Christmas (part 4)

The day after Christmas we went up to Ober Gatlinburg. You paid for an hour and a half session, and we knew there was one at 11:00 am. Bill decided since he was awake early, to go ahead and drive up and buy our passes so that if there was a line we wouldn’t miss out. Normally they want you all to be right there and get your bracelets, but they allowed him to pay for them and then hold them back for us.

The bad part of it was he drove the van because he didn’t want to deal with the stick shift up and down the mountain. So when he was on his way back to our cabin, he made this one turn that is steep and sharp, and the wheels started spinning and he felt the van start sliding, and he was truly worried that he was going to go off the edge and down the mountain. The wheels caught and got some traction, and he was able to continue on up the hill. After going through that harrowing experience, he made the next big turn and started onto the loop road that our cabin was on, and he drove just a little ways, and a large tree was down and completely across the road. He definitely couldn’t go forward, so he then had to back up, a small road, with drop offs, and he was still freaked out from the previous scare! He managed to get back onto the other road, and had to then go down and then drive up the road that is generally the out road. Steep down, the driveways face the other direction, so now he had almost slid down the mountain, had to back up a significant distance on a different mountain road. Instead, now he has to get the van to go UP a different tough road, where he passed another downed tree, but only the top of that tree was in the road and it was at a spot where it was wider and you could get around it. Then he had to pass our driveway and back up into it, as he literally could not make the turn backwards to get into it from the direction he was forced to come. He arrived back home and I could tell something was up, he told us his tale and was a little bit on edge for the rest of the morning.

We managed to all be up and moving along and were ready to go ahead of schedule, and we made it back up to Ober Gatlinburg early, and we were very glad that Bill had gone early once we arrived (and we got there early around 10:20 or so), they were already sold out for the 11:00 tubing run. We had another small drama when we went to have the lady put on our wrist bands. Liam freaked out! Bill identified the problem pretty quickly, and I have to say, I don’t know that I would have gotten it for a while. The previous times Liam has had any sort of wrist bands put on him it was at the hospital and having procedures done... Poor little guy was absolutely out of his mind and refusing to have it put on. We finally got it on, and he just pulled and tugged at it and screamed. We kept trying to explain that was our ticket to go tubing on the hills. We took him outside to watch and I don’t know that it helped do anything more than scare him about it as well... So, when our time came, the girls and I all got in line, got our tubes and slid away. Bill took Liam and went to the arcade inside and let him play for a bit to help him calm down.

The tubing was fun, not like anything I’ve done before. All the snow was manufactured, and there were 6-8 formed lanes down the hill, with banked sides. You got your tube, and walked around to the conveyer belt lift. It was very nice to be able to just stand there and hold onto the cord for your tube and up you went to the top of the hill. The girls and I had some fun runs down the hill. Bill and Liam showed up after a little bit, and they had these double tubes. So Liam is doing alright up the lift and at the top of the hill. He’s sitting in the tube waiting in line for his turn, he’s smiling... THEN, it is their turn. Bill is trying to get into the back of the tube, Liam is bailing out! He’s screaming, “You can’t do this to me!” “I’m not doing this!” and fighting to free himself. Meanwhile, there isn’t really any other way to get down the hill. So I am shoving him back down to sit, and we are causing a scene. Bill sat in the back and wraps his legs around Liam to keep him sitting in the tube, and then they were off and down the hill, Liam crying and screaming all the way.

I was surprised to see them head right back up the hill. Liam asked to go, and was happy all the way. He got up there, and sat in the tube waiting for his turn, and Bill still held onto him but he seemed to be o.k. with the whole thing. So then they headed back up for trip three... Again, Liam sat until it was their turn, and all of the sudden he starts fighting and screaming and trying to climb out of the tube again. I’m trying to shove him back down to sit in the tube again so they can go down, and the worker guy says, the adult has to be in the front and the child in the back of the two part tube. Well, we try to explain to him this is his third trip down. I’m trying to hold him down and now we have to take him out and move him! So... he’s screaming, Bill is supposed to be in the front, but when it becomes clear that there is NO way Liam will stay in the tube if not held there, the guy suggests to Bill, that he could turn around backward facing, so he is facing Liam and can still wrap his legs around him. Meanwhile Liam is throwing a fit the whole time, and now I have to push him over the edge and watch him as he heads down the hill.

After that run, Liam is done, and Bill was going to take him, but Rebekah and Sariah agree to take him for a while, since they were cold and let Bill have some time to go by himself. Toward the end Bill and I went inside to check on the kids, and Bill went walking around with Liam for a bit, and Liam said he wanted to go again! So up they went and Liam had a blast and asked to go again, but alas, it was too late. Our time was up and he couldn’t go any more. Oh well. At least maybe he has decent memories of going, since his last run was a positive one.

Before we left Ober Gatlinburg, we went through their little zoo place. The one bear that we could see was hibernating back in one of the stalls/caves way far back inside. Amanda spotted him, and with the zoom lense I was able to get a fuzzy picture of the bear we paid money to see. The kids really got a kick out of the nocturnal animal exhibits. There were turtles swimming, and there were several kinds of lizards and snakes. The kids were all really excited trying to identify each of them.

After that we headed back home to our cabin. (or to our cabinet as Liam called it). Bill decided the one road and turn that he had the hard time with that morning, he didn’t want to make again, so he drove past our turn, up and around another curve in the road so we could get to a drive way we could turn around in, so that we could hit our road/turn at more of a direct angle and have the momentum of going downhill rather than trying to backtrack going uphill as we had previously done. It worked. Yay, no slipping and sliding. Then we took a risk and went past the first turn to the loop of our road, and up to the 2nd turn. The road had been cleared, yay, no backing up! However when they had come and cut the tree, they barely cut it the width of the road, there was not much wiggle room. (I can’t believe I didn’t grab the camera and take a picture of the big tree that had come down the day before in the storm and blocked off the road!) It wasn’t the one that knocked out the power lines, but that also made me wonder how many trees had come down around the area during the storm on Christmas eve. We arrived safely and well back at our cabin.

We spent the afternoon organizing and beginning to pack up. Some people took naps – that riding up a lift and sliding down sitting on a tube apparently took a lot out of some of us. ;-)

We wound up our trip with a dinner show at The Dixie Stampede. What a fun time. We arrived early for the pre-show. Liam was a challenge he did not want to sit down and we waited and waited... Bill went and bought us some popcorn and some fun drinks in cowboy cups. It helped to keep him entertained for a little while. Finally the pre dinner band came on and all of the sudden, he was entranced. He started clapping along to the bluegrass music. Then he started strumming his little hand across his imaginary guitar or banjo. He did that for the longest time. It was really cute.

The dinner show was really fun. The kids all loved it. Because we went at Christmas, instead of the entertainers being soldiers from the North and South, they were Red and Green Elves. We got a Christmas show. It was wonderful. They incorporated silly Christmas gags into the horse and rider portions of the show. They had a toy land portion, and then they had the whole Nativity story. There were Joseph and Mary and baby Jesus. I asked Liam if he knew who that was, he said, “Mary”. Then he said, “Is that Amanda?” because she had been Mary in the nativity play at our Church party recently. The Shepherds came out with real sheep and goats. One sheep was really funny, and kept jumping around; it would jump almost straight up in the air. It was pretty funny. One of the other highlights was that the wise men actually rode in on Camels. They came out right in front of us. It was pretty cool. The food was pretty yummy too; Creamy vegetable soup, Roasted chicken, cheesy biscuits, and a flakey delicious apple pastry. Yum Yum.