Recently my family and I headed to Austin to celebrate the life of Granny Van Vavra, my maternal grandmother. She was a great lady and I will miss her laugh, practicality and curiosity. Although gathered for a sad reason, it was great to spend so much time with my family...

Me with my paternal grandparents, Oma and Big Daddy.

including all the friends and neighbors that loved Granny too.

The flowers in Austin are beautiful this time of year...


but Sylvia was the star of the show.

Luckily, she's an equal opportunity lap sitter

Not to mention easily entertained....

this basket of paper recycling was an endless source of amusement for Sylvia. For the big girls, we got a kick out of comparing her expressions to the dozens of photos we sorted of Aurelia, Susan and myself.

Sylvia and Susan shared her first washtub bath....

And Aunty Vic put her in the antique trashcan. (Sorry, Miguel)

We also took a trip out to Jarrell, where Sylvia and Big Daddy had a long discussion on the building strategies of Tyeco.....or something.

Here's the whole fam....
I also caught up with my oldest friend, Pam Ziegler (now Brown) and her adorable boys

Pam with Logan

Noah just turned 5! He's quite the young man

And an excellent big brother, here with Logan, about 11 months.

Choo Choo to Chattanoooooga

This past weekend, Andy and I decided to celebrate our last work-free weekend for awhile by taking a short trip to Chattanooga, TN. It's a short (2.5 hours Victoria style) drive up to this town that is so fun to say and we were mighty pleased with all we found to do armed only with a New York Times Article (36 Hours in Chattanooga) .

First we stopped at Bea's, where you sit in a big round table with strangers and eat off plates stacked on a lazy susan in the middle of the table. These plates are PILED with fried chicken, fried okra, potato salad, cole slaw (no, not like yours mom), beans, pickled beets (first for Andy) and cherry pie. Oh, my stomach is aching a little just talking about it, but it was excellent.

Next stop, ART (of course). Actually, Chattanooga has quite the art scene with lots of public sculpture as well as an great American art museum, the Hunter. Although they have the standard collection of early American landscape paintings and boring portrait paintings (apologies to the art snobs among the audience), the museum also has a great collection of contemporary art as well as a fantastic view of the Tennessee river.

Plus, the building is pretty cool.


After all of that, we took in some seafood, wandered the town and had a generally good time observing the many high school proms that were taking place throughout the city, from the art museum to the Creative Discovery Museum to the convention center. Nothing makes you feel quite so glad to not be a teenager anymore; I recommend it!

The next morning, we headed up to Lookout Mountain early in the am to catch the views before the tourist flood.

Of course, Civil War history abounds, but we caught some fantastic views and even got a nice little hike in before too many folks were up the mountain.

(We loved this sign....it didn't seem like it would get your attention until you were falling down the mountain.)

Next stop was the aquarium. Now, I'd like to say, after living in Boston for many years, I've been to one of the nicest aquariums in the world. BUT, but....wow. Chattanooga's aquarium (the Tennessee Aquarium) is the largest fresh water aquarium in the world as well as having a great salt water collection as well. (This is the part where I got really brave and touched a shark and a sting ray.)

(No, that's not the one I touched.)

The fauna is so diverse! Otters, penquins, a ton of turtles, alligators, sturgeon, penquins, macaws, a butterfly exhibit, a sea horse exhibit

...and this odd species that we never really figured out.

It was great fun and I HIGHLY recommend it.

Finally we thought we should head on down the road toward the Magic City but made one final stop at the Chicamauga Battlefield, where we learned more about how hotly the control of Chattanooga was contested in the Civil War. In these battles, 47,000 soldiers died. The battlefield was created in 1890 "to preserve and commemorate these battlefields". Every unit that fought there was invited to create a monument or snippet of information that was placed at the site of action. This battlefield is 5500 acres of protected national park with a wide array of plaques, statues, monuments and information about the men who fought there. And it is also a beautiful piece of land. It was quite sobering and Andy summed it up well by saying "I'm so lucky I was born when I was, where I was, and who I am". Amen.

Not wanting to back track (silly us) we decided to try out some smaller state roads to get back to B'ham. We made a wonderful discovery of Cloudland Canyon State Park in Georgia,


which may be the destination of another short trip before too long!