On the Sunday of our epic Tennessee family adventure, we slept in practically til noon, after our very late night at Ole Red, which was capped by an immorally large brownie sundae, which had me waking up with a deserved stomachache.
We didn’t even try live-streaming the Sunday service from church back home, as we had spent a week already fighting with and complaining about the internet in Pigeon Forge (Jeddy tried continually to Google “Why is the internet in Pigeon Forge so bad?” but the answer would never load). So we looked up the sermon passage and songs from the order of worship and had cozy family devotions instead.
After that, Jason made his usual famous Sunday omelets, which we ate with fruit platters and muffins from the grocery store bakery.
Then I took a long nap.
Vacation is great.
When I woke up I made the kids turn off their electronics and take a walk by the stream. Their grumbling became half-hearted and eventually faded away after they waded into the water and looked at the ducks and geese. They discovered if they threw pebbles in the water the birds would rush over every time to see if it was food.
When we got home we thoroughly enjoyed the rest of our vacation Sabbath by making frozen pizzas and chicken Caesar salad, and eating in front of the Olympics while playing Minecraft and Hay Day.
On Monday morning we were up early to have breakfast at the Old Mill. We were assigned to a very lively waiter who told us enthusiastically that he drinks no coffee but extolled the complicated scientific virtues of some “natural” energy drink. When Jason asked, “So it has molecules?” he responded “Yeah!” like he was thrilled that someone finally gets it.
After breakfast we poked around the shops, doing a little shopping and watching the potter work at his wheel, until we realized it was about checkout time. For our second week we were switching hotels, so between checkout and check in we were homeless for several hours. We hit up a souvenir shop, took one last round on the “elevator track” (Caleb volunteered to be the photographer/videographer from the sidelines), and finished at a second souvenir shop by getting henna tattoos before loading up on groceries for our second week at a new hotel.
