Hooray for DollyWood!

Chip and I have always thought we were pretty decent parents. I mean, sure, sometimes we laugh when our kids burp at the dinner table or shake their booty in public places. We maybe buy Cooper too many superhero t-shirts and let Kendall watch one too many Dora the Explorer episodes when I want to get some more laundry done. Overall though, we feel we do a pretty good job...we insist on "please" and "thank you" and talking in well-mannered, kind voices. We teach manners and respect for grown-ups and sharing with what we believe to be amazing vigilence. Alas, apparently we had nothing on any other parents in the East Tennessee region until a couple of weeks ago. We've gone the whole life of our 5 year old without one single trip to Dollywood. GASP!

All it took was a little visit from Cousin Kali and we had our whole day planned in the DW. We brought along Grammy so our child to adult ratio was a perfect 1:1 and there couldn't have been a better decision made. What we assumed would be several hours turned into all day. We arrived before 11AM and didn't leave until 7PM. And by golly, not a single Dolly sighting the entire day.

We haven't been to Dollywood in about 8 years. So, we walked what seemed to be a few miles to the "new part" where we found the Best Ride Ever. I don't remember the proper name, but we call them "The Shooting Boats" which is exactly what they did.

Hopefully you can properly see the damage in the photo. And, hopefully you'll come to my house to protect me if my mother comes to shoot me for posting this. But, they are D-R-E-N-C-H-E-D. And it was hilarious.

So, we're in the kids' section and we are walking past the roller coaster and Kendall says "Hey! I wanna go on that!" Um. Ok, sure. And Chip and I exchange looks that say "you wanna place bets on how long it takes her to start screaming?" But she never did. She LOVED it and wanted to keep going back. She also enjoyed the flying elephants, the Raging River Rampage, and begged to ride the Mountain Slidewinder and the gigantic loop-de-loop "grown-up" roller coasters. Go figure.

Can you see the joy and excitement on Cooper's face? He got to ride so many car-related rides that day I thought we would never get him to leave.

Luckily Kendall had Kali to ride with her on all the smaller rides because Cooper was too busy begging for bumper cars to worry about that stuff.
This was our first "ride." I am not sure I've seen such joy on my son's face as I did at that moment. I mean, he's 5, obsessed (seriously) with cars and he actually got to DRIVE.

Don't worry, Dolly, we'll be back sometime this weekend and you can catch us then.