Slideshow of our time in Gatlinburg

Greg & I (along with our black lab) arrived in Gatlinburg, Monday 12/17 around 5:00 pm. We invited my mom and step-dad to join us for the week so Dakota rode with them in their van - they have the DVD player that he can hook up his xbox to and play games the whole trip up so makes for a great trip for him! They didn't arrive until about 1:00 a.m. Tuesday! Greg & I had an evening to ourselves - very nice!!

Most of the day Tuesday everyone rested from the 8-10 hour car rides the day before. I played games on my computer, got in the hot tub, took a nap, read a book and was just plain lazy all day long.

On Wednesday we went to the Arts & Crafts Loop which is an 8-mile drive through this community of arts & crafts stores/vendors. We saw about 1/8th of what there was to see!! We are going back in February for a Marriage Retreat with our church and I am scheduling this activity for one of the days! LOL

On Thursday we decided to go into the Smokey Mountain National Park and drive up to Newfound Gap and on over to Cherokee, NC where we ate lunch and did some shopping.

One of our favorite places to visit everytime we go to Gatlinburg is The Donut Friar.
It is a tiny little shop that has the absolute best donuts anywhere!! (Even better than Krispy Kreme!) My sweetheart got up around 6:00 am the first morning after we arrived and drove down the mountain into town and got some fresh donuts from this store....awwwww, these are just heavenly. After this, my mom and dad were hooked! We showed them where the store was and they went back themselves 2-3 times! LOL

We did a lot of walking around and shopping in the little stores around Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge the week before Christmas. We were not really exchanging gifts with anybody this year except my dad/step-mom and my in-laws so we had to find gifts for them while we were out of town.

We attended one dinner show - Black Bear Jamboree. It was a fantastic show and the dinner was outstanding but I wasn't happy at all with the seating arrangments. I won't go back to that show again because of that!

The day before we had to leave - Greg, Dakota, Jet and I drove back into the Smokey's and over to Cades Cove for the day. Dakota wanted to go hiking but it was really too cold to hike to any of the waterfalls or anything so we figured he could get a look at all the old cabins and churches and be satisfied with what little bit of hiking we had to do to get to those places. He was pleased - he fell asleep on the way home! LOL

We drove home Christmas Eve...had an uneventful drive home, Praise God! I couldn't believe it was Christmas Eve and we were not out shopping (as was normally our custom!) It felt so odd to both Greg and I...like it wasn't really Christmas time, but we both agreed this was the best way to spend Christmas and we are definitely doing it again next year!!!