Our crazy vacation started right at midnight on Friday. We had a 15 hour, 933 mile trip to Orlando, so we figured driving at night would let the kids sleep half the way. Of course, they were so wound up and excited that an hour into the trip, they were both wide awake... They eventually fell asleep and we made amazing time, sailing into Chattanooga right as the sun came up over the mountains. Beautiful! They were both up shortly before we made it to Atlanta and then things went downhill. GPS kept telling us to keep right through the city. Even though the lanes were exit only, Christopher kept right and you can guess what happened... we exited. Thankfully we were in a nice area. Actually, we were right at the doorstep of the Ritz Carlton- literally, the doorman was 5 ft from our car. Betty (GPS) got us back on I75 only to tell us to keep right again. And yes, he exited. This time we were in the ghetto, BIG TIME! A little scary! Betty got us out of the ghetto, but took us WAY around Atlanta. Thankfully, she got us back on our original track and the rest of the trip was uneventful and we pulled into our resort at 4:00.
My sister-in-law and her family had made it into town earlier and we waited a short bit for my in-laws to arrive before we went to buy groceries. Afterwards, the guys went out to buy the rest of our tickets for the week. Then we crashed, and crashed hard after being up all night.
The next day we had plans to go to Universal Studios. The kids were thrilled to be wearing shorts! It was 33 when we left IL, so this was pretty cool for them.
We had a good time. We did get rained on for about an hour, but the rest of the day was OK. The sun never did shine, but it was warm.
We ate lunch in the Simpsons area of the park- actually in Moe's Tavern. The kids were clueless as to who the Simpsons were, but growing up with them, we thought it was neat.
Preston is a sucker for carnival games so he just had to play.
And he won a pillow.
They had this huge Christmas tree that I just knew was real, but it wasn't. Who knew they were that big?
By 4:00 we were all pretty worn out, so we headed back to the house and cooked our traditional spaghetti dinner. It started 10 years ago on our first big family trip (coincidentally to Orlando) and we got slammed by Hurricane Charley and everything closed down. The only thing we could find at the store was stuff for spaghetti, which we ate right as the storm hit and the power went out. We've continued this meal every year since.
Preston's favorite activity of the week was playing pool in the garage. He loved it in Gatlinburg, and was thrilled to be able to play again. We played a lot of pool!
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