The Lost Sea

America's largest underground lake is found within a cave in 

Sweetwater, Tennessee. We took a 2 hour tour to explore the cave and lake.

illuminated cave bacon

 This cave is one of the few places in the world that cave flowers like this 

one exist. For this reason, the cave is now a registered national landmark.

A small waterfall that drops into a small pond that drains into the lake.

 An old moonshine still that was left in place.

Finally we descend to the lake, load into a boat and explore from the water.

 At one point they added Rainbow Trout to the cave water. They quickly found it to be problematic as the fish were unable to procreate. Trout normally attach their eggs to plants along the bottom, but here there is only sand, so the eggs would float to the top and promptly be eaten. They feed the fish dog food during the tour and the fish expect this and come swimming toward the boat in large numbers.

On our way back to the cave entrance, the kids had us hang 

to the back of the group so they could race each other out.

The "bear claw" stalagmite. 

Knoxville, Tennessee and an education on 3D printing

It was NEGATIVE SIX DEGREES with a few inches of snow on the ground when we left Ohio! As we entered Kentucky, we noticed these icicles on the side of the highway!

Downtown Knoxville

We met two of my twin mom friends, Theresa and Laurie, with their kids at the Muse in Knoxville. 

It's basically two rooms of exhibits and activities. It's relatively small, but my kids 

had no trouble playing for 4 hours and we still had to practically drag them out at 

closing. There are many open ended creative areas that the kids really enjoyed.

They built LEGO cars then raced them down ramps.

We watched a short movie in the planetarium about stars, planets and the sun.

The boys loved building a tunnel and knocking it down. 

One of the employees was telling us about the museum's 3D printer and showed us a few of the items they have made there. I was shocked to see a stretchy bracelet and a heart that spins in half. He told us about a company in town, called Local Motors that actually printed the first real car! I had to know more, so we went to their store in Market Square. They're building a new car at a show in Detroit this week, they have it down to 44 hours and about 50 pieces, whereas a regular car is thousands of pieces. They anticipate a 18-30,000 price range for the electric car when it comes available for purchase. This is a scale model of it.

We had a ton of questions for the rep, and he ended up turning on one of the printers so we could watch a nut and bolt print. It first heats up to 280 degrees Celcius before laying down thin strands of material. He gave the kids each a set to take home. It almost feels like holding the future in our hands, it's pretty exciting.

 Random items that were printed at this store. The circle is a stretchy bracelet, the 

wrench really works and comes out of the printer only needing 3 small pins 

to be pulled out to function. The linked chain still blows my mind! 

A SNOW delay and a chance to look back

We were planning to leave Ohio and head to Florida on Tuesday. Monday night a winter storm moved in, leaving four inches of snow and the polar vortex dropped temps below zero. We will have to wait a few days for the roads to be safe for travel.

The kids are excited for a few more days of snow. Daddy took them for a ride on sleds, pulling them around the yard with a rope tied to him.

While we sit here waiting to leave, let's take a look back at our visit....

Cousin Lucy's birthday

The eagle that we saw just down the road from Grandpa's house.

 On Christmas day I told the kids it would be a "Christmas miracle" if they could both put their underwear on all. by. themselves! And they did! A couple days later they pushed me out of the bathroom after their bath saying, "we have surprise a you". A few minutes later they emerged, fully dressed- pants on backwards, wearing each other's shirts, also backwards and Asher somehow managed to have his on upside down (with the neck of the shirt around his belly). But you know what? They did it all. by. themselves! They were so proud of themselves that they wore them this way for the whole day, minus the upside down shirt- I did have to chase him down to turn that over! 

Avery tracing Asher. They ended up turning these into an amazing 

Christmas present to surprise us with. I love them!

Whenever Mommy, Daddy, Grandma and Grandpa had spare time we played 

"the neighborly game". The kids started sitting with us and getting the hang 

of how to play. Soon we can have our own card nights in the RV.

Mommy and Daddy managed to have 3 date nights thanks to Meemaw, Uncle J 

and Aunt Christen. There would have been more, but it's hard to leave these oh so sad faces! :(

After 9 months of living in the RV, this was the first time we convinced them to sleep 

the entire night in their own bed! They have always preferred to sleep on the floor. Silly kids.

The following night, after an extended period of below freezing temps, our pipes froze in the RV, 

so we winterized it and moved into Grandpa and Grandma's house for the remainder of our visit.

My sleeping beauty

A hair-raising visit to COSI

After giving birth to two very premature babies, seeing the babies exhibit, was much more striking 

to me. My kids were born between the stages of the babies that are second and third from the right!

Asher was also intrigued. 

Aunt Christen surprised us with tickets to Shadowbox, a live theatre/music show very similar to SNL. 

She even watched the kids for us so my mom and brother could go with us. A great afternoon!

Shadowbox Scrooged!

We ended 2014 with nearly 4700 miles on the truck since we left Vegas in April.