Tennessee Trip (for real) Part One

After stubbornly fighting with Blogger, I finally get my way. So, here is the first part of our trip to Tennessee (& Mississppi). Vanessa and I traveled with Mama (Randolph), My brother, Joel and his wife, Kristina (who had the connections to get us buddy passes, and was kind enough, and brave enough to arrange this crazy week for us...Thank you, Kris! I can't say it enough) and their girls Ashley (3) and Katie (15 mo).This first picture is of Ashley, Katie, and Vanessa before the very first flight of the trip. This is when they were actually excited about the planes. It was very cute!

We then arrived at my Uncle Mike's house (My dad's brother). He is actually currently living with my (former) Aunt Ann and her husband Spencer. They live about a half hour away from Memphis, TN in a beautiful little place called Byhalia in MS. This picture is taken outside their house. Uncle Mike and Ashley are holding Schnauzer puppies.



One of the most distinguishing features of this home is that it is a "little heaven" for little girls. Particularly because there are so many animals that the girls can pet and play with. There are probably 5 or 6 big outside dogs, and then about 5 or so poodles inside, a chihuahua, and of course the schnauzer family. In addition to those there are 23 cats inside a special room added on to the house, 2 cats in kennels (ones that can't be near the others temporarily), and then I think another 5 that roam the house. Oh, and there's a canary, a frog, and some fish. The most amazing thing is that all the animals are well trained to be good and gentle (they stay in certain places if they don't behave), and they are all very well taken care of (Ann's family ought to be paid for all the love and care they give these sweet animals). So you can imagine why the girls loved it so much. (Of course they just loved all the great people there, too!)

This plaque sits just outside the cat room. How appropriate!



Here's a couple shots of the cat room. Mom (Brown), I thought you'd get a kick out of this!
The second picture shows how Vanessa's favorite word/sound was "meow" (or "melow" as she says it).




On this trip Vanessa discovered the joys of sleeping on pillows. She was missing her daddy a lot, and I guess this and her Uncle Joel helped a lot.

These picture are taken on the front porch. It was fairly warm but the porch swings made it pretty nice to be outside.

Vanessa got a chance to "explore the forest" in front of Uncle Mike's house. It was just so pretty out there I had to show this picture.

Before we left for the other leg of our trip, Uncle Mike served us one of his specialties: Spaghetti (trust me, it's no ordinary spaghetti. Even nauseous pregnant women enjoy it).

As you can see, Vanessa devoured it with gusto. I think Uncle Mike has the special touch when it comes to food. She even ate the scrambled eggs he made one morning (she never eats eggs, ever!). By the way, I think this is my favorite picture of her now. Don't you just love that messy grin?

While we still in this area, we got to meet Uncle Mike's sister Sharon (he is technically Papa's half brother through their dad and this is his half sister through Uncle Mike's mom). She is such a sweet lady, and she was very accomodating to tired, hungry traveler's and their kids (okay, I threw in hungry, because I'm always hungry). It was great to meet her, and I'm glad that the two of them ended up so close to each other.

We also got to see almost all our Uncle David's kids (Ann's girls). My cousin Steve lives in another state, but I got to see all five of the girls. They were so nice. I wish I knew them better and had more time to visit with them. Since that visit, my cousin Holly had a baby girl. Congratulations, Holly! Maybe we'll get to visit again someday when Matt can come with us.

It was so good to see Uncle Mike again. He is the uncle I know best since he would come and visit anytime his truck routes would take him over our way. Thank you, Uncle Mike, for letting us come and treating us like royalty while we were there. Vanessa sure loved you (and I'm pretty sure the other little girls did, too). I hope it won't be so long until the next time we see you.

Well, that's only half of the trip. I will see if I can get pictures from Mama for the rest. There were a lot of great pictures I missed because of being tired and sick half the time (although now I wished I had just sucked it up and grabbed my camera anyway). Stay tuned for more!