Sunday, February 15, 2009

Day Two

We got up a little after 8am to get ready to go eat pancakes at The Log Cabin restaurant. I don't know what it is about the mountains but it makes eating pancakes one of my favorites things to do here. Anyway, back to story. Tony and Gabrielle got in both bathrooms to take their morning shower but were shouting shortly because the hot water ran out. Needless to say, I didn't get to wash my hair this morning. Ugh!



The Log Cabin was packed by the time we got there. I thought we would be in line for a while which I was dreading because Tony does not have the patience of Job, but amazingly it went quickly. Gabrielle and Cassidy split a plate of Chocolate Chip pancakes, I had blackberry crepe pancakes and Tony had plain buttermilk pancakes with a side order of bacon AND a side order of country ham! What a pig! LOL!



After a quick trip to the grocery store, we headed to Pigeon Forge to do our favorite pastime there...ride go carts. We love visiting Pigeon Forge and riding all the different go carts they have. We rode some today that we hadn't rode before because we saw their advertisement stating that their go carts go as fast as 40 mph. Wow! Unfortunately, Cassidy was still not old enough or tall enough to ride alone so we rode in a double go cart. Even though we were in a double cart, we were still flying. In fact, we "drifted" everytime we turned a curve. What fun we had. We visited a few gift shops including going to the Old Mill. We had never been there before in spite of the many trips to Pigeon Forge. We snapped a couple of pictures to remember the beauty of it.



Next we headed back to the condo to watch the Daytona 500. I tried very hard to keep my eyes open but they just wouldn't cooperate so I ended up taking a short nap. Later that evening we headed back to Pigeon Forge to ride the go carts again since we would only have to pay half-price to ride. We stopped at Pizza Hut and ate and then headed back to the room for the evening.

Check back tomorrow for more exciting details. Ashley and her crew will be driving tonight and should be here early in the morning. Yeah!

Saturday, February 14, 2009

It's official!

I have finally decided to try my hand at blogging. I can't promise how much I will post but I want to give it a try. The main reason for wanting to start this is to help me remember small details of my family's life. My memory is TERRIBLE! Maybe this will help my journalling when I am trying to scrapbook an event that happened five years earlier. Not that I'm admitting to being that far behind in my scrapbooks...maybe more.

The girls are out of school all next week for their winter break ( I love their school schedule now) so we decided to go to Gatlingburg and take them snow skiing again. We came last year for the first time and it was one of our best vacations ever!

We got up this morning at 5:00 a.m. to make the 8 hour drive to Gatlinburg. Boy was the van loaded down this year. We brought some groceries and cooking essentials to avoid having to spend extra money at the grocery store. Gabrielle brought 3 bags of clothes and five pair of shoes!



We also brought the girls' Wii and Playstation 2 systems to set up in the condo. Unfortunately the condo we are staying at has old tvs and so we couldn't set up the games. Cassidy was so upset. What will she do for a whole week without playing her games?

The drive up here wasn't too bad. The weather was a little rainy at times but nothing too bad. Of course, Gabrielle and Cassidy took a nap. We make a quick stop at Tallulah Falls to look at the gorge. We had tried on several other trips to stop there but it was always too foggy to see anything. Today it was perfect which is really amazing conzidering the weather.The drive through the Smokey Mountains was a little disappointing because we were hoping to see ice or snow still on the ground. Oh well, maybe it will snow one day this week.





Once we came into Gatlinburg we headed straight for our condo. It is located near Ober Gatlinburg but we would have rather stayed in downtown Gatlinburg. Last year, we stayed at the Crown Park Resort and was so spoiled by all the extras it had including an indoor pool, indoor hottub, a billiards table and exercise room. This condo is not as nice although it has the most beautiful pine boards on the walls. It also has an indoor pool and hot tub and even a sauna!