Life at Home

After getting some much needed rest from the games at the gym, the older Simons and Schroeder children decided to go on a hike. Here is Kirsten on the trail, and Brian up ahead every on the watch for a place to climb.

The hike took place around Sunset Rock, so after walking around down in the forest below, we decided to go up and look at the view. There really is a spectacular view from this point. Here is Brian meditating on whether or not he should drop pretzels over the edge on the rock climbers beneath.

What if the rock just cracked and broke? Oh well, don’t think about those things. Rach and KC are dropping “crumbs” on the rock climbers beneath… how kind!

Later that day we met up with the Beeches again. We parked over by Clumpies Ice-cream shop and then walked across the Chattanooga foot bridge to Mellow Mushroom for some pizza. This photo was taken of the hottest new band to come out of Chattanooga in the last year. Look for our new hit single… Schimoneech!

And here we are after the pizza. It was truly a great meal… if you are ever in the area you have to try their pizza. Now, the thing we are sitting on in this photo is a couch made out of bricks. Clever or Strange? I’m not sure what JP is laughing at… care to take a guess.

This is a glass bridge which goes over a street in downtown Chattanooga. It leads to an “Art Museum”. Some of the “art” is on display outside of the actual museum…. See below.

Clumpies...

Then yesterday (Tuesday) we had the unique opportunity of going caving. The cave was supposed to have a very shallow stream (shallow as in a couple of inches) running through it, which we would have to walk through. Here is the group prior to the expedition.

This is the entrance to the cave. Once we got into the first room, the hike through the stream began… and the water turned out being a little deeper than we had anticipated.

There are supposed to be tennis shoes standing there. This is the water we were hiking through in the cave. Most of the time it wasn’t that bad; at its deepest the water would reach just below knee level on the adults (the white dot is water on the lens… in case you were wondering).

The water snaked through the cave, and some areas were smaller than others.

Here is a random shot of the ladies. Now, do you see something wrong in this picture? Yes, Kirsten is not wearing her jacket. Apparently one of the little bats in the cave wanted to join in on the fun, and it latched onto Kirsten’s back. The bat was carefully removed, though, and the caving continued without anymore “bat attacks”.


This is one of the waterfalls which we walked over in the cave. By the way, if you look closely you will see a red clothespin on Brian’s blue bandana. Yes, we are continuing the clip game from a few years ago.




Right before we turned around I caught a tender moment of Dr. and Mrs. Beech on film. Mrs. Beech is severely claustrophobic, so she is probably very happy at this moment knowing that we are turning around and heading out. Dr. Beech looks like he missed his nap.





Cool cave.

Here’s the Fam.

And the Beech Fam

Kirsten is still scared of the bats.

The mothers made it out safe and sound.

So did Buford and Mama

Here's the damage.

Look at Paige’s feet. She crawled through that whole cave in flip-flops! There were many slips, but she made it through safe and sound.

Well, we all made it out safe and sound. There was lots of mud and strange creatures, but we faced our fears, and made it through. This final photo is with our tour guide, Miss. Elliot. Thanks for a great time!

And now we will leave you with a random picture.

The Schroeder Fam.