Christmas at Dollywood: Trip #1

This is our last month to enjoy our Dollywood Season Passes Ryan's grandmother Betty gave us last year for Christmas. My favorite thing about Dollywood's Season Passes is when you purchase them in December, you get to enjoy the entire next year, including December, too! 

Ryan's parents came up the first weekend he was gone (December 1) to come enjoy the lights with us. 

Dollywood at Christmastime is seriously breathtaking!

My favorite tree. The white "drips" down the branches.

Let me just say, this was the most crowded it has EVER been when we've been there. We had to park in Splash Country parking! Wowsers, I guess everybody had the same idea we did!

We started our evening with the old-timey cars. Me and my girl got to ride together:

Then we grabbed dinner and ate while watching the parade. We had great seats away from the crowd!

Then to my favorite ride--the Ferris Wheel! Good grief there was such a wait. So Papaw watched the AL vs. GA game on his phone. :) Technology truly is amazing!

Papaw and Gavin rode together while Gram, Henley, and me squeezed in a seat. No pictures of that because that girl is a wiggler! Whew, quite scary so high up!

I did snap this picture at the top of the lights in the park. So gorgeous!! The picture can't capture how beautiful this is in person.

We all rode the Shooting Star ride (which is still amazing to me that 2-year-old-scaredy-cat-Henley rides it no problem!), but sadly no picture of that.

Gavin loves the games. Good grief they are such a waste of money, but he sure has a great time.

Gavin and Papaw's favorite part of the evening was the new Smoky Mountain Miniature Railroad they have set up this month.

It really was incredible! The kids loved checking out all the details:

Man, autostitch is an amazing app! Here's an overview of the whole train setup:

 

 Papaw loves trains. Love is probably an understatement, actually. :) He had a blast chatting with the "conductor" about all the work they did and all the trains they had on display:

 Gavin got to operate one of the trains for a bit:

Henley, not so much :)

 Oh, this boy. It is such a fun Christmas seeing things through a 3 1/2-year-old's eyes!

We stayed until closing time, and on the tramride back, we took a picture to text to Dad:

 

And Dad, on a train in Boston, sent us a picture back! It was fun that we were both ending our adventurous days together on a train ride :)

We sure did miss him while he was gone. So of course we had to go again when he could go with us! Stay tuned...

When Dad's Away

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, Ryan flew down to Florida for training for a new position at work. Although we are so thankful for him getting a new job, we sure don't like all his traveling! So he was gone for 9 days for that stretch. The kids couldn't quite grasp how long 9 days was, so we made a count down chain:

We kept busy during the week, and both sets of grandparents came up on the weekend to make it go by faster! Here is Gavin fixing Nani's hair at Sonny's BBQ:

Ryan flew in late the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and these kids were so excited to see him. Henley kept looking at Ryan's face and hugging him over and over. It was precious.

Unfortunately, when Ryan was gone for those 9 days, he found out he was going to have to go to Boston for NINETEEN DAYS, flying out that following Monday. So he was gone 9 days, came back for 5, then had to fly back out. Whew. Gavin cried pretty hard at the airport when we dropped him back off, so we stopped at Starbucks for cake pops (and Peppermint Mocha for me!) to make tears go away!

I am so thankful for Facetime. I'm afraid these kiddos would have forgotten what their dad looked like without it!

 So how did we survive for 19 days? By filling up our schedule! Here's a little bit of what we did...

Lots of eating out with friends. Pizza Kitchen on Kids' Night with Bethany and Hudson while Peter was out of town for work, too. And notice the adult is the only one watching the movie! Ha!

Knoxville Symphony Quartet at the Library with Kim and Rev:

 Gavin got to play the cello!

Lunch (and milkshakes!) at Long's afterwards:

Playdates with our buddies the Blantons:

Movie night with the Blantons, too!

Probably the most helpful was going to my Mom and Dad's for 5 days in the middle of it all.

We drove after picking Gavin up from preschool during naptime to Chattanooga, and Nani had cookies and hot chocolate ready for us!

On Friday, we went to Northgate Mall for SUCH a fun day. We started with playing in the play area. Nani slid down the slide upon Gavin's request, and then got reprimanded by the Mall Cop! Totally worth it for the story, Mom. :)

We rode on the train that goes around the mall for $3 each. It was SO FUN! He even punched our ticket like the Polar Express.

We were all able to fit in one train car. Thankful we're little, Nani!

Henley waved at every person in the middle. It was adorable.

We then went to go visit Santa. We had no plans of taking pictures, just letting the kids chat with him. Well, they both ran up to him and were acting precious, so of course Nani had to buy the 1 picture they snapped (for $25! Sheesh!). How cute are they!?

The rest of the weekend, we played outside when we could because the weather was great:

 Nani loves making games for the kiddos to get their energy out. New favorite game: Dragon Slayers through the woods.

Henley looking for dragons:

Pop knows the way to this boy's heart: trains!

and vehicles out of K'Nex!

And he knows what Henley loves--books!

 Nani sets up "centers" like her classroom all over the house. Our favorite center is the garage, because we don't have to clean it up! Love this precious picture:

Polar Express is a Christmas tradition at Nani and Pop's!

We went to Gram and Papaw's on Sunday night to visit with Gavin's buddy Asher, and I only snapped one picture! Papaw is such a pro at Lincoln Logs!

The rest of week 3 has FLOWN BY thanks to this trip to Chattanooga!

So all that was left was to pick Dad up at the airport on Friday night at 10:30! Henley had a 2 hour nap and we drove to surprise him. He thought our neighbors were picking him up, but of course we had to greet him!

 We did SO many other things to fill our days that I do not have pictures of. (Including a super fun trip to Dollywood with Gram and Papaw which I'll post about later!) I am so thankful for all of our friends and family that offered to hang out with us, watch the kiddos for me, and email/text me a word of encouragement while Ryan was gone! I'm so glad it's over!!!