My Hero

I was cleaning out Karlee's school folder this morning and I found this. It's funny what kids don't forget.

This happened when we were living in Texas (before Erik was a soldier). Our apartment was next to a huge field that was filled with fire ant mounds all over the place. The kids had learned early on what to look for and what to avoid, but I guess Karlee had walked into it without realizing it. Erik and I were talking by the front door and when we heard the screams Erik took off. As he was running back to the sidewalk, Karlee was in his arms screaming. He put her down on the sidewalk and proceeded to brush the last of the ants off of her legs and clothes, all the while suffering bites on his arms and hands. Karlee was around 2 or 3 years old at the time, but she has never forgotten it. Obviously.

They Don't Call It That for Nothing!

One of the main reasons that we wanted to go to Pigeon Forge was to see The Great Smoky Mountains!Unfortunately, the day that we went there was the only day that it rained, or more like poured!
The beauty of the mountains, however, were only accentuated by the mist that formed around them and created that "smoky" look. I am not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I hope that you can enjoy the beauty that we saw in person, at least a little, through the pictures that we took.
Taken from inside the car.

We drove all the way to the top of this mountain to see the view and the only thing that we could see clearly was this sign.

We had planned a hike to a hidden waterfall that only the locals know about, but because of the rain we had to settle for the paved trail to Laurel Falls. There was a slight lapse in the rain that morning and we took advantage of the time to hike up there.
By the time we got back we were all pretty wet, but we did it. Since I have been sick and am still recovering I was always behind on the hike, and on the way back Karlee stayed with me. I would like to say it's because she likes my company but it was because I had a camera and she wanted to be in all the pictures. She is very photogentic.

That's me way behind on the way back. Can't imagine why I was so far behind, what with having to stop every few minutes to take pictures of Karlee.
Chimney Rock

This is the view of Gatlinburg, TN (the place with all the Ripley Attractions)

The best part about this area was that if you wanted to pay for your entertainment there was plenty of things to do in Pigeon Forge and in Gatlinburg, but if you wanted to escape from the craziness of it all you could drive for 10-20 minutes and enter the beautiful mountains.
I kept trying to figure out why the beauty of these mountains overcame me so much, having grown up around the mountains my whole life, and I realized just how much I have missed being near the mountains. Erik and I, both enjoyed just looking around, the kids, however, were happy to watch movies and skip the whole mountain adventure. Poor kids don't know what they are missing!
So there you have it, I'm all caught up...for now.

Believe It or Not

Other than Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, which we didn't go to due to time constraints, the other big attractions there are the Ripley Attractions. As in "Ripley's Believe It or Not". When we went to St Augustine, FL we went through the Believe It or Not building and the kids loved it. There were all sorts of fun things to see, and to try and figure out. At Pigeon Forge they didn't just have a Believe It or Not building, they actually had about 8 or 9 attractions that you could pick from to visit. Luckily for us they also treat their military members VERY well, and gave us a 85% discount on a pass to everything. So our entire family got tickets to everything for less than it would have been for ONE person to get a ticket!

Our first stop was the Aquarium of the Smokies. It was really cool.

Check out them crab legs!!!

We've been to many, MANY aquariums in the last year, but this one had the coolest tunnel to see the sharks and other fish swimming around. I kept trying to take pictures, and they would rarely turn out. Then I remembered that I can do videos on the camera as well and that turned out much better. See for yourself.

After the aquarium, the kids DESPERATELY wanted to visit the Mirror Maze.
When they read the description online they misunderstood a crucial thing. They thought that if you found your way through the maze you would have access to as much candy as you can eat. The only thing that they didn't understand was that you had to pay for the candy by the 1/4 pound. In fact it was $3 for 1/4 pound, on top of the price to get into the maze. Needless to say we skipped the candy part, and they were very disappointed!
I couldn't take pictures in the maze, but I did take some video. It was pretty fun and it took us a while to find our way out.




Next, we visited the Guiness Hall of Records, and got a few good pictures.


Then we moved onto the Moving Theater.
It's one of those simulator rides were your seat moves and you watch on a big screen what you are supposedly doing. Here we are ready to go.
The first part of the ride was cool. It was simulating a roller coaster, and then it turned into a dune buggy. Then the second part was a crazy driving logging truck. It was horrible. It was nonstop shaking with sudden jerking everywhere, I was getting very sick.


After that the girls and I braved the Haunted House.
Jordan was too young so Erik stayed outside with him. I didn't know what I was getting myself into otherwise I probably would NOT have gone.
Here we are on the elevator to take us in to start the "tour".

Once we got inside, the creepy owner told us that we had to walk single file and all hold onto each other, oh and not to touch anything because they were just sprayed poison all over everything to get rid of all the rats...Nice!
We were in a group with one older guy and, I'm guessing, his wife and adult daughters. So what do they do??? They stick the little girls and their mom in the very front! The only thing that got me through it was knowing that the people who work there can't touch us, so there would be no grabbing or anything like that. The scariest part though was the fact that more than once we were wandering around in complete darkness. I kept having visions of reaching out with my hand and touching someone or something really gross, so every so often I would kick in front of me to make sure there was nothing there. It worked really well. Lizzy was directly behind me pulling on my shirt so hard that it was starting to choke me. Then Karlee was behind her with her head buried in Lizzy's back, then behind her was the older guy followed by the women who were screaming and carrying on about EVERY little thing that we came upon. As much as I hated being the first person, I soon found that it worked to my advantage. Whenever they had something that was going to jump out or make a loud noise it usually happened around the middle of the group, so I lucked out a couple of times. It was pretty fun, but I doubt that my girls will be begging to go on another one for a very long time.

Later on, Erik took the kids Miniature golfing while I went to some of the Outlet stores nearby. There wasn't much picture taking going on, so this is all you get.

And Believe It or Not, that was the end of our VERY long day!

Wonderworks

On Tuesday we made it to Pigeon Forge, TN. It was crazy! It totally reminded me of Las Vegas minus the gambling and the horrible pamphlets you are handed on the street. It was a huge commercialistic (I know that's not a word, just humor me) mess. There were mini amusement parks, rides, mini-golf, race track places, souvenir stores and restaurants everywhere. The traffic was bumper to bumper and on top of it all they were doing construction. After it took 30 minutes to go 7 miles, we were getting a little frustrated. We finally found our hotel, got checked in and got our stuff unloaded. After that we decided to go check out Wonderworks. I saw a Wonderworks in Florida when we went there, but with all the stuff we had to do we didn't have time to check it out, so we jumped at the chance to go when we saw it in Pigeon Forge. (We had also heard that they do a good military discount so...) If you have never been to one, it's like an indoor discovery museum for kids. They have tons of different activities catered to kids and helping them to learn different things. There were a lot of people there, and even though I got a lot of pictures I only got pictures of a fraction of the things that we did. So without further ado, here is the picture overload. Enjoy.

The kids LOVED the fact that the building was upside down. When you go inside the building, if you look up it has staircases and stuff that are upside down as well.

The first thing that we came to was this pulley system to pull yourself up. They had 4 different ones that the kids were suppose to try and decide which one made it easier to pull themselves up, but with everything going on they didn't really care as long as they could play on it. The kids thought that was pretty cool though.
This place had different sections. We were in the space section for these next pictures.

The kids really wanted to go on some of the rides, but for some of them they were too small. They were perfectly happy to settle for rock climbing though. Lizzy was the only one that made it to the top.

Karlee had a lot of fun on the huge piano!

Lizzy was having fun coloring.

Jordan found this awesome air cannon. When you pull the rope connected to the ball all the way up and let it go, it forces the tennis ball on the other side to shoot out the top. If you look in the next picture you can see a little green ball flying high above it.
The girls were super excited that they were tall enough to ride this roller coaster simulator. I wish I would have taken video of it, but I didn't think of it at the time. It moved all over and even took them upside down. They were inside the simulator and were watching the roller coaster on a screen inside.
Here they are waiting in line.They got briefed on safety stuff before they were closed in. I told them that when he opened it after they were done they needed to give me some kind of sign to know if they liked it or not, and this is what I got.They loved it!

After we lost Jordan and had to find him again we decided it was time to go. After we got back to the hotel Erik took the kids swimming while I rested. It was a tiring day especially since I'm still recovering from being sick. I will be posting about day 3 soon, so keep an eye out for that.