Dave and I spent Christmas in Tennessee. It’s about an 8 hour drive down, but we listened to the Harry Potter ebook the whole way down and back. We got through Sorcerer’s Stone, and made it to the third chapter of Chamber of Secrets. Now we’ll have to make another journey somewhere to listen to the rest of it!
We brought Poffins with us, since she’s such a delicate flower she can’t bear to spend any moment apart from her mommy (aka me). She spent the first day sitting around in various locations at our relative’s house.

Poffins sits on the back of the couch. She needs to be at the highest altitude possible to watch for predators.

Poffins sits at the end of the bed by the door, keeping an eye out for predators.
We all went to Market Square in Knoxville the first day, which was Christmas Eve. It was pretty quiet there.
I was looking up places to see in Knoxville, and this ranked pretty high up there. There’s a bunch of shops, and they have an ice skating rink during the winter. We checked out the shops. My favorite one was this home decor shop, Bliss Home.
It had lots of things that were reasonably priced, and I enjoyed looking through there. Although it did come with a side of envy that my home doesn’t look like a magazine.
Other than the actual square, there was a street nearby with shops on it, too. We went to Mast General Store.
It was crazy in there! People were packed wall to wall. The front of the store was clothing, which I didn’t check out, because I found a candy section. I may be a full grown adult, but I can still enjoy barrels of candy. I found one of my favorites: Lemonade Nerds. They really are the best possible flavor of nerds. I ended up eating them all before we even left the store. Every few minutes I’d rummage through the bag for another box.
To my own credit, they were little boxes. Only enough Nerds for a swallow full.
We walked around some more and then we left. There was a second Christmas tree, and this one was huge.
Overall, Market Square was an interesting area. Unfortunately, there was a few shops closed due to the holiday that I had been interested in going in. Oh well.
There were also a lot of hippies. Way too many hippies, and also their modern cousin, the hipster. This place is located right next to University of Tennessee, so I suppose it was inevitable. Still, lots of friendly people, and lots of neat shops. There’s a couple of theaters in the area that I will be checking out on a later visit, and I’d probably walk around here again when I do that.