Family Vacation

Except for math, we have ended our school year!  To celebrate we scheduled our family vacation to Tennessee.  We have driven through Tennessee a couple times on our way to Florida, this year we decided to spend an entire vacation there.  We stayed at a condo in Fairfield Glade.  We really wanted a laid back vacation with little running around - we wanted to enjoy nature and just hang out.  

Our first full day was spent visiting a local attraction.  Less than 10 minutes from where we were staying the worlds largest tree house was built by a local pastor who felt that God had directed him to create an attraction that would be free to families.  It was huge!

The tree house was 10 stories tall!  It was very rustic.  So rustic that there were several places I questioned how safe it really was  :)

On this vacation we discovered that Sweet Baby has some real fears.  This particular day we realized her intense fears of heights (she gets that from her dad).  She has never liked walking up or down stairs that do not have risers on the backs and she really did not like each and every story we continued to climb in this tree house.   It was necessary to do alot of cajoling to get her to take the stairs up each story.  When we hit about story 6, she would not go any further.  I stayed back with her while the rest of the gang continued going up.  Amid the backwoods/rustic feel of the tree house, this beautiful stained glass window hung.

When you reached the top (or nearly the top) and looked out the one side of the tree house, you could see this mowed into the lawn.

The older girls did not mind the heights at all until they reached about floor 8 - it was at this point that both daddy and Peanut decided they had gone far enough and then made the descent.  

This backwoods Tennessee attraction was complete with a swing....a very "hillbilly-ish" swing.  It was made from a lawn chair, rope and duct tape - yep, duct tape! 

In the following picture you can see Sissy taking a ride on the swing, though I really thought you would enjoy another view of the tree house.

To end this day we made our way back to the condo  and changed to go swimming.  If I asked the girls what their favorite part of our trip was, more than likely they would all say swimming.  They are all like fish!  Sissy perfected back flips underwater and the other girls just enjoyed splashing around.  Now...if you asked mom what her favorite part of the trip was, I would have to say, sitting in the hot tub each night watching the girls swim.  Ahhhhhh.......