Pack a Bag - Let's Go To Gatlinburg!!!

So when we get home from church Sunday afternoon around 1:00 p.m. Brian says, "Hey, let's go to Gatlinburg!" I just start laughing because I honestly think he is just joking around with the girls. Then he says more seriously, "Let's go!" He grabbed a coin that was laying on the table and said if it lands on heads we'll go and if it lands on tails we'll stay home.

Please keep in mind that we ARE NOT gamblers! :)

So the first time he flips the coin he drops it and doesn't see what it landed on. The second time - guess what it landed on?! Yep, heads. So we had about 20 minutes to pack a bag and we were off!

With the schedule that Brian works he gets an eight day break once a month and he has been off since last Thursday and still had a few more days off. And since we've gotten back from Panama we have wanted to take the girls somewhere before we start our school year.

Before we left Brian explained to the girls what prayerwalking is and that we were going to do some prayer-driving! That if any one of us sees something that we feel like God is pointing out for us to pray for that we'd all stop what we were doing and pray. It was really cool to see the different things that our attention was drawn too.

We obviously didn't have reservations, so when we got down there we just picked up some coupon books and started calling around.

Econolodge had a $39.99 a night deal for Sun-Thur!
And it was a newer hotel with an indoor pool and they had a river outback where we could feed ducks! Needless to say I think we have a new place to stay in Pigeon Forge!!!

Another thing we did was take turns picking out where we were gonna eat. That night for supper was my turn to choose so we ate at The Old Mill Restaurant! It is always one of our favorite places to eat while we are down there. Everything I have ever eaten there is delicious! I had the BBQ ribs and Brian had homemade meatloaf! Every dinner is served with a dessert.



After supper the girls wanted to play some putt putt golf. We all decided that this place would be fun and they had a good coupon! :)

Getting ready!

Some random shots.

They had taken a pic of the 4 of us before we started playing and had it for sale when we got finished. I am always a sucker for those things. Hehe! It was only $10 AND we got 2 free passes to play again and anyone extra that plays with the passes only pays $5.00 each! I thought it was a pretty good deal! :) I need to scan the pic I bought and post it!

Monday morning breakfast was Anna's choice and she chose, Flapjacks. Ummm, it was decent. We'll know next time to bypass Flapjacks and just eat elsewhere.

One of the main reasons we wanted to go to G-burg was to go tubin' on the river. We've wanted to do this since the girls were little and now they are big enough!

We wore our bathing suits under shorts and t-shirts and had to wear closed toe shoes. We had a blast! Because the river was so low the girl were able to float down most of the time by themselves. There was a few places that it got a little rough and we had to hold onto them, but it was fun!

When we left Sunday Brian and I both wore black shirts. Then Monday morning after we got ready we both started laughing when we realized that we both had packed turquoise shirts to wear! It was too late at that point to change so just call us the twinkies!

To get to the tubin' place we had to drive through Wears Valley. This is one of our favorite places in East Tennessee.

Here is one of the reasons :) For our honeymoon we rented a cabin from this place called Bear's Pause.

It was located on this road :) Maybe next year for our 15 year anniversary we might go back and stay in the same cabin!

Monday evening it was Holly's choice to pick our dinner location. She kept trying to con us into going to a dinner show called, "Murder Mystery!" But we called for prices and it was over $100 for the 4 of us! Yikes! So with a little help from Daddy she picked Bubba Gump Shrimp in Gatlinburg!

This sign has been there for as long as I have been going down there!

I love the drive between Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg!

I've always loved this little turn going into G-burg. It's all trees and then voila a town appears!

Usually we park and walk around, but at this point eating was the only thing on our minds.

Bubba Gump!

I had the Cajun Bourbon Mahi Mahi and it was yummy yummy!

Brian got a variety of shrimp thingy. We shared with each other.

After dinner we played putt putt again for only $10!!!! Hehe! Then we had Baskin Robbins ice cream. I think I was about half asleep at that point and forgot to grab my camera.

This morning before we left for home we let the girls feed the ducks at the hotel. It was all fun until the pigeons showed up! But we ended up feeding them too.

We had a great time and sometimes a little spontaneity is a good thing!

We also found out last week that we'll be traveling to Plymouth, Massachusetts again later on this fall to be an extra in a documentary that Kirk Cameron is filming!!! That will be a nice little field trip for school.

Speaking of school......we start "officially" in the morning!