Florida - Tuesday, June 25th
08-21-2002, 10:52 a.m.

Florida - Tuesday, June 25th...

August 21, 2002

We got up at a decent time, and got ready to hit the road again. Jen was excited about going to pick up the kids, and Tonya couldn't wait to see her own. We were only going to Tennessee that day, and so it was only going to be four hours in the car. A total difference from the day before, and we were looking forward to spending time in Knoxville. Tonya wanted to take us to Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge and we were looking forward to having a nice relaxing day of site seeing and stuff, rather than spending another whole day in the car.

The first stop was to Jen's MILs house to pick up Kris, Lain and Nicole. They were so excited to see their mom and it was cute. For as much as Jen sometimes jokes about not missing them, her face totally lit up when she saw them. They were anxious to get on the road with us, especially Nicole who couldn't wait to see Maddy and Rachel almost as much and Tonya couldn't wait to see them. First stop though, breakfast. Believe it or not, we passed up the cracker barrel. We were ready for something different and so we chose the IHOP instead.

We had a yummy breakfast.. okay some of us did. Jen's they kept getting wrong, and she was getting frustrated (understandably so), and they finally ended up giving it to her for free, so that was a good thing. It made the cracker barrel look not so bad all of a sudden as we never had any problems there. Still we had a nice time catching up with the kids about all they had done all week. Then it was back on the road for us. We were all anxious to hit our destination, and the 4 hours went quickly. We decided to check into the hotel and clear out the van some before we went to get the girls at Tonya's mom's house.

The girls were so excited to see their mom, and she was so excited to see them. It actually made me tear up, because she was just so happy and you can tell. We stayed and visited with Tonya's mom for a bit, but we were anxious to get out and do some stuff before it was too late. At first we thought that we would take the seat from Jen's van and put it into Tonya's van, so that we could all drive together (they both only had one seat in their van at the time).. but it didn't fit, so we had to take both vans anyway. It wasn't so bad though, and we headed to pigeon forge. I was so excited to finally be going here as Tonya talks about it all the time, and we all wanted to go to the Christmas village place. It was awesome too!! It was starting to drizzle as we got there, but we didn't care. We started walking around and going into all of the little stores. I wanted to see it all. This was such a cute place, and I kept thinking about how much my mom would love it. I would so love to go there with her someday, it is something that she would enjoy very much. We looked in some of the collectible shops and the candy shop and toy shop, but my favorite of all was the ornament shop. We spent the most time in there. We looked around at all the ornaments and picked out a few favorites. Tonya bought both Jen and I one, and I got Jen and Tonya one.. and a few for my mom and MIL. I also got one for Cory, which I never have given her yet, lol.. We had fun in there, and I so wasn't ready to leave when it was time to go. I could have spent hours in there looking at all the ornaments, they were just so beautiful. But everyone was getting hungry and the kids were getting antsy and it was time to go. We headed out to find a place to eat dinner, and we found this cute little place that specialized in seafood and stuff. It was good, and it was cute, and everyone had a good time including the kids. As we ate dinner, we talked about what we wanted to do next. We all really wanted to go Ripley's Aquarium, but it was getting late and it seemed senseless to pay that much money for such a short time. I would love to go back there sometime and do that though, it really looked neat. Since it was starting to drizzle again, and we couldn't pick a place to go to, we decided to just go out for ice cream and then back to the hotel to let the kids swim and stuff. Tonya had been telling us about this ice cream place for days, and omg, she was so right.. they had the best ice cream ever and I have been dreaming about it ever since. The kids loved it too, and we had fun. Jen and the boys took their ice cream and went back to the hotel, but Tonya and the girls and I ate ours at the shop and then headed back. We spent a while swimming, and then the chlorine made my sunburn start hurting so badly, and I couldn't take it. I spent the evening rubbing my back against the wall, half in tears and the rest of it begging Tonya to scratch.. man, that part sucked, but the whole rest of the day was wonderful.