The rest of our vacation...

I realized that I hadn't blogged in a few days! Let's see...

Wednesday was a day of shopping and just chillin' out! John's brother, Jack Jr., took us to the Smoky Mountain National Park. We went to a little part of the river, where you can swim and just relax in the cold water. We got some tubes for the kids and headed to the river. It was the best thing ever! I wish we had known about this spot earlier in the week. I think we would have visited this area more than once. It was not only beautiful, but tranquil and just amazing. Josh would walk upstream and ride the river down to where we were. He had so much fun...until his raft popped! He was going down a small waterfall area and he hit a rock. He had a great attitude though, and kept on exploring...this kind of thing is right 'up his alley'. Cami wasn't a huge fan, she's not too fond of water anyways...and cold water was definately not exciting for her. She was a trooper though, for the most part. Thankfully, Grandma didn't mind sitting with her in the most shallow areas. Grandma sat in the water and played with rocks with Cami. We all ended up having a blast that day. By far, my favorite day of the entire vacation!







Thursday, we cooked out again, washed laundry and packed. Grandma & Grandpa celebrated Cami's birthday all week! They 'casually' gave her a gift every day of the week. On this last day, she got 2. She was so excited...she was dancing around the cabin, singing "This is the best birthday of my life!!!"...so funny.





Friday, we left early in the morning to head home. We drove to Little Rock, AR where we found a Best Western and spent the night. We went swimming in the hotel pool that evening and went to dinner at El Chico's...Mexican, my favorite!!

Saturday, we finally arrived home around 3pm!! The kids were very ready to be home, we were too. It was really funny...I told the kids that we would need their help unpacking the car...Cami whined a little, so I said "Cami, you can either help out or you can go to bed", she was asleep within 10 minutes! I guess she really didn't want to help. When we got home, the kids did help out...and we actually unpacked right away! By 5pm, everything was put away and the dirty clothes were washing...I was very pleased.

I went grocery shopping today, there is never any food in the house when you return from vacation! Now, we are getting ready to get back to work...John had airport duty tonight, picking kids up from the airport. We're planning to 'try' to get our kids on a school-like schedule over these next 2 weeks. Josh starts back to football practice tomorrow, with two-a-days!! That will put him into schedule-mode because by 8 or 9 at night he will be so exhausted that he'll beg to go to bed! This will be the 1st time Cami's ever been on any kind of schedule! She is very excited about starting school. Our plan is to have Cami in bed by 8:30pm and Josh by 9pm. I'll get back to you on how that goes!!

Overall, our vacation was awesome! I think we're going to try to plan a vacation with Lace & Julian sometime in the next year. I'm sure we'll go back to Gatlinburg again, this was our 2nd trip and the stay in the cabin (vs the hotel) was much better. So relaxing...exactly what we needed!