Ivvy and Yan Finally Meet
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I have wanted to adopt Yan for a very long time but never had the means to do so. But finally it seems I am able to support the lil guy. So I gather up a care package of sushi, a bag of undies and a bento box and head over to the adoption center to pick the darling up for a weekend adventure to let him test the waters of living with me.

The Beginning Of The Journey
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I gather the sushi carefully and load it into the car. I want to make sure Yan has snacks for out road trip.

I make a pile of undies in the backseat in all kinds of colors. To give him extra comfort.

The I grab the bento box filled with a homemade lunch I made just for him. In it is a bed of white rice over carne asada, steamed broccoli, a sweet red bean bun, grilled seasoned chicken, and to finish it off a nori cut out of pika-chu and stars. A fun yet well balanced meal so he can have energy for the day. Trowing the cooler in the back with drinks, I head to the agency to pick up the bundle of joy Yan.

Activity One Saturday
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We arrive at Rock City high up in the mountains. We head into the park seeing many natural wonders along the way, witch's rock, old mans rock, fat mans squeeze, mushroom rock, many natural arches and bridges. Then we come across a suspended bridge that overlooks the Tennessee valley. Ahead of us there is a massive cliff side with a beautiful waterfall cascading down. This is lover's leap. According to folklore, a young Indian couple fell in love but couldnt be together because they belonged to tribes that were at war with each other. They leapt from this spot so they could be together in the afterlife. From atop this point we could see seven different states! Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, and South Carolina. Its beautiful on a clear day! We wind back down the mountain trough more awesome scenery. We stop at Deer Park to see the rare white fawn and see a squril just hanging out on mushroom rock. Yan snaps a photo of it. We find ourselves at fairlyland caverns. Inside the caver in a mini disney world like land there are carvings and models of all kinds of fairytail stories come to life!

Activity Two Saturday
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We climb the mountain entering a lovely little town at the summit of lookout mountain. They feel here is very colonial and regal. We hop out of the car and enter the little rail station. Yan runs about looking at the giftshop where I buy him a pop gun and a incline railway t-shirt. We board the old fashioned trolly like railcar known as the Incline. Looking down it seems to be a straight drop down! Its a one mile stretch on a 72.7% drop! We look out our windows as we make the climb down the mountain side and yan is practicly bouncing in his seat! We rest once we get to the bottom and grab a milkshake at the little general store and he eats his bento lunch. I buy a few handmade candles from the local artisans shop. Then we board and head back up the mountain, to continue out journey in the mountains!

Activity Three Saturday
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We travel a short distance to the chickamauga park Its a civil war park where the south lost the stronghold in the war! We enter the castle like gates to see fields and cannons everywhere. Our guide gives up great information on the war and all that happened there. And then the icing on the cake! We get to watch a mini reinactment of the battle! Cannons and guns are firing and soldiers are everywhere! Its a truely exciting sight to see. Afterwords we head to point park just a stones throw away. I point out the monuments and the old stronghold house to Yan. I want his trip to be fun and educational at the same time. We lounge on the porch of the old house and overlook the valley seeing the Tennessee river below.

We head down the mountain to continue our sight seeing.

Activity Four Saturday
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We arrive at Ruby Falls a natural wonder in Chattanooga. We enter through the gift shop entrance and purchase our tickets, for less than $10 apiece. We wait for the group to form and gather at the doors of an elevator. When they open Yan and I as well as a small group of sight seers, enter the little room and travel deep down into the earth. Upon the doors opening we notice several Quartz formations around the cavern. The guide explains about the different formations and points out lots of neat things inside the cave. Rounding the final corner we all stop and the lights are turned out. I hold on to Yans hand so he doesn't get afraid of the dark, we hear the rush of flowing water, then the reason we stopped here is shown in all of its glory. The lights come back up and colored lights are filtered against the wonder that is Ruby Falls, a 200 foot stream of rushing water falling from the caverns top. Red, blue, green violet, all reflected off of the running water. We are allowed to explore and even go behind the fall. The sight is breathtaking.

Activity Five Saturday
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Our next stop on our trip was to the Aquarium. We enter in the River Journey building. It is the largest freshwater aquarium in the world. We follow through the guide yourself halls climbing ever down and around seeing marine life of every form. Yan gets to pet a rockfish and feel its odd texture. Then we move through the living forest section seeing the swamp life and foliage. Then we hit the salt water area and yan gets excited! Looking up at the transparent tunnel we are in yan points out sharks and sting rays, then jellyfish and cuttlefish. Creatures from around the world. The last leg of the building has a seahorse exibit with sea horses from around the world. Followed by the penguin refuge and lastly the turtle exibit. Yan got to see marine life of all kinds on this trip and seemed to love it.

Activity Six Saturday
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In the heart of Chattanooga we arrive at Coolidge Park. We get our parking ticket and head to the park for some water fun! At is center the park has a massive water fountain. Yan is in his swim trunks and ready to go. Water spurts up from the concrete ground in big streams and it alternates making different designs. Yan hops on top of one of the stone statues of a lion and giggles as he captures water as it sprays from the lions mouth. Seeing him play with the other kids is a joy for me. When he is tuckered I take him to get into dry clothing and head over to the large round building next to the fountain. Once inside he sees that its a carousel! The entire building is one big ride! It is so ornate and pretty. Yan hops onto a black stallion and waves to me as he goes round and round on it. I hum along with the music as I take his picture for the scrapbook.

Activity Seven Saturday
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After all the activity we were hungry for an early dinner so we headed over to the Vauderville Murder Mystery Dinner Theater for a fun bite to eat. We are served a four course meal of grilled chicken, steamed veggies, mashed potatos, and dinner rolls with a yummy cheddar broccoli soup. Desert was a huge volcano cake made of chacolate chip cake topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and covered in hot fudge, whipped topping and a cherry! The show is interactive and amazing we found clues and cracked the case. Sadly it was the flapper girl in pink that yan thought had pretty boobies. But even though she was the bad guy she made his day by giving him a kiss on the cheek! Then she and the rest of the cast let him take their picture to remember them by. He said he wanted to eat there everyday!

Activity Eight Saturday
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As the sun was getting ready to set we board the river boat. It sets out powered by its massive steam engines and we listen to the captain tell us all about the river and its attractions. The river bank of downtown Chattanooga is lighting up as the sun goes down showing a bright beautiful side to the city! The captain lets Yan steer the boat! And he got an official honorary captains hat and pin to show how good of a job he did being the captain of our voyage! We pull into our port safely and are happy to be back on land. It was yans first time to drive let alone a ship!

Activity Nine Saturday
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We make the short Walk to the Hunter Art Museum. Outside there are all kinds of sculptures. Yan poses with one of a bronze nude lady. A big grin on his face. Once inside we look at all of the artwork. paintings sculptures and all kinds of neat things. We learn about different art periods and how a lot of cool artists came from right here in Tennessee. On the upper level we exit the building under a huge iron frame work of a macabre sculpture that reminds Yan of a Nightmare Before Christmas. We walk out onto a long winding pathway that is see through and lit up with neon colored lights. Yan excitedly tells me he can see his and the museums reflection in the walkways floor. I laugh and hold his hand as we make our way down to the riverbanks for our final activity of the evening.

Activity Ten Saturday
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We find a seat on the riverside in a small carved area of seat. Overlooking the water we marvel at the sight of all the boats on the water and how the lights play off of everything. We hear instruments tuning up. This is the Finale of our day. Rocking on the River! A water front concert free to all! Yan dances around me as the music starts up and jumps around happily as we listen to the local bands show their stuff. They are playing for us from a huge boat on the river. There are stage lights and everything making it one heck of a show! I smile at how happy Yan seems to be today.

When its all over we pack up the car and head to our hotel room to get some rest so we can start all over the next day with more fun stuff to do!

Activity One Sunday
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We get up bright and early and eat a nummy breakfast of waffles and bacon.

We head over to the bowling ally! Its a huge mega complex filled with lanes and arcade machines everywhere. The neon lights are intoxicating as we get our shoes and hit the lanes. Yan bowls a lot better than I do. I enjoy watching him knock out the pins. We hit up the arcade machines and play some SNK street fighter. Yan kicks my butt at it though I tried really hard. We have a snack of some epic nachos drowned in cheese before heading out.

Activity Two Sunday
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We arrive at a small train yard and Yan looks a little dissapointed. Since we did the Incline yesterday but then as we are waiting he erupts in a smile he sees Thomas the train coming down the track! This is a very special once in a great while opportunity. Its day out with Thomas. We meet the conductor and board the train. Everything is bright and blue. Yan runs up and down the isles of the train, looking out the windows as we chug along. The countryside is beautiful and the staff tells stories about Thomas and his friends. When we get back to our stop, Yan is awarded a certificate showing that he made the trip with Thomas. He feels all official and stuff now. Hehe hes such a cute lil guy.

Activity Three Sunday
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We decide to cool off and head over to the Wacky Factory. The building looks crazy on the outside! Its a neat attraction. They combined a water park with a fun house/haunted mansion! The water seems to come alive around us reflecting our faces like fun house mirrors. The lights and sounds are spooky as we make our way through it. Getting splashed here and there as Ghostly apparitions appear in the water spurts that manifest around us. Yan stays close to me but has a big smile the whole time. I think he enjoyed the specticle. We head out shaking off the dropplets of water that are clinging to us from the funhouse.

Activity Four Sunday
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We head over to another part of Lake Winnie. And enter the Amusement park. We try to ride every ride the park has to offer. But the highlight of it was our roller coaster ride. We even got our picture taken on our way down. I had such a funny face in it though. Yan looked cool as always. Se played games and even got to make a music video in the little recording studio at the park. We sang along to Skillets monster and made a video of us being silly to it. All in all a fun outing.

Activity Five Sunday
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We make our way to the space education and mission camp center. Inside we find rockets and actual moon rocks! There is an astrounaught there who shows us how space suits work and explained space food and how missions are trained for. Then he let us go into a simulation machine where we got to experience no gravity and what it would feel like to take off into space! Yan squeeled with glee at our take off. When that was done we walked around to all of the exibits and learned about all of the moon landings and saw really old flying machines that never really got used. It was such a cool experience for us both.

Activity Six Sunday
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The next stop of our day is the Harley Nitro Races! An exciting and fun filled sporting event where we get to meet drivers and see some amazing tricked out bikes. We see a bright green bike that is low to the ground and actually get to meet the creator and owner of it. He put in all the work to make his bike a custom one of a kind ride. Yan got a picture of himself sitting on the bike. Then we go and find our seats by the track and watch all the different races. Our guy with the green bike didnt win but boy was it exciting getting to see everyone go so fast!

Activity Seven Sunday
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Mongolian Barbeque is what we decided on for lunch. The eatery was a huge building that had a mix of intoxicating smells. I walked with Yan as we made our bowls. He filled his with shrimp, scallions, and beef topped with mushrooms, sprouts, baby corn, and cabbage. Then we added a sweet and spicy seasoning to it and took it to the grill he had his made with lomain noodles. Mine was a sweet and tangy beef loaded with veggies and rice noodles. We sit together and eat our creations as we watch the cooks work the grill. Flames dancing up into the air as it cooks the delectable food the place serves. We wash it all down with some hit tea and round out the meal with an order of sweet buns for dessert. We will really have to do this again.

Activity Eight Sunday
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We decide to do some shopping so we hit up the Hamillton Mall. It has two levels of awesome. We brows the shops and even ride the carousel in the food court as we drink mango berry smoothies. We visit the play area of the mall and I watch Yan scamper about all over the playground equipment. Then He gives bungie jumping a try. Its a neat harness over a trampoline that he gets strapped into and he bounces and does flips for me. I caught it all on film luckily. We stalk the Disney store upstairs and he gets a new outfit from Oshgosh, then we find ourselves in Build a Bear! Yan wants a velvet teddy bear So we make a wish and start to build him, he dresses him in a plain white shirt and baggy black shorts with a pair of converse. Then we get his adoption certificate. We leave the mall with Yan cuddling his newly adopted bear.. I hope I get to adopt Yan for myself.

Activity Nine Sunday
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As a special treat for yan and his love of unmentionables and the ladies I took us to the Victoria's secret runway show. He had a blast getting to see all the ladies in their skivies and wings. I think he took about a hundred photos at this event. And he was bouncing out of his chair the whole time clapping and calling out the the models. He loved the girl in the tutu and was in aww at how long her legs were. He took a lot of pictures of her it seems. He got a free gift bag of new undies straight off the new line to comemorate the experience.

Activity Ten Sunday
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Our last stop of the weekend is an anime convention. There are so many people in costume cosplaying their favorite anime and game characters. We came across a lady who was dressed up as Mai and Yn went nuts. I mean aside from big nap rack she could kick butt! We watched her compete with several other girls dressed the same way. She came in second place overall. But Yan said he thought she should have won because she was the hawtness. *giggle* We got some art made while we were there of Yan dressed up as Zero from Vampire Knights. It was so much fun watching him pretend to be a vampire chasing the girls around trying to bite them.

Journey Home
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After the convention we hit up Chuck E Cheese for a bite to eat before we go home. We have a extra cheese meat lovers pie brought to us and we eat and Yan plays some of the arcade games, while watching the band play on stage.


On the car ride back to the house Yan falls fast asleep snuggling his teddy bear we made at build-a-bear. Hes so cute drooling on the bear and undies pallet in the backseat. Im so glad I ordered that special seat for him.


We arrive at the house as the sun is getting low in the sky. Yan is still sleeping like a baby and I am tired myself. I know Jelly will be waiting inside the house to either collect Yan to go back to the center or to tell me I passed the adoption test. Either way I think the little guy should be let to nap. He had one heck of a weekend. I take a deep breath as I gently carry Yan in my arms into the house to face the music and hope beyond hope that my dreams come true and Yan will get to stay with me.

Yay all set up and ready to go!!!!!!!!!11 Lets get this trip started!

good luck, Ivvy!