Thursday, July 18, 2013

Smoky Mountains Part 1

We are so so thrilled to be headed off to the Smoky Mountains!!!  We went 4 years ago and are so blessed to get to go again!  The van needs two new tires and the air conditioning is not working, so we are taking the car!  Again, blessed to have a car and ready to go!  Yay!
Here we GO! 
See Elia and Liliana's lipstick...
 After about 8 hours of driving, we stayed the night at a Country Inn and Suites in Harrisonburg, VA.  So nice and clean and COZY, with an indoor pool, which was a blast after driving all day.  The pool was actually a triple blast with Daddy...he is SO fun in the pool throwing the kids up and stuff.
Three sweeties right here!
 The next day, Monday, the 8th, we drove about 6 hours, enjoying lunch at a Cheddars!  What a treat, we don't have those in CT.  Here is the Ripley's Wax Museum...wild...we are THERE, IN PIGEON, FORGE, TN!
 At the cabin.  Elia had a ton of fun with the bar of soap.  Haha!
 We don't use bar soap at home, so this was a real interesting thing for her.  She washed her hands for a good 10 minutes.
 We met Donnie's brother, Patrick and his wife, Michelle, Kyleigh, Kadee, Brianna, Gavin and Madelyn!  It was so amazing to see them!!!  We arrived to the cabin within minutes of each other.  They live in TX, so TN was just about exactly the same distance for both of us, making for a great reunion spot!  That night, after shopping for food for the week, we went to No Way Jose's for dinner, a place we fell in love with the last time we were in TN.
The next day we enjoyed a delicious breakfast made by Patrick and Michelle and then packed a lunch and went sight seeing!

 Cool snail...I did not see the little pile of poo just behind him when taking this photo...oh, well.  Ha!
 Very strange leaves...
 And yellow stuff growing...
 The water felt so so good and cold.
 A different snail...Noah named him Fluffy, he is yellowish green there in front of Noah.  I got a close-up shot, but he is pretty gross looking in the photo...to much detail...

 Bee containers!  Cool!

 Another day we did the Cade's Cove drive.  There was a field of horses in the beginning, my favorite part!  Gorgeous!


  A much needed nappy!
 Putt-Putt Golf!  Elia wasn't sure about the bear in the entry of the building.  :)
 Noah did really good!  It was hard to get very many photos since we were such a large group and it was kind of busy.
 Elia had a BLAST!  She played each hole 2 or 3 times...but did get in the way of other peoples turns...oopsies.

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