Dinner on Wednesday

Does everyone who's here on Wednesday evening want to come to dinner? We were thinking casual/barbecue. Does that sound good?

I wanted to call and make a reservation. Or since I doubt they take reservations, more like a warning.

Things to do in Chattavegas

For the record, I didn't make up the Chattavegas moniker. I've actually heard the term—both in conversation and in print. Knoxville also gets called Knoxangeles and K-Town.

Anyway, Danny tried to find out a little bit about what everyone's plans were, and even though it sounds like people will be mostly in on Thursday and out on Friday, having some things to do with kids is always helpful, right?

1. Ruby Falls is on top of Lookout Mountain, which is where Grandview is. Jackson, for some ungodly reason, LOVES this place. It's a cave and you're way way way underground for the whole part. It's a cavern with all the caverny type things you might expect. Stalagmites, stalactites, columns, things they claim are shaped like a turtle or an angel's wing. It takes maybe an hour or 90 minutes.


2. Rock City is also on top of Lookout Mountain and is directly adjacent to Grandview. Literally, they share a parking lot. Rock City is pretty good for kids and for parents. They can run around and scream like banshees and no one cares. You walk on a set route, which is rather nice, and it's decent exercise. There are lots of uphill, downhill parts and stairs. There are also caves and bridges.

3. The Tennessee Aquarium rounds out the Chattanooga triumvirate. Both Ruby Falls and Rock City have been around for decades, but the aquarium is relatively new. It's a pretty decent aquarium and I think I heard that it's in the Top 5 or so in the country. Although, I think I heard that here, so I'm not sure of the legitimacy of that particular claim. Jackson likes it here a lot. He runs through it as quickly as he can.. it's basically an obstacle course with some fish in the background. They do have a little tide pool where you can pet stingrays and nurse sharks. One of those top window rooms is a big butterfly garden where you do tend to get bombarded by butterflies. Danny HATES this room. The aquarium is made up of two buildings—one is the salt water side (with penguins!) and the other is freshwater.







4. The Creative Discovery Museum is also in downtown Chattanooga. It's fun for kids, but I'd strongly recommend grownups bring your headache-relief medication of choice.

There are a lot of other things to do. Jackson really enjoys anything by the river. There's a nice small playground on the city side of the river and on the other side, there's a huge park with a lot of green space, a big water fountain for kids, and a carousel. Coolidge Park is really nice for just about anything. We've picnicked there a lot. When the weather is nice, not too many weekends go by without going here. Near the park there are are a lot of neat little shops and restaurants. There's an ice cream place, a hot dog place, and a bunch of boutique shops.

Downtown Chattanooga is super walkable. There are a lot of restaurants and things to do that are pretty close. You can walk to Coolidge Park from pretty much anywhere downtown. It's pretty flat and pedestrian. There's even a walking bridge that connects downtown Chattanooga to the park and all the shopping on the north shore. That said, you definitely can't walk from downtown Chattanooga up to Lookout Mountain.



Whatever you do, don't go to the zoo. There are five animals there. We counted. It doesn't matter how much you like zoos, this one is lame. We took Jackson there and ended up apologizing to him for it's level of lameness.


As for places to eat....

Chattanooga is pretty kid friendly. Here are the kid places we can recommend:

There's several options for good pizza. Mellow Mushroom and Lupis are both downtown and are both good. There's another place, Pisa Pizza, on the north side of the bridge.

Jackson likes Sticky Fingers, which is also downtown.

If anyone wants to eat barbecue while in the south, Rib & Loin or Sticky Fingers would likely be the best choices.

For breakfast, if you're brave, Aretha Frankensteins has pretty good pancakes. They're HUGE. Seriously, don't order more than one. The restaurant itself is super tiny and only has a few tables.

We've been to several places around here we like, so if anything specific interests anyone, just let me know. We can probably make a recommendation.

For the grownups... well, to be honest, we've maybe only been to about 5 grownup restaurants.

Danny made reservations at Hennen's for our anniversary. The food was great, they were very nice, and it wasn't outrageously expensive.

There are a couple nice restaurants in Bluff View. We ate lunch at Tony's one day, and that was really good Italian food. The Back Inn Cafe is pretty good, and I heard they serve a nice brunch.

Mount Vernon is a nice place that serves good, traditional southern food. Danny: the mean age of patrons is rarely less than 85. Bring your two-year old and it might lower to 84. Maybe.

Hope some of this helps! If anyone wants any specific information, I'm happy to look something up, work on a map, or even call and make a reservation. We have year-long passes to Rock City, Ruby Falls, and the Tennessee Aquarium. If any of those interest you, please just let me know and I'd be happy to buy tickets and get them to you when you get here.

Our house

We went out to look at houses last weekend and before we went, we firmly decided that we were not going to do anything but look. After all, we didn't want to close on anything until sometime between June and November. I said that we absolutely wouldn't want to make an offer on anything—even if we really liked it—for a few weeks. This is a buyer's market so why should we do anything but sit around and wait for the perfect house?

Right.

So, we found a house at a great price in the perfect location. What constitutes the perfect location you might ask? The house is in the "north shore" area of town, which is apparently one of the most desirable places to live. It's in the Normal Park area, named for the Normal Park Museum Magnet School, which was recognized as the best magnet school in the country a couple years ago. It seems to be a really good school and it's where we wanted to send our kids (Jackson and any yet-to-be-conceived children). It's less than 10 minutes from where we work downtown. And it's supposed to be a very walkable community. Plus, we like the house. We made an offer, they countered, and we accepted.

We had the home inspection last weekend and we're currently waiting to hear what the seller might be willing to fix. There's nothing major, just a few little things. We're set to close on May 14, and while that's a little earlier than we had planned, it will give us time to clean up the house and fix up a few things before our lease is up at the end of June.

The house also came with another price. We promised Jackson he could get a puppy when we had a backyard. We'll probably try and make good on that promise after the wedding. He would like a white, black, blue, and red dog whom he plans to call "French Fries." Yeah, ok.



Here's a link to some information about the house. On this page, there's a video tour of the house.

This is the outside of the house—it was built in 2000, and the lot is super sloping, which we didn't want, but it is very typical for the area.






Our (I think I'm speaking for Danny too) favorite part of the house is the downstairs living space. The kitchen leaves a bit to be desired, but we're hoping that can be remodeled in time. But there's a great living room, dining room, courtyard, and deck. The courtyard extends in kind of a half-moon shape around the side of the house. Chattanooga's weather is nice enough that eating dinner outside is really a decent possibility probably most nights in the summer and fall. Thus far, spring is not proving to be super nice. It also seems like a nice place for kids to ride tricycles and kick around a soccer ball. Sure, most people would use a real yard for that, but that's most people!





Another cool part of the house is this treehouse. Jackson was VERY excited about this. It's actually incomplete and looks to be part of a patio or something they started to build. But we think it looks like a great fort for a four-year old and a nice place to camp out. The backyard is very, very sloped and is only partially terraced. We think it's mostly rock, so we have some grand plans of finishing out the patio and then adding more steps and raised garden beds.

We don't close until May 14, so it's not exactly a done deal, but we've at least got a mutually agreeable contract in place and we're going through all the bajillion steps.

We'll try to post something cuter and more fun about Jackson soon. Danny has little opportunity to post now that he's working and I don't have access to pictures at work. After Jackson goes to sleep, the computer is seldom used as anything but a TV/movie watching tool.

Happy Birthday, Danny

I love you and Jackson loves you very much. Every day I feel lucky to have you in our lives.

I can't wait to marry you and build our family and life together.

Have a wonderful day, a wonderful year, a wonderful life.

I'll love you always.