Gatlinburg Tennessee - post leaf color change

Liesl and I and the kids took a trip to Gatlinburg Tennessee last fall for a little mini-vacation. We stayed in a cabin in the mountains. For those of you who are not familiar with Gatlinburg, it is on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. One of our favorite places to go as a family. It is about a 3-1/2 hour drive from our house.

This is pizza from a small place in Gatlinburg called Best Italian Cafe. It is really good. But the pizza is not even the best thing there. They have the best ever garlic rolls. Yummm.

Here they are making taffy. This machine is really fascinating, but simple.

View from the deck of our cabin in the morning.

The Alpine Slide at Ober Gatlinburg. It's kinda like a bobsled, but not on ice, To get up to the start, you have to take a chair lift. That was extremely scary, Liesl had Keeley with her, and was afraid Keeley would wriggle out, but she loved the sliding down part.

We made it to the 1.7 mark and back. If we had more time, maybe we could have gone longer. Besides, Keeley doesn't like to be in the backpack.

The two most beautiful girls in the world.

This is at Cade's Cove. A valley surrounded by mountains. We've gotten the same picture of the boys at roughly the same age while they were on top of the car with the mountains in the background, so we had to get Keeley's too.

Bryce and Rece became Jr. Rangers at Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Candy Craziness

Halloween Candy. Perhaps an even scarier thought than any other shenanigans that happens around this time of year. It's fine to actually acquire the candy, but the sugar overdoses and the constant, "I want some candy..." "Can I have some candy?" is now compounded with "treat?" "pweese?" from the newest sweets addict. So after doing some impromptu trick or treating at the local outdoor mall while shopping Saturday afternoon, we dressed the kids all the way up. Bryce as Darth Vader, Rece as Optimus Prime (Transformer) and Keeley as the Sparkly Angel.

Keeley is ready to go (looking off camera thinking "Momma, where is that candy bag. I'm ready to go dominate the neighborhood!)

Bryce ended up getting invited to a friend's Halloween Party. I took him there, while Liesl took Rece and Keeley to one of his friend's neighborhood. They all loaded up with candy, with Keeley turning out to be the most hard-core Trick-or-Treater. She would not let go of her bag and with freezing hands and feet wanted to continue to fill her bag with the precious candy.