Gatlinburg

We always look forward to our week with family every other year in Gatlinburg.  The girls and I rode down with Karen and met Lesli, Jeff, and Austin at Mountain Loft.  Karen worked her magic to get us a newly renovated unit, but unfortunately that meant we lost our amazing view from last year.  Jeff was a little disappointed. Sunday and Monday we started each day with a big hike.  The first part of the first hike Elye spent taking a gazillion pictures with their camera.  The girls lost their energy around mile 1.5 and we had to turn around.  The next day we did an even longer hike and it was straight up hill, 2.4 miles uphill.  The last mile uphill was ugly but we made it!! Then Elye ran the whole way down with Austin and Jeff.  The girls went down on our own nice and slow and started talking about soldiers who have lost limbs in war and how they miss out on things like this.  Then we started talking about the dancing with the stars soldier who lost his arm and leg.  Meemaw best comment of the week was about him and how he lost them, "What'd he do, step on an IUD or something?" 

The rest of the week we went to the water park, walked downtown almost every night, did Wonderworks, Alamo, and walked around the Island.