What a Great Fourth of July Weekend

      We are back home from the mountains. We had a blast spending time with family and friends.  We did not take Dake tubing or rafting because the water was low in the mountains  which would have been more difficult for him to make it over certain areas.

    We stayed at the Yearwood Cottage, the family cottage. My grandmother was a Yearwood. Her sister owned the cottage and after her death, my great uncle, the only living sibling of my grandmother's family owns it.  Uncle Al is so generous and shares with everyone. It is always such a wonderful time to go.  The mountains are always awesome but the fact we have a place to go that we KNOW will work for Dake just adds to the enjoyment for Dake and us. No anticipating obstacles that will cause frustration for us. It is truly a place we can relax and we are so appreciative of Uncle Al's generosity.

Dake was able to climb Laurel Falls Mountain in his chair because it had a paved trail.  Dake is terribly afraid of heights so this was a mission of conquering fear for him. He did awesome! We had several pass us on the way up and down but that is OK....he DID it. He is fortunate to have friends and family to be patience with him as he accomplished this feat. I think he was pretty proud of himself too.

He wanted to eat pancakes and we ate at the Smoky Mountain Pancake House on Saturday in Pigeon Forge. He was able to well fulfil this mission. They were so delicious.

We attended the first 4th of July parade at midnight on July 3rd in Gatlinburg. Dake got tired (as well as all of us waiting for the parade to start) but he enjoyed it.  It was kinda exciting having a parade at midnight. Daisy Duke was the Grand Marshall of the parade.  I believe all the male attendants of our group enjoyed seeing her.....I think the memory of her youth days were quite the highlights for some of them.

Everyone got to put one thing on the "wish list" to do during the weekend. Gracey wanted us to have an Old Fashion Photo taken of everyone. Her choices were to be "hillbillies", a "saloon scene" or "gangsters".   She did not think the hillbillies had very fashionable costumes and I highly discouraged the saloon scene, so we went with the gangsters.....(I am not so sure I won out either way. Let's just say wearing fish nets in public was not my idea of  relaxing in the mountains......) We landed up with a funny memorable picture. 

 All in all we were able to accomplish many fun thing, as well as relaxing things with our friends. We are very thankful for the moments away. Pictures to come soon.