Well, actually, it wasn’t the weekend.\u00a0 We left home on Thursday at 6pm, had a smooth 5-hour trip, concluding with the bright Christmas lights of Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, arriving at 12:30am local time.<\/p>\n
The kids and I visited Ripley’s Aquarium on Friday morning.\u00a0 We had a great time, of course.\u00a0 This was one of the first times it was really an interactive experience for both of them.\u00a0 Analise was full of questions, and Josiah was really appreciating things, too.\u00a0 We got a big long nap in our spacious, quiet apartment, right next to Brian’s conference hotel.\u00a0 He had worked nearly all night to finish his presentation, and he spent all day over at the various sessions.\u00a0 We woke up just in time for him to come home and take us down the street to dinner at Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Factory.\u00a0 We made the cold walk back up the hill, and caught a trolley to ride around town and see the beautiful Christmas lights.<\/p>\n
Poor Brian crashed early for the night, and amazingly, the kids slept long and hard for us.\u00a0 Brian had planned to get up this morning and ride up to the mountain pass, as he’s done the past few years, and he was really looking forward to it.\u00a0 But he slept too late, it was very-VERY cold for riding (in the low teens!), and after we drove up, we found the road was salt and snow covered, so he wouldn’t have made it far anyway.\u00a0 So we enjoyed a relaxing morning getting packed up, grabbing breakfast, and driving up into the mountains.\u00a0 We played in the snow at a couple different stops, and drove the long way home through the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.<\/p>\n
This was a fun trip.\u00a0 I have probably said this before, but my kids are getting to fun ages so that we can really enjoy traveling.\u00a0 Yes, the hours in the car can be really long, but we laugh, sing, play and find lots of fun things to see and do.\u00a0 I’m already looking forward to next year!<\/p>\n
Enjoy the pictures!\u00a0 Our camera has an aquarium setting for low-light\/no flash, so some of the photos got very grainy.\u00a0 Click on each to see the larger version, then you can click the “back” button to come back to this post and look at the others.<\/p>\n\n\t\t