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~Our Dollywood Trip~

 

God really blessed us with an awesome trip to Dollywood!  The weather was decent most of the day – a little cool, but the rain held off until right as we were getting ready to leave.  The best part was that there was hardly anyone else there!  We road most of the rides at least twice if not three or four times, most of those were even back-to-back.  How many times can you go to an amusement park and do that?  The only downfall was that Melia could not go with us due to a mandatory test that she had to take today.  Thank goodness for season passes so that we’ll be going back several  more times (I hope) this year!

Here’s a few pics of our day today!

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(Katie’s friend, Michael, & Katie)

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(Michael & me riding the Veggie Tales roller coaster)

Here we are riding the scrambler:

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and

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(Michael riding the Flying Elephants)

There were a lot more things that we road.  It really was a great day to go.  If you’re ever in Tennessee, you need to check out Dollywood.  It’s a great family-friendly park. 

Of  course, we crashed when we got home.   It sure does wear you out!  I wonder how tired they’re going to be at school today?

 

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Christmas 2009

I know I’m late posting these, but this past holiday season was a little rough for us.  I really feel like we’re starting to come out our fog now and life is starting to return to what I guess could be called “normal”.  LOL  I always have to laugh when I hear the term “normal”.  What is “normal” anyway?  I heard it described once like this: “Normal” is a setting on a washing machine.   I really have to agree with this.   Anyway, back to the topic at hand.  🙂
My parents came and stayed the night with us on Christmas Eve so that they could be here when the kids got up in the morning to open their presents.  They love being here and we love having them.  We made sure to take the time to read the Christmas story, too.  We want to make sure that we take the time to focus on the real reason for the CHRISTmas season and not just on the materialistic part that has become so all-consuming for most people today. 
So, without further ado, here are a few pics of our Christmas morning.
Yes, we have a fence around our tree.  Brian originally built this in 2002, Michael’s first Christmas, to keep him out of the tree.  But, we loved it so much that we’ve kept it and use it every year.  Now, it serves to keep the presents ‘in’. 
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After Santa came but before the kids got up:

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After they got up at about 4 a.m.  LOL
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My mom and dad:
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Melia:
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Katie:
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Michael:
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Here they are opening up their afghans.
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If you didn’t see my post about their round ripples that I made them for Christmas, you can find it here and see a pic of them as well.