Last week, Brian and I had one of the biggest adventures of our married life yet. Nope, we didn’t go to Africa. We went to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee for a family vacation. My family on my mom’s side (20 people total) rented a house in the mountains (see picture below–it was beautiful!).
The vacation itself was great, but Brian and I were so worried beforehand about the packing, the money, the 11 hour car ride with two kids under the age of 3! We got lucky. Overall, the kids were pretty awesome in the car, and Olivia had a blast the whole week, soaking up the attention from all of her cousins, aunts, uncles, and great-grandma. (Connor was a little clingy to say the least.) But we really did not have one bad day; we got to hike, whitewater raft, play cards and game with the fam, explore the strip a little (first time for me on go carts and playing lazer tag). We do it again in a heartbeat. We ended the vacation with a stop in T-Town to see Grandma & Grandpa Grunloh and Aunt Amy and Uncle Aric.
Olivia was a trip last week. She made up nicknames for my cousins on day one (probably due to cognitive associations and mispronunciations, but they were funny). She called Whitni, “Pooha” (we think because of Winnie the Pooh), Josiah “green giant”, Shayla was “Sheira”, Madalyn was “Moman.” Because we were laughing at her names, she thought she was the wittiest little thing, so she kept being a clown the rest of the week.
