The Grand Illumination, Downtown Chattanooga

Thanksgiving was fast. Polly cooked. We ate. We were thankful. Polly went to work. I had the kids the rest of the day. She....was thankful. HA.

No pictures worth putting on here for the day though, because we were a little rushed and the pictures ...way to forced. So, instead of showing the backs of people’s heads and the kids watching Blues Clues, here is what we did over the weekend.

We went downtown to see the Grand Illumination Ceremony.

So, the whole "illumination" spectacle was basically this. There are stairs that lead 100 feet or so down to the Tennessee River.









All of the republicans or "have mores’" as Bush Jr. calls them, dress their yachts up as Christmas floats. Here are some pictures of this..































Right about here is where Jonathan started to get ornery. When he gets like this, he's been known to BOLT! So we headed back up before he did a cannonball into the river.You will notice that I got a couple of pictures of Valerie on here as well. This as about as rare as seeing a Gray-crowned Rosy Finch doing a back flip in Antarctica. No, I don't know allot about birds. I do however, have Google..

After we got topside, we went over to check out the nativity scene. Here, there was a shepherd handing out candy canes. Jacob somehow managed to get a hold of one in record time. Jonathan was unable to snag one and he was adamantly screaming it into my face....so, in the spirit of good discipline I trumped his behavior by fetching him one. I have a feeling the guy playing the shepherd kind of wanted to be somewhere else. I mean his peers were playing Joseph, Mary and the wise men and he was doling out candy for cripes sake! Anyway, I snagged one...situation averted..











After the nativity scene we kind of just.. ended up in the right place. We weren't all to sure where we were supposed to be. We only knew there was some big spectacle with allot of lighting and so forth that most probably took place toward the end.

So, we followed the crowd and ended up right slap in the middle. Santa was on stage firing up the crowd and then this happened..

































Here are more Finches. Not of the Grey Crowned family mind you. These are Robert Finches. So far as I know they are not endangered and the one on the far right can do a summersault. They followed us through the whole thing. I think they wanted Jonathans candy cane.


(From left Chris, Carston, Robert, Calen, )
And while unawares...Valerie.






That's all Folks.