Weekly Wrap Up - Two Weeks in One

As I said last week, we went out of town on a family vacation combining our 20th wedding anniversary and Olivia's 18th birthday celebration.  We left around 8:30am Monday, and traveled to the Sevierville/Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area of Tennessee for the week.  On our way, I spotted a huge Bass Pro Shop, so we made a pit stop for Tom and Olivia's sake.

We rented a great house through AirBNB just outside of Sevierville.  We arrived mid-afternoon and we stopped at Knife World on the way into the area.  Olivia was in heaven.  Lindsey, not so much.  We found our house and spent the evening settling in, getting dinner in town and then going to the grocery store to pick up breakfast items and snacks for the week.

Tuesday morning we headed out to the Cherokee Trading Post and spent quite a lot of time there checking out their wares.  I think this was the kid's favorite part of the trip.  We had a gift card to Olive Garden, and used that for a lovely sit down lunch.  Following lunch we went to the Titanic Museum.  This was a really well done museum.  We were all given boarding passes, of real passengers/staff, and we were able to find info on some of them along the tour.  At the end, we checked our boarding passes against the survivors list to find out which of us had survived and who had perished.   Lindsey, ironically was given the card of a woman traveling with her two sons.  The mother survived, the sons did not.  Olivia and I both survived as well.  Tom's boarding pass was one of the violin players, and he perished as well.  Some of the interactive displays are still on hiatus because of the pandemic, but overall things were operating pretty much as normal.  The grand staircase replica was so elegant.  The exhibit of the locked gate with water rushing down the stairwell was very sobering.   We weren't allowed to take photos inside, but I did get this cool photo from the parking lot of the front of the "ship".

We went to a huge outlet mall and walked ourselves silly.  Roles were reversed for this and Lindsey was in heaven and Olivia was not enthused.   We were thoroughly exhausted by the end of the day, so we grabbed dinner at a fast food drive through and headed home to eat and veg on the sofas watching tv.

Wednesday, our plan was to spend the day at Dollywood.  The park is currently only open on M/W/F, so this was the only day that worked with our travel plans.  Unfortunately, we woke up to temperatures below 40 and heavy rain, and none of us liked the idea of spending a ridiculous amount of money to get into the park to be wet, cold and miserable all day.  We decided to head over to Gatlinburg for the day and spend the day there.  It was still cold and rainy, but we were in and out of places enough that we weren't miserable.  We ended up going to Blake Shelton's Ole Red restaurant for lunch.  There was live music, great food and a really fun atmosphere.  

We did lots of sight-seeing and boot shopping, and were once again pretty worn out by evening.  We went home to rest and then I did an online order from Chipotle for dinner.  Tom and I ran out to pick up dinner and some special desserts from the Chocolate Monkey for our official anniversary dinner.

Thursday morning we went to the Apple Barn & Cider Mill.  They have the best apple hand pies!  Once our tummies were filled up on pie (yes for breakfast) we headed over to the Christmas Place.   This has always been one of my favorite places to visit when traveling to the area.

We did a few more little stops along the way before heading to the house to rest and freshen up for the evening.  I booked tickets for us to go to the Biblical Times Dinner to see their production of Ruth.  While sitting in the lobby waiting to be seated, we realized that someone had not paid close attention to the music choice for the waiting area.  We jammed out to "Tequila" while waiting to go into the dinner theater.   After the show (and yummy meal).  We traveled over to the Island and walked around a bit, taking in the sights and light show.

Friday morning we packed up and headed home.  We were back in our own county before 2pm.  The dog was very happy to see us!  He was well cared for by friends, but you could tell he was very concerned about his people having gone missing.  It was a great trip, but it was truly good to be back home.

Saturday morning Olivia and I were back to the work routine at 5:30am.  She did all of her usual shifts, and I ran to the store to pick up groceries.  When I got home I worked on making food for Sunday's birthday celebration.

Sunday Olivia turned 18.  She'd asked for the day off from work so she could sleep in a bit. We went to church and then stopped on the way home from church to pick up her birthday cake (I ordered it the Sunday before we left for TN).  We had family and friends over for a late lunch at 2pm to celebrate.  At Olivia's request, I made homemade pork barbeque, macaroni salad and cole slaw.  It was a great day with family, lots of good conversation and laughter.

Monday was back to the current routine.  Lindsey only has 3 subjects left in school so she doubled up a great deal.  I took her for a driving lesson around 9am.   Once we were back we went out to shop for a pair of boots for Olivia.  We'd hoped to find a pair she liked (as well as affordable) on our trip for her birthday gift, but that didn't happen.  We were successful in our shopping endeavors here, so she officially has new cowboy boots.  We swung by the YMCA to pick up her new hire packet, and then went to Med Express to get her TB test for work.  Because she's 18 now, and because of covid restrictions, I wasn't even allowed to go in the building with her.  My credit card was welcomed with open arms though.

Tuesday Lindsey went back to work at her nanny job.  The weather was spectacular, and Olivia helped me work in the flower beds and gardens.  Her new hire info from the equestrian center came via email, so we worked on that.  Her start date there is May 3, and she's very excited.  We're still looking for a vehicle for her.  In the evening it was back to jiu-jitsu.

Wednesday both girls were back to their work schedules.  Lindsey got up early to do her school work before she left.  I had a lunch date with my friend Yvette, and then it was home for the evening.  Our mid-week church service always goes on hiatus from late April/early May through Labor Day, so I had nowhere to go.  I did have to run by the ballet studio after it closed to pick up the bookkeeping.

Thursday Lindsey had a long day at work.  She normally works 9:30-1:30, but they asked if she could stay until 3:30.  Just as I was picking her up from that job, the other family she works for texted to see if there was any way she could come right over and stay until 5:30.  I dropped her off and came home to finish laundry and work on dinner and wait for Lindsey to straggle in.  She was a bit tired, and frazzled when she got home.  Apparently the oldest sibling at the second house was in rare form.  Jiu-jitsu wrapped up the evening.

Friday morning, Olivia went to work earlier than usual, so she could go to the chiropractor with us.  The rest of the day will be filled with errands, dropping Lindsey at work and eventually heading over to a friend's house for Olivia's refresher on dog/house sitting for her upcoming work load.  

Have a great weekend!