Tennessee Travels

Well, Robbie and I had a great week in Tennessee. It was so fun to see my family and spend some time with them. Dad was able to take off all but one day of work so we got to do a lot of stuff altogether. We flew in on Tuesday, and the plane ride was much better than expected. Robbie and I had our own row for the first leg, and we sat by 2 grandmas and 1 great grandma--who absolutely adored Robbie-- on the second leg, plus he slept much of the way.

my parents home

Tennesee has some beautiful hibiscus flowers in bloom right now. This one is in my parents front yard.
Grandma
Grandpa
Robbie had gotten used to my sister's dog, Elly, by the end of the trip.
Jonathan and Camilla (who, I'm happy to say, are expecting)
The night we got there the cows came through the pasture behind my parents home. This is in their backyard. Robbie didn't know what to think of these big animals that made weird mooing sounds.

On Wednesday we went to Dollywood--Dolly Parton's amusement park-- with my parents, Natalie, and Jonathan. Robbie's taking me for a cruise in this cute oldies car.
The park had a section of country fair rides that were really great for kids. Robbie loved this little "elephant" ride....kinda reminds me of a Disneyland ride.;-)

a carousel ride


walking to the next ride with Grandma and Grandpa
Jonathan, Natalie, and I waiting in line for Mystery Mine...we got to the top of the line and the rain and lightning came...they shut down the ride until the storm left the area. Unfortunately, it didn't let up for a long time, so we had to leave without riding.
waiting with Grandpa

On Friday and Saturday, we took a trip to Columbia, South Carolina to visit some old sites that we enjoyed as a family growing up in Georgia. Here we are crossing the border in North Carolina.
Here we are at the Riverbanks Zoo that I loved as a kid.
This baby flamingo wasn't even 24 hours old! The pink feathers belong to it's mother.
New baby cub lions
The gorilla just sat and pouted at the window while we watched him.

Also in Columbia, we went to the South Carolina State Museum. It's in an old textile factory building and it goes through the history of the south. It's one of the neatest museums I've ever been to and it was just as I had remembered it.
This is the Giant White Shark. They found the huge jaw bone off the coast of South Carolina and made a replica of how big it would be. You can kinda see in the clear box below the big jaw, a jaw bone of the great white shark. This shark is so much larger than that!
For the rest of the trip, we got to celebrate my mom's birthday (Happy Birthday, Mom!), go shopping, go to my sister's swim team practice, swimming at the neighborhood pool, and more. The plane ride home wasn't as dream-like as the flight out there, but I won't go into details about that. We're home now, and we had an absolutely wonderful time!