My Fourth of July weekend!

This has been a really wonderful weekend! It actually started Thursday with spending a couple hours with Jen and Kellyn, and then we all headed down to Newnan for dinner and hanging out for a while. After Jen left Aaron and I watched the first Hellboy movie - excellent by the way! Friday morning we (Aaron, me, Janine, Mohammed, Hatem, Sue, and Jack) all packed up and went to Chickamauga (no clue if I spelled that right) for the Jones family reunion (that is Aaron's mother's side of the family). It was out in the middle of nowhere really, but a fairly nice time, sans the repeated ocasions that Jack took to playing his bagpipes while, yes ladies and gentlemen, he was wearing his kilt. The kilt I don't mind so much as the bagpipes. You see, he still has a long way to go before he could really be considered good. Aaron and I devised a drinking game in which (theoretically, because we had no booze) you would take a shot everytime he squeaked. Janine quickly pointed out that you would hardly have time to fill your shot glass between the required drinking moment - hahaha. After the reunion and making various visits to other family members in the area who didn't make it to the reunion Aaron, me, Janine, Mohammed, and Hatem went up to Chattanooga for the rest of the weekend. We stayed at The Chattanoogan Hotel - not as great a hotel as we had thought it would be, especially given the fact that it was almost $200 per night! We got to our room, unpacked, and found a great 24 hour diner in the area that had 98 different types of cake and pastry, so we hit it up for desert! I had a huge slice of this incredible chocolate cake called the seven deadly sins - it lived up to its name! We then went in the direction of Lake Winnepasauka amusement park to see a fireworks display (we actually stopped at a gas station near it where we could see the fireworks perfectly). Yesterday was our full day that we had to play around Chattanooga. We went to Rock City, The Incline Railway, and Ruby Falls (you can get a discounted ticket that gives you access to all three, I think it was like $42). Rock City was fantastic! It was a beautiful garden with all sorts of rock formations, waterfalls and such. Aaron and I bought out first home gnome. His name is Gus, and he will be accompanying us as we search for our first home and will then be our official gnome to make it a home. The Incline Railway wasn't my favorite thing honestly. First of all you had to pay a parking meter to park - a lousy idea for such an attraction given you have no real idea how long it will take. Second, I am not a huge fan of steep hills and going down them in vehicles. Yes, I like rollercoasters, but the falls really are my least favorite part, and no, this was NOTHING like a rollercoaster because it was very slow, which did make it more bareable. By the time we waited in line to go down the mountain, went down, got off, waited in line to go up again, and went up we were certain that our meter had expired and that the seemingly overzealous meter maid (yes, it was a guy like in school for scoundrels) had left us a nice little ticket. However, our meter had expired but meter maid man had yet to get to us so we left as quickly as possible to slip out of it! Having finished this we were famished and went in search of food which took us to KFC where we reveled in the wonder that is air conditioning and probably drank our weight in diet pepsi. We then hit Ruby Falls. Long line, but it was all in shade, and we had fun being very juvenile with the remaining ice in our cups from KFC. Now, when you go to Rub Falls you have to go down in an elevator 260 feet. This elevator's door is glass so all that you see as you are going down is rock. The elevator began to have some issues as we were going down (apparently yesterday is their busiest day every year). It stopped about 3 or 4 times and a couple of times began to shake quite a bit. The operator even called back to the control room to have them reset the elevator sensors (whatever that means). It was a small elevator with quite a few people and with it only looking out on a rock wall things began to feel very tight very quickly. Needless to say, I was uncomfortable and Aaron had to remind me to breath. We did make it down and after that it was FANTASTIC - my favorite part of the day!! Going through the caves was really awesome, but the cavern with the actual falls was beyond words! We got some awesome pictures. By the time we got back to the hotel we were tired but wanted to have a night out on the town, so we picked a restaurant (Big River Grille and Brewing Company, where I ate with my girlfriends from PSI in January), cleaned ourselves up and went out. The food was AMAZING!!! Aaron and Janine had a dinner that included these shrimp stuffed with crab that were to die for, and the wine I had with my dinner was delicious. Plus we just had a great time in general talking, laughing, and hanging out until like midnight. This morning we slept late (til like 10) and checked out of the hotel. We hit the diner again for lunch, and headed home. We were just about to 85 south from 285 west when the accelerator cord in the engine of Mohammed's car broke. We spent like 30 minutes trying to figure out a way to jerry-rig it so we could get home, but to no avail since we had no tools. We were just about to throw in the towel and call a tow truck when a tow truck who was on his way to a call saw us and stopped to check on us. With his help and his plyers we were able to temporarily rig the cord so that we got home - quite an unexpected event! So here we are now in Newnan, road-weary and slightly smelly. But all had a great time!