What a Week

As you can imagine, this week I have been super busy at work.  Vacation is good, but sucks when you get back to work.  So much to catch up on. So I am just now blogging for the first time since our trip to Tennessee.  It was fast, busy and beautiful! Leven loved it.  Cold rivers, good country food, Smokey Mountains, Tennessee Volleyball, etc.  Leven and I headed out after I got off work on Friday.  We wanted to drive as close to Nashville as possible.  We ended up getting in bed around 3:00 am.  There was a huge wreck 10 miles from our hotel and we were completely shut down for over an hour.  So.......that made for a long trip up.  We woke up bright and early Saturday morning and drove about 20 more miles to Nashville! Neither one of us had ever been and we can't wait to go back! We were only there for about an hour and go back on the road headed towards Knoxville.

We stopped in Knoxville at the Universtiy of Tennessee so Leven could finally meet one of the volleyball coaches he had been in contact with for a few months.  While we were there, they asked him to come back and help coach their team camp! Super cool and he jumped on it.  So Leven actually worked while on vacation!

We finally made it to my Meme's Maryville home around 4 that evening.  Everyone was already there and had settled in.  We have a big family whom I love dearly. But let's just say that after 5 days, we were all getting a little tired of each other.  It's so much harder now with all of our kids.  We stayed in Maryville for two nights then headed to our Gatlinberg home for two more nights.  We swam in the cold Tennessee rivers, drove through Cade's Cove (http://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/cadescove.htm) and had a picnic while we were there, spent a day at Dollywood, walked around downtown Gatlinberg, ate good, and our parents even babysat the kids our last night there so we could all go out together! Fun fun! Here are some of my favorite pics from the trip: