Mountain Hiatus + New Tunes

Charlotte, my mom, and I took a few days and went up to Pigeon Forge/ Gatlinburg for a few days this week. It was fabulous! We found one of the nicest hotels up there for just $55 a night! WORD! Our main reason for going was that my mom has a photographer friend who runs a wedding venue from his home. Here's his website: http://rikphotography.com/
We got in Monday around 4 and had time to kill so we went to check into our hotel. It was The Holiday Inn in Pigeon Forge, it was surprisingly beautiful! It had an amazing pool and hot tub area. We hadn't booked it yet so we walked to the desk and mentioned we'd seen a rate online for $55 and would they be competitive enough to match it or beat it. The poor girl was like, Ummmm, they run specials online a lot but I can't change the rate I have. So I asked if I could have the Internet code for the hotel and book our hotel online. She said ok so I sat down in the lobby pulled out my laptop and booked our night, had the confirmation sent to my cell and we checked right in! Our room was the standard 2 double bed room with a big ol TV and the usual stuff. We hung out for a while, got ready and headed out to find the place we were meeting the photographer. It was this cute little park behind the community center. He took a few shots there with C playing on the playground and playing with some flowers and walking on the walkway by a little creek. It was fun, I Love relaxing photo shoots. C just ran around playing and doing whatever she wanted (of course we prompted a few cute poses) ;)
After finishing up at the park, we headed to Rick's house. He warned us of his rambunctious little pups and sure enough one of them knocked Charlotte down right off the bat. She was a champ though. :oP We did a few different outfits on her and the pictures turned out GREAT!!! :) He loaded them onto a website where we just order whatever we want. He didn't charge us for the session and said he really enjoyed it. It was a great little place! If I was getting married, I'd totally go there! We definitely plan on going up again for some family pics including E-money! :)
The hungry little girl decided we should go eat so desperate to just find somewhere to eat we went to IHop :) It was perfect! C got ice cream for doing SUCH a good job with the pictures. She didn't fuss or cry at all!! Our next stop was the pool at our hotel! C was dying to get it! As soon as we had our suits on she jumped right into the water and swam like a fish! Saying 'Back water! Back!' While using her floaty covered arms to push the water back. It was her best attempt at real swimming! She did GREAT!! She played in both the pool and the hot tub and preferred the pool bc she could jump in and had more room to swim around :)
Tuesday we decided to go ahead and add another night to our stay and ventured out into Gatlinburg. We ended up at the Ripley's Aquarium. It was lots of fun, Charlotte LOOOOVED the SHARKS! She kept yelling SHARK anytime she saw one. Of course she relayed everything into Nemo terms, Jellyfish, nemo, dori, Gill, the 'My bubbles' fish. I got her some little play sharks in the gift shop :) When we left the aquarium, we just walked around a little, shopping and looking. We ate dinner and headed back towards the car. It was a little wetter outside so we just went back to the hotel. We were pretty exhausted by then. (we did stop at a few random places on the way back though, you can't pass up a junky beach store in the mountains, right??)
I think one of the most memorable and most important part of our trip was Mr. Rocky Rocky. Charlotte has this obsession with rocks and every time she sees a bed of rocks she has to pick one. She carried this one rock around everywhere we went and held tight to the thing. It was so funny because she would get so upset if she dropped it or if she couldn't find it, but we always found it and somehow we made it back with Mr. Rocky Rocky. haha

Last thing... I have to throw in the plug for my Bff Chelsie! She's working on some GREAT tunes! I'm listening to them right now! Head on over to her website http://www.chelsieguillemet.com/ She's got a blog going on there, her songs are on the left side, just pick one, press play and enjoy! My favorites right now are Randomly Beautiful and Favorite Color :) She also has lyrics up, and so if you are so inclined, go have a listen leave some love for her and let her know what you think! She's looking for some critics too! Let her know what you think!!

Word!
Here's the update-ness:
Current craving- Thin Mints dipped in Peanut butter
Current Annoyance- RAIN!
Current task at hand- getting ready to go to the Zoo tomorrow!
Current Favorite- Chelsie's new tunes! and also a Jim Brickman/ Lady Antebellum duet called Never Alone.
Current excitement- Tomorrow!! Going to the Zoo and Hubby gets home!! YAY!
And also the pictures! Here are some samples :)