A Week in Tennessee- August 5-11

In Tennessee, we joined Papa, Granny and Jaime for a relaxing week.  We slept late and proved to be the laziest ever.  The week was spent taking rides on Papa's boat, going to get gas and feed the fish, jumping into the hot tab and reading books.  Yifat's favorite activity was a swim in the Lake with Doug and the kids and a date with Doug.  We went to see "The Fault in our Stars", which was a very sad and romantic movie.  Yifat cried buckets and Doug provided the mascular shoulder to cry on.  It was the first movie they saw together in months.  The kids favorite activity, besides the swim in the Lake and hearing Mom singing kids' songs, was our trip to Gatlinburg, to WonderWorks, with Granny, Papa and Jaime.

WonderWorks is a combination of science exhibits, hand-on exploration, laser tag, magic and everything in-between.  It inhabits an upside-down house, whose roof touches the ground and its base reaches the sky.  Inside, it is fully furnished with tables and chests sprouting from the ceiling and stairs going to the ceiling.  The house seems to have been uprooted by a big hurricane or a tornado (what do I know about these, being in the West?  Anyways, one of these must have done the damage…).  That house will give the Winchester house in California a run for its money!

We had a great time inside the hands-on exhibits.  Charlie and Joy loved the space walk, which had a 1.5 hour wait for it.  They stood patiently (or not so patiently) in line, yet announced the experience as a very worthwhile one.  The room is dark and simulates space, while you have to go through a high obstacle course, up high in the air, attached to a harness.   Both kids loved it, while mom was saying prayers for their safety and practicing s-l-o-w breathing, watching them up there.  There were also a lot of monitors where you could have answered questions to check your scientific knowledge, that we all were interested in.  We got special hair-dos at the earthquake simulator and all of us learned a lot about space, hurricanes, tornados etc.  Jaime was taking lots of videos of everything while Papa and Granny were enjoying the grandkids in their daring space walk.  Charlie was mesmorized by the robotic arm, trying to use that arm to stack cubes on top of each other.  It is way, way, more difficult than what you can think.  Honestly, stacking those cubes would have been done much faster by a 5 years old! Also, we loved the Tesla coil and the glove that you wear in order to see the lightening shooting from your hand.  A smart Glass restroom was also an interesting exhibit.  When you lock the door to the restroom with its Smart Glass walls, the walls fog and people outside the restroom cannot see what's inside it.

After spending a long day at WonderWorks, we ended at our favorite restaurant "The Applewood Restaurant", which has an amazing apple fritters dusted with powdered sugar.  We filled ourselves with good country food and drove back home.

Another culinary discovery for this trip was a restaurant hidden in the mountains next to Granny and Papa.  The restaurant has a great view of trees, mountains and a waterstream and is very charming.  They have some Cajun food (good jumbo) as well as steaks and country food.  The atmosphere was really cute and special and we all liked to read the historical background about the family that founded the restaurant, coming back to their ancestors' land in Tennessee.

A funny exchange with Charlie:  When we went to get gas on Papa's boat, we arrived at the dock, where they have a small store that sells ice cream and where you can feed big, huge carps.  When we asked Charlie what kind of ice cream he wants to have, he said "I don't give a Carp".  Get it?  Carp!  ha, ha, ha!

Finally, let's not forget tubing.  Joy and Charlie LOVE tubing, with each one of them, trying to toss the other one off the tube, look as silly as can be or make the most ridiculous moves for the camera.  And, mostly, they do all these things at the same time.  If Joy and Charlie ever want to apply for a circus position as replacements for the monkeys, we have the prefect pictures to show that they are fit for the job!   Standing on the tube, making faces, switching places with each other and just trying to crush each other- what wonderful, treasured photos we have to show at big family events, where "child embarrassment" is our parental duty!!!

Pictures From Fort Myers

Hey all! My mom already did a post about the things we did in Fort Myers, so I figured I would just post the pictures instead of boring y'all with having to hear the same story twice... hope you enjoy!

Mom and Charlie in the water in Lovers Key Beach.

Me and Charlie in the water... Charlie refused to actually take of his shoes and go in the water, and I wanted to stand in the water, so we got this shot. Oh well. I think it adds depth to the photo.

Charlie... being Charlie.

Same explanation as the last picture.

Mom in the sand.

Us having fun sitting, eating, and reading at Lakes Park.

To Tennessee!- Day 3

The next day, we continued our journey, refreshed after our late night the previous day. The morning went by quickly in a flurry of podcasts and sleepiness. But before long I noticed a problem.

Ants. Darn, scuttling, stupid, ants. They were crawling all over the car, all over me, up my legs, and all over the seats. It was so annoying! Before long, I was going mad from the ant attack, trying desperately and furiously to smash every one of their silly heads in for invading my car! Ugh! It was horrible and I was going crazy. I hate  things whose whole purpose seems to be to get everywhere and just be annoying. I mean, seriously, they are so dumb! I mean, they think they can survive... after messing with me?! The imbeciles! They all deserve nothing better than death, in the most painful and cruel forms! 

Ahem. Anyways, luckily, we found a vacuum at a gas station and stopped to vacuum all the nasty, despicable ants away. We opened the car doors and there were ants hiding everywhere, taunting us as they tried to run from the awful sucking vacuum of death. Fortunately, they didn't get to far and we were able to suck most of the nasty little critters up and out of my life. 

Relived, we continued on with our drive. By lunch, we'd arrived in Ashville, so we found a place to eat, a delicious nice little Indian restaurant called Chai Panai, owned by the Patel family. Unfortunately, this Patel family had nothing to do with the one we knew from Fremont... The food was absolutely delicious, and I had a fun time making fun of a couple with big glasses, scarfs, and skinny jeans who I thought looked like "hipsters," which somehow led to a conversation on how writers went to cafés and wrote stories about random people at the cafe as a creativity exercise, often writing intricate story lines concerning two complete strangers. 

However, by far my favorite thing about the restaurant was the t-shirts the servers wore which had the restaurant's logo on the front (a food cart with the words "Chai Panai" painted on it) and, on the back, the words "Namaste Y'all."  I don't know why this was so funny to me, but it was, so I had a fun time with that!

After the lunch, we were stuffed, but we still had enough room to stop at the Chocolate Fetish for a snack. (Duh.) As soon as we walked in we were in chocolate heaven, and, needless to say, mom sure was excited! There were chocolate seashells and seahorses, in a display case, surrounded by sand, chocolate high heel shoes, chocolate themed t-shirts (Who needs love? I've got chocolate!), and no end to the variety of chocolate dipped fruit, marshmallows, fudge, truffles, chocolate mixed with spices or jams, and, of course, just plain chocolate. We really went crazy. We got chocolate with chili pepper, wasabi chocolate, some assorted chocolate truffles, chocolate dipped organge peels, chocolate dipped ginger, and, as a finishing touch, a turtle, named a "frog" by the store for copyright reasons, for Granny. 

From there we drove all the way to Granny and  Papa's, with the obligatory stop to Walmart, of course, where my dad and I got our fishing licenses, and some other unimportant nicknacks. As we waited for the lady to give us our licenses, I marveled at the knives and guns, including an adorable pink shotgun that was just so cute, I wanted to eat it... but if I did that, I'd probably blow my head off. Stupid reality. 

Before long, we'd arrived at the lake house and were welcomed by a warm round of hugs all around. We passed out all the gifts we'd got to each appropriate person and sunk into the armchairs, tired from our long trek. Never less, we'd still had an enormous amount of fun on our journey, and couldn't wait for our next adventure.

To Tennessee!- Day 2

The next day we got back on the road again and began our drive to Charleston. We drove north up to Saint Augustine, where we enjoyed the beautiful sights of the city, from the safety of our car, of course, and reminisced about our previous visit to the Saint Augustine Fort. 

As we gradually drove further up north, my eyes were met with an amazing sight. The ocean was adorned with real waves, not the wimpy ones I'd seem so far in Florida! The scandalousness of the situation left me speechless (Who are we kidding? Me! Speechless! Ha ha!) for the rest of the drive to Singleton's Seafood Shack, a delicious seafood restaurant. We are our fill of amazing and plentiful clam strips, clam, crab, and shrimp. The restaurant was on the shore of the bay, which we had a great view of from our table. Finally, by the time we finished eating, we staggered happily out of the "shack."

Still full of the delicious food that we'd just ate, we sat in our car and waited for  The Saint John's River Ferry to come and ferry us across the bay. When the ferry came, I, who had been so stunned by the shockingness of the actual waves in Florida that I hadn't been listening to anything anyone had been saying during the ride, so I was surprised to learn the reason we'd come to the restaurant was to ride this Saint John's River Ferry. I was even more surprised to learn that this ferry allowed cars on it, so, when the ferry arrived, we drove onto the ferry in our car, payed the ferry fee, and hopped out of the car to get some fresh air and watch the river. I even took some pictures of the ferry.

We then drove up to the  Little Tablot Island State Park, and, after getting out to gaze longingly at the beach and stop at the bathroom, continued on our way to Charleston. 

On the way, however, we stopped at one of the small tourist shops that were scattered all over Florida to get gifts for the family. We got a bottle of special Hot Alligator Vodoo Sauce for Jaime and a jar of orange marmalade for Papa. The shop, as all shops in Florida are, was alligator themed, with a stuffed alligator and real life baby alligators. I couldn't help taking a picture! 

I love how Charlie's in the background of this one, stretching and smiling, thinking to himself, "Well, I've done my job well..."

...and here are the tiny baby alligators. They're soooo cute!!!!! I could just eat them up! ...That is if they didn't eat me up first... Oh well.

From there we took the highway past Savannah to Charleston. In Charleston, we drove past Battery Park, filled with people, even though there was still three hours until the fireworks started.  We went to park at the South Carolina Aquarium parking garage. We went down to walk down the coast of Cahrleston. There were plenty of people waiting for the fireworks to begin, so we amused ourselves by watching half drunk college students playing Heads Up and football, while dressed in red, blue, and white headdresses, shirts, and face paint. 

I took a picture of us beneath a flagpole and fountain as we walked down the pier.

I also got a picture of me with a South Carolinian Roxie (my nickname for the albino alligator that lives in the California Academy of Sciences).

Finally, it was almost time for the fireworks to start, so we went back to the parking garage, to the top floor, and settled down to watch the fireworks.

The fireworks were amazing, beautiful, and loud! They were being shot from a barge on the water and we had a perfect view from the top of the parking garage. 

When the fireworks started, we were all excited and awed by the enormity and length of the display. It must have been at least of thirty minute show of rapid succession fireworks, all leading up to a HUGE finale with even more fireworks. There was also many types of fireworks, happy faces, Saturns, and more. At one point there was one firework that exploded, and my dad exclaimed, "Wow! It looks like a heart." Without thinking, I immediately replied, "Really? It looked more like a crying face to me..." The Roschach test at work, I guess...

Overall we had a very fun time. I managed to get some pictures of the fireworks, even though the really impressive were too bright, and turned out as blurs.

This one was blurred, but I thought it looked cool anyways...

The funny part was there were some (probably drunk) rednecks (No, I swear they called themselves that, not me. At one point I heard one of them declare loudly, "Darn right we're rednecks, and we're proud of it!") also on the roof with us, praising 'merica in their loud Southren accents. It was, frankly, hilarious to hear their one sided view of the history of our great nation. One, at one point, exclaimed in a very loud voice, praising the USA "...an' nobody can mess with us, 'cuz if they do we'd just get all our guys and go after them, an' find 'em, and beat them to the pulp!" Apparently, however, my dad thought that the drunkards were picking a fight with someone, ignorant to the fact that the men were simply being patriotic. 

As soon as the fireworks were over, we rushed to our car in a desperate attempt to try and beat the impending traffic, and, of course, failed miserably, leaving us stalled in stand-still traffic for the next hour or so. But, eventually, we managed to get onto the highway and drove into the night.

We drove for a long time, past midnight, snoozing lightly, until we came to a gas station with a subways and pizza shop. We had pizza. After discussing the validity of Sharknado: spoof or not a spoof, I got a pint of ice cream to eat because I just really wanted ice CREAM!!! Sorry.

Anyways. At about one in the morning, we finally found a hotel to stay at in Colombia, South Carolina, and sleepwalked to our beds, already long asleep.