Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg

President's Weekend we headed up to Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge to celebrate Jason's 40th birthday. His birthday was on the 3rd, but with this being a 3-day weekend, everyone chose it as the weekend to head out of town. There were 10 adults and four kids-Jason, Kristi and Silver, Brandi, Wes (who I hadn't seen since Kristi and Jason got married) and Zoe (who I'd never met), Brian, Kim and Grayson and a couple, Rachel and Jeremy, who are friends of The Walden's. 

Stella napped while Donald and I caught up on things since he'd been gone all week. Donald got pulled over on the way up going 60-something in a 45, I believe. We were just talking and not paying attention to the changes, but to be fair, the speed limit was all over the place going through Tennessee. Thankfully, the cop dropped his speed down considerably which was super nice. 

Kristi arrived first, then Kim a few minutes after. We arrived about 15 minutes later right as the last bit of light was fading from the sky. 

The kids instantly hit it off. There was a little adjustment time for Stella since she was the youngest, but overall, they did well together. We had some appetizers set up on the bar and Kim fixed chicken parmesan for supper. 

The kids were up late that first night, but thankfully we all slept in somewhat. We shared a room with Kim and Brian, but our part of the room was separated by a curtain and they had the window side so our side was the darkest. I normally want a window or some kind of light to wake me in the morning, but I was ok with darkness this trip.

The next morning Brandi and I awoke to this mess. Either a bear or trash panda got into the trash bag that was left in the driveway. We declared "No dish duty" after cleaning up. 

The kids admired the view from our cabin while playing ridiculous games in the hot tub. 

These were all cookie cutter-looking cabins all along the mountain ridge.  One of the kids, Grayson, I believe said "Wow, look at all those houses." Stella said (In front of Brandi), "Actually, my Mommy says those are cabins." Little Miss Know-It-All.

Kristi made breakfast while Jason sighted in supper. 

Our cabin was in Pigeon Forge, but we decided to go into Gatlinburg for the afternoon. With this being our first time to the area we didn't know what to expect. Driving through Pigeon Forge though we decided it looked like a mountain version of Panama City. There was just so much....tackiness? I don't know. It wasn't really our cup of tea.

On the drive in we started noticing the black soot on the tree trunks and bright chartreuse green winter rye grass growing on the banks. The color difference was amazing.  Even though the fires a few months back destroyed so much, they offered such beauty in some ways after the destruction. We drove along a ridge at the top of a mountain overlooking downtown Gatlinburg where most of the houses were gone. It was so crazy.  These were huge, million-dollar homes with nothing but the foundations remaining. There would be four houses completely gone and 30 feet away, that house would be untouched. Just unreal. 

Since we had breakfast around lunchtime,  we ended up having lunch around dinnertime. We ate at TGI Fridays and actually got to sit at one big table despite being told we wouldn't be able to. It was really good. It had been many years since I'd eaten there.  Stella and I were all matchy-matchy in our plaid shirts and Stella wanted a picture...or four.

And then a solo.

After lunch/dinner=linner, dunch(?) we just walked around the main downtown street a bit. It was soooo crowded though. There was some teen Christian conference and then with the holiday weekend, the streets were just crawling with people. I told Donald I felt like I was in Vegas.

The girls sampled some wine and bought moonshine at some distillery while the kids danced to some local bluegrass band on the stage outside. They enjoyed themselves and the people in the crowd enjoyed watching them.

After returning home, the kids watched a movie and played while the adults played Cards Against Humanity.

Sunday morning, Brandi made pancakes and bacon.  I prepped everything for a white chicken chili to go into the Crock-Pot for later that evening. Then we made sandwiches for lunch and got everything ready to head back into town for Winter fun.  We were all supposed to go snow tubing, but Kim and I missed out on tickets. We opted for ice skating which Stella had been asking to do for months now so that worked out. Kim, Brian and Grayson did the mountain roller coaster and a few other things while we were all up at the top of the mountain. 

While waiting on Daddy to buy tramway tickets Stella found amusement in the rocks outside. Imagine that. 

Stella loved the tram ride up to the top of the mountain. We probably could have ridden this all day and been good.

Hard to tell from this picture, but all of the girls had on teal shirts. Actually Zoe and Silver's shirts were the same and Grayson did have on a teal shirt, but changed.

Stella wanted to step on the snowflake like when Elsa does at the end of Let It Go.

We changed into ice skates and what was incredible was that we all got the right size skate the very first time.

Then things got interesting. And wobbly. 

While trying to skate and help Stella stay upright I looked up and noticed a girl who looked familiar attempting very slowly to get onto the ice. I said to myself, "That looks like Macy." Then I moved my eyes slightly to the right to see her mom Jennifer. Jenn is from Albany, but lives in Cumming. She and her husband, Mike were up with Macy for the holiday weekend too. It was so crazy to have run into them so randomly. I asked her to take a few pictures of us.  

*Note-Donald's knees are wet because Stella wanted to feel the ice. Donald brought her to the middle of the rink and knelt down with her so she could touch it safely and not risk getting any fingers cut off.

Stella wanted to take a break and Donald was tired too so they hopped off and caught up with Jenn for a bit. I decided to skate around by myself for a bit. I was feeling pretty good and going somewhat fast (for me that is). I'd been noticing this really wet part of the ice each time I'd skate up to it. I guess that part of the ice wasn't as frozen as the rest of the rink. Well, just before it, there were lots of grooves in the ice from all of the skates. I hit one of those grooves and lost my balance, but recovered. Then I hit another and couldn't do anything but fall. It felt like my feet were swept out from under me as I landed---no, smacked the ice with my tailbone and lower back. During the fall, I also attempted to catch myself with my hands which led to me cutting my hand open on the ice and getting a nasty blood blister. Oh and I made almost the entire rink audible gasp in horror when I slammed down on the rink.   As soon as I opened my eyes my first thought was "stretcher" which is how I was removed the first and last time I'd landed on my tailbone almost 20 years prior when I fell off a roof and fractured my tailbone.  Luckily, that was not the case this time. I immediately got on my knees, then to my feet and walked off the ice and over to Donald and Stella. They were ready with the speedracer jokes which I found quite ironic considering  he'd gotten the speeding ticket on the way up. Not sure if he wanted to be the pot or the kettle in this situation.  Not gonna lie-my tailbone hurt. Really bad. And I was really concerned about that four hour drive home the next day. But I did end up getting back out on the ice and skating by myself a few rounds. I even went out with Stella, but I couldn't do too much with her. My wrists and the fatty part of my hands/thumbs were already feeling bruised from trying to brace my fall. We could tell she was getting over it and she'd already mentioned being hungry and thirsty so we called it quits. She enjoyed herself and I'm so glad we could do and experience this as a family for the first time. She did get upset a few times she'd see a kid just a bit older than her skate past her. She couldn't understand why she was instantly good at ice skating. I kept telling her, "We didn't come here to be good ice skaters, we came here to have fun."  Not sure if it worked, but it was the truth. 

Afterwards, we got some fudge and she rode the only quarter machine that would work.

Then we rode back down the tram to the bottom of the mountain.

The girls picnicked in the back of the car after our Winter adventures. Funny thing is, even though it was February and we were in mountains, it hardly felt like Winter. We could have easily been in shorts a few times that day. We brought jackets not knowing how cold it may be inside the rink, but it turns out they were completely unnecessary. 

We were supposed to go to the aquarium, but we knew Stella was fading from being up so late the past two nights.  Plus, she kept asking to just go back to the cabin because she wanted us to get in the hot tub. 

So we did that instead and it was fabulous. It was just the three of us in the cabin. Donald and I straightened up and got a few things together for our early morning checkout. I finished off the chili while he washed some dishes. Then we changed into our swimsuits and got in the hot tub as a family. We turned the outside flood lights off so we could look up at the stars. I got this book for Stella called "Stars Above Us" about a girl who's separated from her dad because he's in the service but he tells her the stars above them are the same. Stella wanted to sit in the hot tub and try to find the North star. It was perfect. 

Donald had been up really late (early?) the past two nights so he retired to bed significantly earlier than previous nights when Stella went to bed. 

I sat up for a bit, then ended up getting back in the hot tub with Rachel, Jeremy, Brandi and Wes. Jason was in for a short while, but I think he was tired so he went to bed shortly thereafter. 

The next morning we were all up and at 'em and actually checked out before our time. It was just a few minutes, but we just figured we'd be late to leave. 

We stopped at a local restaurant in Tennessee along the way home and had lunch. I can't remember if Stella napped on the way home, but I know at some point I wanted to.

We had leftovers for supper, then headed to RaceTrac for frozen yogurt (which Stella had chosen for her Valentine's treat, but then wanted to wait for Donald to get home from a business trip to go with us). 

That was a good way to end our little mini-vacation and also a good way to start Stella's Winter break.  Stella did a lot of running around and stayed up late a lot this trip so I'm glad we had the following week to catch up on sleep.  

I'm not sure if we'll be back to this area or not. We love the mountains, but we weren't so enthralled with the area like some are. Maybe we just experienced it on the wrong weekend? I don't know. But if we do go back it will be at a less busy time and it will just include Gatlinburg.