Driving to Tennessee & Dollywood!

Last Saturday, at 4:30am, we embarked on what I thought would be a deathly long drive to Tennessee:

It turned out that with stopping every couple hours and with the blessing of technology, it was not so deathly. It went amazingly smoothly and we arrived at Pattie & Brian Turley's house at 3pm.

The next day we went to Dollywood. This place is like Disneyland and literally just as expensive but thanks to the Turley's having a membership we managed to get in for hardly anything. 

Here is our favorite little family, which apparently Ben decided to join:

We made a poor choice in the beginning and had Steven go on the biggest roller coaster that he was allowed to ride with his daddy:

He did not enjoy it one bit and this seemed to scar him against riding ANY of the other rides. However, the little ones had a blast playing in a little splash area while he rode on it:

After the roller coaster ride we all got pretty wet on a ride where each person was equipped with water guns:

Then the boys (& Leiah) got on the Shooting Star. This did not go so well. Remember how Steven was scarred by the roller coaster? The minute he got on the Shooting Star he started to have a panic attack (see picture below) and they had him get off before it even started. Ben, on the other hand, made it to the top before he began to wail so after it dropped once, Tyler and him were taken off and then the ride continued. The most embarrassing part? Brice, who is Lucy's age, LOVED the ride. Oh my children...

Steven then proceeded to ride all the baby rides with Lucy & Ben and he LOVED them. He was literally the tallest child on them. Silly boy:

Lucy also got her first kiss from Brice during one of these rides:

Then in attempts to "toughen" up our boys, Tyler & I took them on the Ferris Wheel. Ben DID NOT like this at first:

But after talking him off the ledge (and bribing him with the promise of a prize) he stopped crying and learned to deal with being stuck on that wheel with his mean mama:

Steven actually did pretty good the whole time and even got comfortable enough to rock it a little (something I won't even do):

Afterwards, as a prize for their bravery, the boys got to play a fishing game and each won a cute penguin doll:

Next we took a ride in some cars. Everyone loved this ride:

And to end our day of excitement we watched "The Gazillion Bubble Show." And there were literally a gazillion bubbles. It was pretty darn awesome end to our pretty darn awesome day: