shark stayed out of the kid’s reach. Little stinkers! I think they were a bit upset about it, but we saw the butterflies and they flitted around them, made it a little better.
Then they played in the cement creek between the two places and had a lot of fun! I got pictures of that too. Then it was off to the River one, I got a lot of pictures of ugly fish. There was a common theme between the 2 places…..A LOT of UGLY fish!!! I did see a few pretty fish, but most were downright ugly!!! I took a ton of pictures!
Then it was snack time again, more playtime in the cement creek. This time it was not wading, they decided to jump in, sit down and then lay down in the water. The Littlest Hellion dripped water down his legs for an hour, Little Miss almost as long. Her clothes were thinner than his. So we decided to do a bit of walking to let them dry. We went to a park, we walked to the Marina and looked at huge boats, I got pictures. We walked around town, saw a lot of old buildings. We rode a electric shuttle from one end of town and it took us to the other end of down town and dumped us out. I did get to see the Chattanooga Choo Choo. I got a few pictures. After all of this the kids were exhausted and ready to sit and we figured out if we got back on the shuttle it would carry us back to the car!!!
We finally got back to the car and was off. The kids started sniping at each other right about the Tennessee state line! So we were trapped in the car with 2 gripey kids!!!! We stopped at a McDonald’s to feed them, in hopes of settling them down. Little Miss hurt her ankle on the playground equipment, and she was bitchy! The Littlest Hellion was hogging the DS, the DVD player, the head phones. And get this we had TWO DVD players and headsets. But they both wanted to listen to the same CD. Only they couldn’t both listen to it. So the Littlest Hellion kept unplugging Little Miss’ headphones.
We stopped at Russell Cave in Alabama. I didn’t get pictures there. We went through the museum, but did not go down to the cave. The kids were ill. We stopped in Madison to clean the office before going home. Needless to say that did not go over well.
We finally got home and would you believe, the Little Hellion wanted to stay with us again!!! We sent him packing. But he didn’t go home, he only went to Mammaw’s, so first thing in the morning he was back.
On Sunday we cleaned up mom’s car and took it home. The Boy made it back from Florida and we all survived the weekend. I did get pissed, we were suppose to go to Hel-Mart to have my pictures put on disk and we didn’t. It was decided by hubs, we would wait until later. I got pissed but I cleaned the house and unpacked the clothes and felt better. So the Littlest Hellion finally went home at 7pm!!! I was ready for him to go home.
So how was your weekend? I hope to post the rest of the pictures soon. So I must go and finish cleaning and do a lot of washing!!! Tons ‘o washing! So until next time…….
HAVE A GREAT DAY AND THANKS FOR VISITING!!!!!!!!