An awesome vacation!

(You can click on the pictures to see a bigger version...some of these look so tiny just looking at the photos on here.)
We had an awesome vacation last week. It was suppose to be a get away for Chad and I but we had a change of events and ended up taking the girls with us. What a blessing it turned out to be for our family. As we were traveling, we realized that this was our first family vacation that included just the five of us. We went to Pigeon Forge, TN. We stayed in a cabin that we found on vrbo.com. It was just perfect for us! Definetly was nicer to come home to that at the end of a busy day, instead of a stale hotel room.

We went to the Ripley's Aquarium, rode the sky lift, went to the Comedy Barn, The Black Bear Jamboree, and hiked up a Great Smokey Mountain trail called Laurel Falls to see a beautiful waterfall. We also walked around the Tanger Outlet mall and found some shoes that we desperatly needed. It was a busy week but we wanted to make the most of it since we weren't sure when we would be able to do that again.

We went to this one resturant thinking we could get a good steak...well while we were waiting we looked at the menus...we quickly took our names off the list...steaks were $23...so I was thinking...this resturant was not an option for us...no biggie...we found another resturant called Calhoun'....so yummy and reasonable!!!

While we were in Gatlinburg, they were having a Santa Claus convention...so we saw swarms of Santas...we got out of there before the parade started...we were exhausted from the aquarium and all the walking!

Our car started messing up a little on our trip and we were so blessed that it held on while we were gone and started really messing up when we arrived home. We also were blessed that Autumn started getting sick on the way home and she wasn't sick the whole trip. She was so sweet to wait to throw up til about 15 min after we walked in the house after our 8 hour drive.

We arrived back home Thursday evening. We spent Friday unpacking and getting things cleaned up around here.

It was nice to have a few days to just hang out after getting back in town so that we could recover. Why is it that you always need a vacation from vacation? All the packing and laundry...its making me tired just thinking about it!