Tulli Times: Tennessee Family Vacation

It was an awesome vacation! The girls had a great time and Zach had a blast too... he brought a buddy (Brandon) along so as not to be outnumbered. They (the boys) are old enough now for us to let them have a little space - they did stuff with us during the day and then in the afternoon/evening we dropped them off in the walking area of Gatlinburg (nice and safe and fun stuff to do) and then picked them up later. Tony was a real trooper picking the boys up at 11pm (it was about 30 minutes away from where we were staying) and by that time, I was done for... They came home one night with tatts (I almost had a heart attack!) - but thank God they were Henna!

We went to the park, played in the river, went white water rafting, rode horses, the boys zip-lined, went to Dixie Stampede, attended the China Kids Reunion and saw the acrobats, ate well, watched a movie all piled in the cabin, had friends over to the cabin for dinner one night (they were staying in the area too and the boys all play ball together so Tony and I got to meet the parents and get to know them), and of course, took Emma to Cincy afterwards. She got a clean bill of health - hooray! We did a lot, but relaxed too.

Life is MUCH easier when you don't have to work all day! ;)

So Sweet...

& Innocent...

Not!

Boy, you can really see the resemblance...

A quiet moment...

The boys are back from their adventure!

Yes, that is a lot of purple!

Even Brandon went along with my silly idea -- wouldn't want anyone to have to guess who was in our party!

Ah... how rare it is for all three to be smiling at once -- and standing next to each other!

Six years later, we reunite with one of the 10 other familes we travelled with to China when we adopted Mia.

On stage at Cirque de Chine...

Mia was SO excited about going horse-back riding -- she talked about it even before we left for TN!

Rough & Tough Cowboys!

Alpine sledding in Ober Gatlinburg... I'm positive Zach and Brandon set new speed records!

Mia & Emma didn't actually sled -- but they sure make a cute picture!

Wa-Hoo! That was actually the name of the zipline company -- it was appropriately named... I could hear folks yelling 'wahoo' as they ziplined through the resort area we stayed in.

Brandon posing... he is so hilarious.

These guys had a great time! The key to going fast is weight and reclining in the harness. At 205 and 240, these guys had to be like lightning over the tree tops -- especially on the tandem line! As you can imagine, they are 'slightly' competitive -- and on the last line, they got to race each other. You'll just have to guess who won. ;)

Tony and I have said for the past year or so that Mia was going to be an engineer... well, this trip erased any doubt we might have had. This girl LOVES building (and later dismantling) dams. She and her sister played for hours in the water -- stacking rocks and then later tossing mini-boulders to create new waterways. It was really neat to watch.