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.