Tennessee Weekend - Part II
08-29-2002, 9:30 p.m.

Tennessee Weekend - Part II...

August 29, 2002

As planned, our first stop of the evening was to the Christmas Village... I loved it so much when we went there in June with Jen, that I wanted to go back. I wanted to take the time to look in every nook and cranny of every store. I love everything about Christmas, and that is a store I could spend a lot of time in. Unfortunately, I could spend a lot of money in there too, and I think I did...lol. Honestly, the biggest bulk of my spending money went into the Christmas village. Tonya had to pull me out of there kicking and screaming, and only because she already spent a fortune in there as well. We had fun buying each other little presents.. and she got me the cutest TN Vols snowman ornament. I so cannot wait to hang it on my tree this Christmas. I also found this awesome hand lotion in one of the stores which is my favorite almond smell. I love that smell, but it has to be just right, and some things just don't hit the smell right, but this lotion did... why else would I pay 7 bucks for a tiny jar of it, lol. I am so nuts..but it was fun to just buy goofy things like that. I don't do stuff like that too often, just spend money in stores like that.. I usually look and look and pick one or two things. And most of what I bought was for myself.. something I rarely do as well. It was a unique night for sure.

We were cracking up in the store when we came across this big smokey blow up. We so couldn't resist taking our pictures with him. We were taking tons of cute little pictures all over the place.. and looking at them now, I am so glad that we did. I really love having pictures to look back upon. We spent a lot of time looking at the TN Vols stuff, imagine that. We also spent alot of time in the store that had Yankee candles.. I think that we smelled every single scent and I know we bought quite a few votives in different scents.. we even got little votive holders so we could burn our favorites at the hotel.. lol. I have been having a lot of fun burning them since I got home. I so love those candles. They last a long time too.. so we ended up only using one (coconut bay, yummm.. it lasted us the whole weekend).

Finally we left the Christmas village (I so want to go back with my mom sometime.. she would so love that.. so would Cory). We were not starving but we were a little hungry so we decided to go get a little dinner. We were tossing around where we wanted to go because we didn't want anything huge.. so I finally said, how about Mel's diner.. this cute little place that we almost went to before when we were there with Jen. OMG, this place was adorable, and I am so sorry that we didn't go there with the kids last time.. it was too cute. We ordered 2 appetizers to share and they were HUGE!!! While we were waiting for our food we took some cute pictures...Tonya was kissing Elvis in this one, for Cory. It was so cute and we were cracking up. When our food got there, we were a little overwhelmed.. it really was huge.. lol.. but it was yummy and we had fun digging in. Our waitress was awesome and she kept coming and offering suggestions.. like ranch dressing for our potato skins, and some salsa for our nachos and she kept bringing stuff out for us. She even made us to go drinks before we left, free of charge. I totally would go back to this place, it was just so totally adorable... right down to the jutebox and the vinyl seated booths... a fun fun time.

Next stop, miniature golf...we both really wanted to play, and there were so many places to go that we couldn't make up our minds. We finally decided on this cute place that had 2 different courses, and for 2 bucks more, you could play all 36 holes.. we were in. We had the best time, we were just cracking up at every hole.. stopping to take pictures everywhere. I can't even tell you how many people we let pass us by, because we were taking forever, just goofing around...climbing up on the rocks and getting our balls stuck underneath them. It was a lot of fun, and 36 holes took us quite a long time. I think we both would have gladly done it all over again, it was so much fun.. but it was getting late, and we were tired...and ready to go sit on our balcony and just enjoy the view. On the way out though, I couldn't resist climbing into this frog ride... for no other reason than, I finally can fit into goofy stuff like that. It was funny and Tonya was cracking up at me, understandably so. What a great time.

We stopped at the pay phone so I could call Stephen and check in with him. He was happy to hear from me, and I was happy to talk to him. We didn't talk too long though, and it was back to Gatlinburg and our hotel. We had a very nice relaxing evening, just hanging out on the balcony and in the room, and smelling our yummy yankee candles... we also spent a lot of time talking about what we wanted to do the next day and making plans. I don't even remember drifting off to sleep.. I probably was still talking as I did...

To Be Continued...