The Vacay Videos

Kyle and Reed worked hard on their sledding hill.  Pretty sure this would put me in the hospital. 

Kyle filmed this with his gopro.

And this is the one video I took of Reed skiing, watch until the end for Kyle to come in to view with a crash landing from a jump. 

 

We Skied

Jason and I did a lot of skiing by ourselves since we don't ski as long (or as fast) as anybody else in the family. 

We did see the little guys a few times on the mountain. 

They definitely skied enough each day to wear themselves out. 

I got to hang out with JR the one time I happened to ride up the gondola the same time as he did.  

Except on Christmas day when the kids are "forced" to ski with us. 

Christmas Break

 We made it to Breckenridge for Christmas.  

We arrived to a little bit of snow.

But then we got a lot.

And by the time we left, the porch was clear again.

I got the tree and stockings up as soon as we got there.

So it felt very festive for Christmas!

A Little More than a Fat Squirrel (But Not Much)

I didn't give up blogging, there's just nothing to report since there aren't any fun parties or things to do.

Reed made the school basketball team so that was exciting news.

The high school football team made it to one round of playoffs, so JR got to hang out and pose with the cheerleaders an extra time. 

And the other boys went hunting again and saw a couple of small deer, so that was better than seeing just a fat squirrel.

A Fat Squirrel

 These boys went hunting at MawMaw and PawPaw's this weekend and they told me the only thing they saw was a fat squirrel eating all the deer corn.  

Smart squirrel.

Thanksgiving with Dolly

 We spent Thanksgiving week up in Pidgeon Forge at Dollywood.

We stayed at Dolly's resort and it was awesome.

As my dad said, the lights were "magical", and my pictures definitely don't do them justice.

And the sunsets were kinda pretty too.

We spent 2 days in the park. The kids rode rides, the grandparents saw shows, and Jason and I did a little of both (and tried to eat as much as possible).

On thanksgiving we drove around Gatlinburg, ate a delicious Thanksgiving dinner at the Ole Mill, and went over to Sevierville to see the Dolly statue at the courthouse.

It was a great Thanksgiving! 

The Big Five-Oh

 Jason turned 50.  

I know, I can't believe it either.

We were supposed to be on a week-long cruise to commemorate the big day, but since that got cancelled, we tried to celebrate the best we could. 

I was so excited with how the balloons turned out, they were even better than what I had imagined in my head!

And I thought the cake was pretty perfect too.

It was fun to celebrate such an awesome guy!

Not Quarantined

 Not even a pandemic could stop Sam the elf from coming to stay with us on December 1st.  

I've seen lots of families are making their elf quarantine for 2 weeks, but we've been through enough cancellations, disappointments, and depression in the last 9 months that we're certainly not going to carry that over in to a Christmas tradition. 

Sam is back, and happy to have free rein of our house!

Nashvegas

 I'm not sure why Nashville is called Nashvegas because it's not like Vegas at all, it's a million times better.

Even with all the stupid covid restrictions like closing everything at 11 (because you can only get covid after 11) and no dancing (because covid knows if you're shaking your bootie) we had an amazing time! 

I can't wait to go back and take JR! 

We got off the plane and went straight to Jason Aldean's restaurant. 

The whole reason we went on the trip was to go to the White Limonene the Dolly Parton inspired bar, which is on the rooftop of a hotel  We got all the way over to it and they told us the bar was shut down because of covid, but that they didn't put that on the website because they didn't want people to stop staying at the hotel.  So Minnie Pearl in the hotel lobby was as close to Dolly as I got.

So instead, we did other Nashville things...like getting our pictures made with the famous wings

And visiting Jessie James Decker's store

We ran in to John Michael Montgomery's son who invited us to hear him play at a bar since his new album was dropping that night.  We decided later that John Michael Montgomery was famous enough that his son probably didn't need to scour the streets looking for people to come hear him play, but we looked it up, and bless his heart, it really was him.

We did a good job of taking pictures on day 1

Day 2 we went to the Country Music Hall of Fame.  I could have spent all day in there! 

And we rode scooters around town

That night we went to Kid Rock's bar.  Which I will say, has the best nachos I've ever eaten! 

 

Our last day we had the best time seeing the city on a tour bus.

And then we went and listened to live music, all of which were amazing enough to be on the radio right now.

We couldn't have had more fun, and it was so great to get out and be almost normal before they lock us all up again.