Gatlinburg ... a Practically Unplanned Adventure! June 27 - July 5, 2009 - Page 16 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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There are other changes as well.
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We go on to the joy and through the tears
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Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
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It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
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Very nice pix. Your school sounds interesting. My DIL is a teacher assistant in a 4 yr old preK special needs class. They have about ten kids but they are somewhat scattered out during the week. They never have all of the kids at the same time.
Very nice pix. Your school sounds interesting. My DIL is a teacher assistant in a 4 yr old preK special needs class. They have about ten kids but they are somewhat scattered out during the week. They never have all of the kids at the same time.
Thanks! It is the Mothers Day Out program at our church, so we only meet twice a week. Yesterday was pretty bad - lots of tears!!! Try as we might, we couldn't get any of the other teachers to come help us. Apparently they were all having their own issues. Our cleaning lady stopped in and got one to stop crying, and later on our children's minister helped us out again. Hopefully it will get better. Especially since we already added a new child that we weren't aware of. So next month, when the little one starts coming we will already have a full room. So much for starting off slowly!
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
What beautiful photos - it was obviously a lovely day. Fascinating about the trees being fused togeether.
Thanks Cheryl! Sometimes I wish the trail guide brochures would talk about stuff like that. Although there's probably not anybody who would have known how that happened in the first place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pamcarey
Looks like a very nice nature walk... although I'm not sure I'd enjoy seeing too many of those worms.
I think it's a good thing that we didn't see them until the end of the trail!
After picking up a few food items it was back to the resort, and time again to figure out what to do this evening. We cleaned up and decided to head down the road to another of our favorite spots to eat in Gatlinburg: The Alamo Steakhouse! Gatlinburg & Pigeon Forge TN Dining Alamo Steakhouse Restaurant
I had my camera out because I was hoping to get some pictures of the ducks that are always out front. But not tonight - they were asleep! Joshua liked the above-door decoration -
We were seated right away in one of the back rooms. They brought out a set of Wikki Stix with Joshua's kid's menu. These are bendable wax sticks that are different colors. They had instructions on how to make a cowboy, but Joshua didn't feel like playing with them. Jay twisted a few of them together but then we ended up putting them away. Our food was delicious! And way too much as usual. Joshua had a cheeseburger, I had "The Burger" and Jay had a ribeye with a salad and baked potato. They also offered a AAA discount like Bennett's did so we saved a few dollars. Jay finished his food but Joshua and I had about half of ours left over so we got a to-go box. (Mine was a 16-oz hamburger! )
We found the place easy enough, and went inside to check it out. The thing is, the skating rink is on the second floor of the building, and there was a go-kart track on the lower level. That immediately caught Joshua's attention and he said he wanted to ride the go-karts. We were mean and told him we didn't have enough money for both, so he would have to choose. We walked upstairs to look inside the skating rink, and I asked Joshua again what he wanted to do. He chose the go-karts, which no doubt made Jay happy. I know he wasn't looking forward to spending time in the skating rink! I was disappointed because I was hoping for Joshua to earn a lot of scout credits on vacation, but we will eventually build up enough skate time for him back home. (Even though our local rink is pretty nasty and this one looked nice.)
So we went back downstairs to look at the go-kart track. The one at this facility was a simple figure-8 track. But we noticed that it cost the same amount as the really cool-looking 3-story track next door. Joshua decided he would rather ride the multi-level karts instead. Pigeon Forge, TN – Fast Tracks
So we walked around and looked at it a little closer. They also offered a combo ticket for the multi-level track and the race-car-type track. But Jay said there was no need to do both tracks - just the multi-level one. I'm not a go-kart person so they got in line while I went to the observation area to take pictures. There wasn't much of a line so they were in the very next group, and got a 2-seater kart.
We parked and headed toward the toy store, only to discover that it was no longer a toy store! From what I could tell looking through the windows, it was selling women's accessories. So we went inside the large shop and started looking around at all the ornaments and decorations. I found out that they had moved the toys into one of the side rooms of this shop - I looked inside, thinking I might find some new Cars for Joshua, but they didn't have any. They didn't have much of a selection of anything, actually. So I went back to looking at Christmas stuff. I quickly found an ornament perfect for Joshua. It was the head and shoulders of a Cub Scout in uniform, with space at the bottom for his name. I showed Jay, and he went to have it personalized while I continued browsing. We also ended up getting a gold trumpet for Jay, an egg with the Christmas Place logo on it, and our vacation ornament for this year was a wreath with a black bear sticking his head out. They had a special - buy 3, get 1 free, so we didn't have to pay for one of them. Plus I had a coupon to get a free ornament - this year it was a snowflake.
After paying for our ornaments we went outside and looked around in the courtyard. Joshua posed
and we saw a bird from the Parrot Mountain attraction
and we watched the trains for a while.
And then it was back to the resort to get ready for bed!
Next up: Day 6, Over the Mountains and Through the Woods (but not to grandmother's house ...)
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Looks like you had a fun evening! That's too bad about the toy store at the CHristmas Place.
We went to Parrot Mountain in June with my family, and we quite enjoyed it. Did you all get to see it?
Sounds like a great night! Dinner sounded delish, and the go-karts looked like fun!
It was very delicious, just way too much food. I mean, really, a 16-oz hamburger - who eats that much? But, it was served on a rectangular bread and sliced in half. I managed to stuff one half of it into me, and had the other one back at the resort another day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katara81
We went to Parrot Mountain in June with my family, and we quite enjoyed it. Did you all get to see it?
We didn't go this time. It looks really neat, it is on my list of "next time" places.
Dinner sounded delicious!!! Sorry Christie, I would have picked the go karts too. Maybe because I can't rollerskate, but also because they are so much fun!!!!
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Fascinating about the trees being fused togeether. 
Especially since we already added a new child that we weren't aware of. So next month, when the little one starts coming we will already have a full room. So much for starting off slowly! 
Joshua liked the above-door decoration -
We walked upstairs to look inside the skating rink, and I asked Joshua again what he wanted to do. He chose the go-karts, which no doubt made Jay happy. I know he wasn't looking forward to spending time in the skating rink! 
I was disappointed because I was hoping for Joshua to earn a lot of scout credits on vacation, but we will eventually build up enough skate time for him back home. (Even though our local rink is pretty nasty and this one looked nice.)
Joshua decided he would rather ride the multi-level karts instead. 
I showed Jay, and he went to have it personalized while I continued browsing. We also ended up getting a gold trumpet for Jay, an egg with the Christmas Place logo on it, and our vacation ornament for this year was a wreath with a black bear sticking his head out. They had a special - buy 3, get 1 free, so we didn't have to pay for one of them. Plus I had a coupon to get a free ornament - this year it was a snowflake.
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