See Rock City

Our Chattanooga adventure came to a close yesterday. We drove back to Nashville and went to Christy's house to see her and Hannah and Benjamin. We ended up at the mall - funny how that works - and rode the merry-go-round. Later we got a call from The Chanticleer Bed and Breakfast. We left our pillows! AAaaargh! They're going to mail them to us.

Here I am hanging up our newest ornament we bought on our Chattanooga adventure. We like to buy ornaments from the places we visit during the year.







Today we spent the day straightening and cleaning because all of the grandbabies and their parents are ALL coming to our house to spend the week! Woo-hoo! It will be so much fun!

There's an old saying, "God willin' and the creek don't rise." Well, the creek is up! But you can still get to Grani's house!

Grani and Papa's Chattanooga Adventure Continues

After our afternoon nap - I know, it's a tough life, but somebody has to live it...

Anyway, after our afternoon nap we headed to Chattanooga for supper. We went to this nice restaurant but it was closed for the holidays. There was obviously a wreck on I-24, so a thousand cars were headed down the street we needed to turn on to so we headed in the other direction and ended up at Cracker Barrel. I only mention this so I can show you that I played the silly jump-the-pegs game and LOOK AT THIS, I won! Grani was so proud she took my picture!





After supper we headed to Rock City. They have a wonderful Christmas light show this time of year. Somehow the Christmas lights idea never took off during July. Ha! Just a little joke. OK, not a very good one. The lights were beautiful.






After walking for an hour or so in the cold we headed to Starbucks. Yes, there is a Starbucks right across from Rock City. The hot chocolate was delicious! The only problem with Starbucks is that it smells like coffee, but I guess most people don't seem to mind.

Papa and Grani's Chattanooga Adventure

There are a lot of really fun things to see and do in Chattanooga.

First, we were really excited to find a place to eat on Christmas night that wasn't a bar. The City Diner had great food and incredible cakes and pies. We had Coca-Cola cake for dessert.




Chattanooga is below the clouds here. (Wednesday morning.)





Before lunch we went to Ruby Falls. We drove to downtown Chattanooga, but everything in the Art District was still closed at 10:00 this morning so went drove back up the mountain to Ruby Falls. Ruby Falls is awesome.


There is a 145 ft. tall waterfall 1120 ft. underground! http://www.rubyfalls.com/geology.htm Wow!


And I got to be the caboose of our tour group. Every time we stopped the tour guide would say, "Lyndel, are you back there?"
It's a burden being famous everywhere you go.... Oh, and we met a girl - she worked at Ruby Falls - and her name was Lyndal.

Outside of Ruby Falls is a great view of Chattanooga.





Just before lunch today we went to the Hunter Museum of American Art. Grani said it was part of my Christmas present. She gets a little tired looking at the paintings and looks much faster than I do. They had some beautiful paintings. A large part of their collection is from 1850-1900. They wouldn't let me take pictures inside, but here we are outside.







Now we're back at the Bed and Breakfast - the Chanticleer Inn. Grani is napping while I type. We walked a lot today. Our room as an outside and and inside entrance.

A surprise for Papa

Merry Christmas!

Grani had a surprise for Papa! She told me to pack a bag and we got in the car and headed East on I-24.

We ended up on top of Lookout Mountain overlooking Chattanooga just a few steps away from the world famous Rock City! How fun is that? We're staying at the Chanticleer Inn. Look how pretty it is!

The only problem with traveling on Christmas Day is that there are no restaurants open! So look what we had for lunch.

We spent some of the afternoon in the lobby. Bing Crosby's Christmas album plays over and over again... but the place is very lovely as you can see.

Merry Christmas from Grani and Papa!

Happy Birthday Haven!

Haven is 4!



Happy Birthday Haven! Grani and Papa love you very much!

Nativity

I wanted to remind everyone that I have another blog - http://www.hilldaleworship.blogspot.com/

I've had over 5,000 hits since it started! Wow!
Today I posted pictures of some of my Nativity sets and a little information about "Nativity." There are at least three still up in the attic, but you can see several of them here

http://hilldaleworship.blogspot.com/2007/12/nativity.html



I pray you all will have a very Merry Christmas!

Papa's Christmas Tree and a New Ornament

Papa finally has his tree up. It's not finished being decorated, but we just take things a step at a time these days.

Each year Grani and Papa buy a new Christmas ornament with all of the grandbabies' names on it. (Gibson and Haven would make sure you knew they are not babies if they knew you were reading this.) We used to buy a new ornament each year for each grandchild and each big kid too (moms and dads) but that was adding up very quickly.

Notice how quickly we go from two names to five! How many names will be on next year's ornament? Only Haley and Christy know the answer to that!

Papa and Christmas!

A friend of mine in Joelton called me "The Christmas King"! That's because I reeeealllllly love Christmas and like to do everything up BIG! However, that keeps me very busy and there isn't much time for blogging. However, I have been blogging on my church blog to keep everyone up to date on "the Tree". (and - horrors - here it is December 7 and I don't have one single tree up at home. This is bad!) If you want to see what I've been up to go to http://www.hilldaleworship.blogspot.com/


And you may not know, that as Christmas King, I collect Nativity sets. Here is a picture of my newest one. I bought it in honor of two of my grandbabies.

Opryland Lights

Nothing says Christmas like seeing all the lights at Opryland Hotel with family and 50,000 tourists! Its the perfect thing to get you in the Christmas spirit.

A Morning With Papa

My goodness! It's been over a month since I posted. Grani and Papa have been crazy busy on the weekends and there were two or three weeks that we were never home in the evenings either, so no time for posting.





This morning Papa and Benjamin got to spend the morning together! "Where was everyone else?", you may ask. Mommy is in Georgia at a women's conference. Daddy is out with the guys playing paintball. Hannah and Grani (Gimmi as Hannah calls her) were in bed asleep. We had a looong night together. Hannah woke up about 2, then Benjamin woke up and, long story short, the only way we were able to sleep at all - although Hannah was up for about three hours - was for everyone to pile into Grani and Papa's bed. Hannah finally fell asleep on top of Grani (ending up only staying asleep if she was in the crook of Grani's arm) and Benjamin slept under (almost under) Papa.





So when Benjamin woke up this morning he and Papa spent the morning together while Grani and Hannah slept. After a bottle and a diaper change we were ready for a fun morning.





Papa makes a good jungle gym.





Benjamin is the fifth grandbaby to have fun with the ball tower.





After a fun morning of playing together the boys fall asleep about 10:30.

A Photo Shoot at Sears

Ooooo, it was lots of fun! Easy for me to say, I wasn't there! But look how great the pictures turned out. Not too bad. You can kind of tell that they weren't all exactly thrilled to be there.

Adoption Day!

What a great day. I wish everyone could hear and see what happens in court for an adoption. There are some wonderful spiritual parallels. They say things like "your heir as if he was born naturally to you."

We had a whole bunch of Littletons and Davises there to celebrate with Christy, Daniel, Hannah and Benjamin. (Grani is behind Hannah's hair!)

Here is Banjamin Jaylin Davis and family with the judge.

All of the Grandbabies Are Here!





Tomorrow they are getting their pictures made together in matching outfits. toooo cute. And then Tuesday is Adoption Day! Check back for pictures!

Papa and Benjamin

Hannah's new chair. Actually, it's Hannah's Momma's chair from when she was a little girl. It was in Papa's attic.