Tennessee Vacation

For our fall break this year, we went to Sevierville, TN with my in-laws to a cabin they own there.  I have always loved Tennessee, but have never been there in the fall.  It is so beautiful when the trees start changing colors!  Even though this was our fall break, we did a couple things that I will count as a school day.  We had just finished talking about horses, so the first thing we did was go to Five Oaks Riding Stables and we all rode horses for 1 hour.  We had to force Nicolas on, but he now says that was his favorite part of vacation.  This is the first time I had ever been on a horse also. 

Alex on his horse,

Nicolas on his horse, Coal.

After horse back riding, we went to Nascar Speedpark.  We went there the last time we were in Tennessee, but it was the spring, and it was busy.  This time there was hardly anyone else there, so the people running the tracks let the kids stay on as long as they wanted to.  The kids wanted to go trick-or-treating while we were there, so we found out Five Oaks Tanger Outlet had trick-or-treating in the stores.  The boys dressed up in their Jedi robes once again and got lots of candy.  That gave me a chance to scope out the stores I would like to shop at in the future!  Ryan and I went to a Mystery Dinner Theatre that night, while the kids stayed with Grandpa and Grandma.  The food was good and the show was funny, (Frankly Scarlet, You're Dead).

Grandpa and Grandma wanted to take all of us to Wonderworks.  It is like a science museum, but the building was built upside down.  They had a hurricane and earthquake simulator, a bed of nails, several optical illusions, a space center, to name a few.  Alex built his own rollercoaster on a computer, then got in a "pod" and was able to ride the rollercoaster he built. 

The last day we were there, we took a trip into the Smokey Mountain National Park.  Along the road we were on, there were 3 old log cabins along with the barns, mills and other buildings that went along with the farm.  The first homestead had a brochure telling about the history of the farmer who lived there.  It was neat to go inside the cabins and bars.  We hiked on the trails a couple of different times and of course got some great pictures of the view.

This is the sunrise from our bedroom window. Gorgeous!!

The rest of our vacation was spent shopping, playing in the game room at the cabin (pool and arcade), and sitting in the hot tub.  No one was ready to leave!