Vacation (Part 4)

Sunday (the 8th) we all slept in and didn't really start moving around till close to lunch. Felt SO good! The kids were up at normal time,mind you, but was nice not to be rushing somewhere!

We loaded everything we'd need to grill burgers at the park. Having a creek to play in was just icing on the cake!

Michael grilled some fabulous hamburgers! YUM!! Nothing like the smell of charcoal in the summertime!! : )

Nana trying to teach my lefty to skip rocks.

She LOVED the water! Was so mad when I took her out of it. Oh, by the way the water in the park is a nice 50 some odd degrees. Burrrr......

Busted Michael catching up on some work.

Didn't think we'd miss the opening game for Preseason NFL, did you?

So ready for football....but mainly college football!!

Don't ya just wanna pinch those little arms?

Guess he was needin' some R&R. Hehe!!

Vacation (Part 3)

Too much excitement for Ainsley! Haha

After we devoured our funnel cakes we walked down to River Battle. I didn't get any pictures of this....my mistake. You laugh SO hard at the poor folks getting drenched.

An amazingly fun day. Had a blast! Mom laughed SO much. Funny how laughing can release what has been built up inside.

Vacation (Part 2)

After visting The Hermitage we headed east. It was another 3 hours to get to the cabin.

We pulled up to the cabin, got out of the truck and saw this. It was creepy. Thought we were in for an awful storm, but it rained for awhile and quit. We unloaded the truck and headed for dinner. We ate at The Old Mill. Food here is unbelievably good. The corn fritters were probably my favorite. So good that I bought the recipe. Don't ask how much that one cost! Haha!! Oh, the amount of fried food that was consumed on vacation......

View from the balcony.

Another...

In the National Park headed for our favorite picnic spot. Kinda sad that we've been enough that we know where we're going.

Playing along one of the little creeks.

In Cades Cove headed up to John Oliver's house. This is where Michael, Tanner and Ainsley saw the bear. The only one we'd (they) see this time

This is the view from Mr. Oliver's cabin. Not too bad, huh?

Vacation 2010 (Part 1)

We left for vacation on August 4th at 3:15am. Yep, I said it, three in the morning. We had a booked a hotel in Nashville for that night, so we knew we had to get moving. After all it was a 14 hour drive (with no stops), and 874 LONG miles. It was great though. Woke the kids up and put 'em in the truck and took off. Ainsley went back to sleep fairly quick, but Tanner was SO excited there was no way he was gonna close his eyes. He may have taken a 30 minute nap that day. Michael and I took turns driving, so the other could try and get a cat nap. We rolled into Nashville about 5:30. Had dinner at Cracker Barrell, some shopping too, and headed back to the hotel. I made our plans for the following day, you'll see that below.

Portable DVD player saved our sanity!

No worries. For those of you who know me, you would've already known I travel with a can of lysol spray. Everything gets sprayed before we try and get comfy. Haven't found a portable steam cleaner for the carpet though.

We visited the home of our 7th President, Andrew Jackson. You can read all about what we saw here:
http://www.thehermitage.com/

This is the drive way of his home, as it would have looked in 1837.

The trees were huge. It would have taken 3 people to wrap our arms around this tree.

Looking up the driveway toward the house. The drive way was lined with cedar trees on both sides.

Sitting on a bench on the back porch of the house.

Looking out towards the formal garden.

This is the house of Jackson's long time faithful servant.

Beautiful flowers in the garden. Love them zinnias!!