Weekend Trip to Cleveland, TN

We took our trip to say good-bye to our good friends. It was a fun trip and it was fraught with all those things that are par for the course when it comes to my kids. Story to come, other than that, I was able to relax and just forget the house, to do list, and just have some fun with Tammy. That was a nice change. It was also really nice to see Tom, her husband home safe from Iraq, his third straight deployment. Fourth deployment if you count the fact that he went to Desert Storm, which of course you count. Seeing redeployment up close was interesting, to say the least. I know I am in for it when Dan comes home. I am not saying anything about Tom and Tammy. They are awesome, I love them. You imagine living on your own for 15 months and not having a fun transition at the end of it.

The first night the kids went to a Parent's Night Out at their church, nice. We just went out to dinner and talked. The next day the older boys had their football games. Tom took the boys and Punx and DD. This is where the story comes in. I stayed at home with Bug and Tammy with her two little ones. We get a call about an hour or so after they left. It's Tom. He's asking how everything is going, everything alright, meanwhile Tammy can hear DD crying and yelling in the background. We were neighbors of a duplex for seven months, she knows DD's sound. Just spit it out. DD was over by a tree and kicking fun little hills of dirt. Only they weren't. She starts running and screaming once she feels the ants all over her legs biting every where up and down her legs. Give it to the ants, it would appear they had synchronized the time for starting the attack. Tom takes her to the family bathroom and nervously tells her she has to take off her pants. He has three boys and one baby girl he is just now getting acquainted with. Her legs are covered in ants. As she dances around, Tom is trying to brush them off her and shake off her pants. Luckily, Tammy's mom was there to watch the game and she brought DD home for some cortisone treatment. Her legs were covered with angry red welts.

After everyone got back, we went to Chattanooga to go to Rock City, a garden of sorts. On the way there I look at DD face to see a red dotted rash across the bridge of her face. We stop at the next pharmacy at drug her up with benadryl and motrin. The dots didn't fade until the next day. But the next morning all the kids were so zombie that I decided church was not in our future and just headed home. We got home in record time and I got to nap, bonus, even if the kids didn't. It was for the best since they went to bed right on time that night to be bright and eager for school on Monday.

Back to Rock City. That place was really cool. It is this cool rock formation place in the high hills outside the city in Georgia. You just walk around the rocks and gardens, sometimes squeeze through these tight places. Even a couple caverns. Then up to the top at Lover's Leap where on a clear day you can see 7 states. We had to walk across a bridge to get there, the swing bridge. The whole time I am thinking of Short Round on the Temple of Doom, "Strong Wood, Strong Wood." as he about falls through. It wasn't made of wood but I didn't like it at all. When I stepped off it, I had some vertigo and had to sit down, it was weird. I've never had that before. We were at a higher altitude there than where I live, and I actually don't do well with altitude changes so I think that was it. As a kid growing up at the grand altitude of 99 ft above sea level, I have had my fair share of altitude sickness and fainting at girl's camp. But it's been at while since I've been through anything like that.

The best and worst part was the last cavern we walked through. I was still a little woozy so the walls closed in on me sometimes but it was made up for by what they had done to the cavern. The made it into a fairyland, wait let me put that into quotes, into a "fairyland." It was so hideously wonderful. The best part was they used gnomes for a lot of the characters. Creepy little gnome mother goose rhymes. I was so mortified and pleased and the same time. It was too dark, no pictures came out. At the end in a huge room was this horrible castle with all these gnome demon kids doing mother goose rhymes in sing-song voices like some travesty of It's a Small World under black light. It was the high-light of the trip. If I did drugs, I am sure that would be the place to drop and then go take a stroll. Although, maybe for me, just walking on the swing bridge and then walking through there is enough.

Now pictures that did come out...





One of those cheesy pictures they make you take when you enter an amusement park or go down a scary ride to get a good face, we have a great one of the kids at Busch Gardens, I'll have to scan those and put them in. Anyway, I just wanted to have a picture of all of us, well the two little ones are missing, oh well.





I like Bug's face, that was exactly how I felt.



Here's the view from Lover's Leap, and the little map to all the different states.





This is one of my favorite things about being in a military family and living in so many different places. Staying in one place and being settled how would I have ever found out that exotic places like this existed? This is what makes living in the South fun, they know how to name a town.