Christmas Part 1

Here are all our Christmas pictures, finally. We battled (some of us are still battling) a month long flu, so it's been a little rough. Luckily, all 3 of us felt well enough to stuff a few activities in before and during Christmas. On "Christmas Eve Eve" John and I took Charlie downtown. A couple of buildings in Chattanooga decorate the windows with animatronic elves and such. We had heard they were really great, so we went (plus it was free, so why not?). To tell you the truth, I thought they were kind of creepy . . . the panhandlers didn't help either. Charlie had a decent time, but I think we'll skip the cold next year and save the trip!

Christmas Eve morning I took Charlie to the "Santa Train." For those of you non-Signal Mountaineers, a few elderly men a while back built this train from scratch. They display it in town for a couple of months. Everyone takes their kids to play on it and take pictures. The craftsmanship is pretty amazing. It's a fun little slice of small-town life. It's become a tradition for us to take Charlie there. He kept asking where the tracks were. I told him it wasn't a real train so it didn't need tracks. He jumped off the boxcar and started pushing it, trying to make it go. Crazy kid.

Christmas night at the Flynns was fun and busy as usual. Unfortunately, Charlie's flu symptoms had started that day and wasn't feeling well. He played for a little while, then eventually crawled into John's lap and just sat there. He turned to John and said, "We please go home now?" It was so sad because he LOVES John's parents and asks to go there every day. We knew he was sick if he wanted to go home in all that excitement. We had to leave early, which stunk, but we had a great time anyway.