Christmas on the Coosa Parade

A little selfie with my mini-me while we waited for the Christmas parade to begin last weekend.  Waited with our shoes and socks off, jackets off, and wishing for a lemonade on a sunny, 80 degree day for the Christmas parade....

And then the best float of the parade (seriously) arrived toward the end--they had Snoopy and Snoopy music ringing out through the heat... Never mind all of my boys were in there.

 

Well there was this random guy in his hot rod, who kind of looked like he had just crashed the parade route somewhere along the way...

 

 

And later we hit our picture perfect city park,

 

to join the masses at a Christmas market with kid rides. 

Kid ride side--I've never had a chance to stop and notice how miserable parents can look standing in line sometimes...but I'll keep those photos to myself.

Stop Touching Me

"Mommy, why are your legs so prickly?"

"Because I clearly need to shave them."

"Ouch! They hurt!"

"Stop touching me."

How We Spend Our Evenings

Nicholas is referee.

All I can think about is all of that skin sticking to the furniture.

I love that Elaine is capable in the midst of a wrestling match to stop and pose. But ask her to stand in a group and pose for a picture and it is drama...

This Is A Rocket Ship

The crew looks like they are enjoying themselves on their space flight after Nicholas gassed it up and Benjamin fixed some holes in the exterior. The fun lasted a minute before a fight broke out over who would be in the pilot seat. In the beginning it was just Ben's rocket ship. Then Nicholas joined in the back. Then the babies joined and not having the ability to truly understand the seriousness of the matter they climbed in the front, they hit their brothers, they stole the front portion of the rocket ship and attempted to drag it away. And then we all just fell apart. Alida has apparently been shot into space over there.

This is typical.

Then Along Came Ben

Remember Stuntman Ben?

Now it is Stuntman Nicholas.

With a twist.

The Saturday Outing: That Was A Brilliant Idea

Friday: We drove. We drove. We drove. We drove.

To get to this.

But it turned out to be this.

Still looks nice, but when you wind down the day huddled in the bathroom making strategies for the weekend to keep from waking the children after driving 8 hours across the state, it is disappointing. Never mind that we had to turn on the air conditioner because we were literally sweating sitting in this room. (I know I'm a fan of cold, but even he was getting angry stewing in his own juices. We considered not even putting pajamas on the children.) With no separate bedroom as we had requested and a gigantic family size jacuzzi tub IN the room with us with tiled, hard-edged stairs around it waiting for someone to crack their head open, we decided to abandon the very touristy Pigeon Forge the following morning.


But not before making a stop in the bit more lovely Gatlinburg to see some sharks. It was cold out and a group hug was in order as the ticket master demanded military id cards for all five of us huddled there. (Yes, five. Benjamin did not grow another pink arm.) After Patric nearly jumped the desk, Ticket Master let us get away with adult id cards for entry. And I will say, $9 for a family of six to the aquarium is a pretty darn good price.

And we stumbled upon these guys right inside the door.

And more.

And that was awesome. This time Benjamin was the only one willing to participate in my hopefully group of four shot.

Sharks. The highlight for me.

And then we stopped and saw Santa.

That's enough for that tradition isn't it?

And after saving money on the second night in the hotel, we let the children pick out something in the gift shop. And THAT kept them happy for about five minutes.

And then, we drove. We drove. We drove. We drove back.

And 15 minutes from our exit the Interstate stopped and the low gas light blinged on. And we sat for half an hour with a flood of toys, angry children, and thoughts of having to walk home. So we turned around, made it to a gas station, and put 19.2 gallons of gas in our 20 gallon tank. Yikes.

And Saturday evening we made it home and tucked everyone in and were so very glad we had the return trip out of the way.

Two Questions Kids

Ben. What are you doing to Elaine?

Elaine. Why aren't you bothered by him biting off your toes or putting you in a headlock?

Together

Our backyard is a pretty good size for our family.

Particularly when they all want to play right on top of each other.

They can be corralled, which is helpful in public.

And just try to spread those chairs apart.
You'll get a sure meltdown from at least two if you do.