Chattanooga trip

So a couple weekends ago, we woke up and decided we had to get out of town! Kind of silly but really exciting to have a couple of days of family vacation. We picked Chattanooga because it was close and had a bunch of fun things to do. We went to the aquarium, the Imax theater, the children's hands-on museum, walked by the river to look at the boats, swam at the hotel, rode an old trolley, and visited an organic farm. So fun!

Esther looking at stingrays at the Tennessee Aquarium.  You were supposed to be able to touch them, but they didn't come close enough for her to reach.

 Discovered that Jesse became very unhappy when he was left in the stroller while we all looked at something exciting. So we took him out to see a lot more than we had planned ...

We got to see a lot of fun exhibits.  I think the penguins were my favorite.  They had a baby penguin and some mother/father pairs sitting on nests of eggs.

But maybe the coolest was the butterfly garden.  It was a greenhouse type room full of beautiful flowers and butterflies!  One finally landed on us, and Esther got to hold it.  She was so excited. I have to admit, I was excited to hold a butterfly too.

Then we went to the Children's Museum.  Esther enjoyed pretending she was a doctor in the doll "clinic" and playing in the giant bee hive/honeycomb.  Jesse enjoyed the water tables and driving the toddler sized car.  Then there's me and Jesse playing with tinker toys, which Tyler enjoyed most of all.

We stayed the second night at the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel.  We used Hotwire, so we didn't actually get to pick but it turned out to be a fun experience.  The lobby area was the original train station and we slept in a room on the actual train.  Odd, but fun.  Esther is playing with an old phone booth and standing on one of the train cars.

There were also beautiful grounds to explore, and a huge model train display that Tyler loved.  And this is where we rode the old trolley, but no pictures of that.

Then we stopped at a small organic farm.  We saw baby chickens, baby cows, and lots of pigs.  The older cows and sheep were off in a pasture so we missed them.  We explored the milking station and and berry garden.  Very inspiring.  Maybe one day we will have something like this!

Oh, a few more details with no pictures ... at the Imax theater, while we were waiting to be seated, Esther tried to befriend a little girl.  The girl dismissed her, but then her brother came over and said Esther could play with him.  Well, from that moment, he was absolutely taken with Esther.  He stayed with her until time to go into the theater, and then he wanted her to sit with him.  Parents declined, but he waved to her when he got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the movie and then found her after the movie.  Wow.  If we lived near each other, I'd have them over for a play date ... or maybe not.  ;)

Also, while we were looking at the boats a family of ducks swam right over to us.  There was a father, mother, and six ducklings.  This was especially fun because we had just read the book "Make Way for Ducklings" so Esther called them Mr. and Mrs. Mallard!  I loved it, and Esther was excited to see the book come to life.

That was our trip ... a nice mini-vacation.  : )