Happy 2nd Birthday Quin!

My baby is 2 today! Hard to believe how fast the past 2 years have gone! I really thought I was going to be able to pull off a slide show of his 2 years, but I guess with getting all the vacation posts completed...I'm not going to stress over it! Hopefully I can put one together of his 2nd birthday party which we are having on Saturday night! He is still the happiest little boy and has loads of personality! His vocabulary has really taken off and he has shown us several times that he is quite determined! Happy Birthday Quin!

{Entire Tennessee Vacay}.

I've finally completed our entire Tennessee vacation and put it into a slide show. Since I realized from my fellow blogger friends that it wouldn't be possible to add Corby back into our Christmas card photo, I've added that one to the show. Oh and for the music selection, it is not really a vacation song but one of my dad's favorite movies is O Brother Where Art Thou with George Clooney. While we were touring Gatlinburg, my dad requested that one of the little side bands on the street perform it. Enjoy!

2009 Palmer Vacation

Beach Bums.

Today we loaded up and headed to our local beach at our lake. Conner just remembers the beach from Florida last year and asked me when we arrived if there were any sharks in the water. (If you recall our shark incident at the beach last year).

Quin absolutely loved playing in the sand and the little stinker took a whole shovel full and scooped it right on top of my hair while I wasn't watching! I'm still feeling the gritty sand in my hair.

Corby and Preston made some other friends and worked hard on a sand castle! Too bad I didn't get a picture of it.

The water was so warm and I just enjoyed soaking up the sun and watching the boats come it.

Ok....can Conner's hair get any blonder this summer??? I swear when his hair is wet he looks bald!

It was a great day to take advantage of our local lake and the boys loved it!

Happy {Wet} 4th of July!

This 4th of July must go down in the books as being one of the "nastiest" weather wise days ever!!! Since when are you FREEZING on the 4th while watching fireworks??? Usually sweat is dripping off of you while you have cotton candy and pop sickles stuck to you! Anyway, we made the best of it! I ended up working during the morning and that was very beneficial since all the boaters couldn't get on the lake! We then decided we would head to our local Mark Twain Lake Rodeo and watch the fireworks.

All dressed in our 4th of July attire...who knew we would add jeans to that???

Quin had just woke up and really was in no mood for a picture!

The 2 Goofballs!

Luckily the rain had stopped as we arrived at the rodeo, but boy was it a muddy mess!

Once again, my kids get tired of the camera shoved in their face!

Conner was in complete amazement! His love of horses still continues and he loved the bareback riding and barrel racing!

The clown was a big hit with the older two...they are finally getting some adult humor!

Preston has hated the noise of fireworks since birth! He is also my only one who has my genetic hearing loss and had to have tubes in his ears!

The fireworks were a little weird this year as we didn't get the full effect as there was lots of cloud cover so they were kind of hazy! Anyway we had a great 4th despite the nasty weather! I feel so bad because this is the first year that we have not purchased some kind of fireworks for the kids to do at home! I guess with us just getting back from vacation and the 4th being the next day it was a little chaotic! Oh well, they haven't mentioned one thing about not doing them!

Tennessee Day 5~Golfing and Back to Gatlinburg.

Our final day in Tennessee consisted of a little slower pace than the past few days that we had experienced. I enjoyed the last day, as it was our last day to sleep in later, sip on our coffee on our mountain view porch (pictures of cabin will be included in the upcoming slide show), and basically packing up. The men not only got to go golfing once on our vacation, but TWICE! They headed out early for 18 holes while the women got everything packed up and ready to go! Our reward for them being gone all morning was to help stimulate the Tennessee economy in the afternoon at the biggest retail outlets I have ever been too! (Believe me, ask Quinn and Sheri because I think I walked 2 miles to the Starbucks and back to the store we were meeting at!)

My dad said he thought the course the played on in Estes Park, CO a couple of years ago was the most beautiful, but he said this course was hands down.

The course with the Smokies in the background.

This hole was a complete drop down!

Once the women got back from shopping all afternoon we enjoyed pizza from a quaint little pizza place close to our cabin! It was homemade dough and absolutely DELICIOUS! We then thought we needed to head back to Gatlinburg one last night for some entertainment.

There were musicians, cloggers, magic acts up and down the main drag in Gatlinburg. Here Maggie was called out by a clogger and got to dance with her.

Grandma with Sydney and Preston enjoying our last night!

Of course the trip couldn't be missed without a sighting of Smokey Bear!

We truly had the best vacation ever with lots and lots of memories! My blog posts would be forever if I added every picture so hopefully tomorrow I will be able to complete the slide show portraying our entire fun filled vacation!

Tennessee Day 4~Dollywood.

It wouldn't be a trip to the Smokey Mountains without making a trip to the world famous theme park, Dollywood! My dad actually said it couldn't be a theme park because the temperature wasn't in the 100's (that's his good old sarcasm coming out!). We had the perfect day at the park and got to ride all the rides that we wanted to! Let me tell you, I thought Six Flags had some awesome roller coasters, but I think Dollywood has the greatest ever! My dad rode the first one and that was enough for him for the day!

Sorry once again for the quality of these pictures, but I was thankful I had my mom's point and click camera so I didn't have to carry mine around all day.

Of course we spent money on one of the high dollar strollers at the park for the little ones, but it was mainly used by the older kiddos! Go figure!

Here Heath is coming off of one of the best water rides I have been on, Artic Rush. It has a drop that goes 50 mph!

Quin telling Grandy "all aboard" as we rode on a nice train ride around the park (basically it was a break for the adults to get a little breather!)

Dolly Parton has her bus parked on the grounds and we got to get a tour of the inside. The last time this tour bus was used was in April 2008. She has since purchased a $2 million dollar bus! This one was very fancy, so I can't imagine what her new one is like!

We completely wore out the little ones!

We played musical strollers, so that is why Quin is in a pink one at this point!

Of course at the end of the day we had to load up on souvenirs, taffy, and lollipops!

We had a great time at Dollywood and I'm glad we added it to our weekly itinerary!

Tennessee Day 3~Whitewater Rafting

Day 3 of our vacation was the BEST!! If you ask my family members, I love vacations with water, I just however don't like to get in the water! It's not that I don't know how to swim, I just hate freezing cold water! Well when we were planning this trip, I thought it would be really cool to do something we (I) have never experienced. When looking at the Tennessee vacation I kept coming across whitewater rafting adventures. Once I found out everyone was on board, I decided it would be fun! Well it definitely was! My parents stayed back with the two little ones and we hit the Little Pigeon River (on the Tennessee/North Carolina border) for some whitewater adventure.

These pictures were taking by the rafting company's personal photographer and we had to purchase them for a small fortune....it's vacation right???

Somehow Heath and I had to do more work than the other raft as we had 5 kids, us and our awesome guide, Jacob.

This was the best experience ever and I'm so glad we decided to take part in it! And let me tell you....that water was FREEZINGGGG!!!!

The kids loved it! Can you tell in most pictures Maggie is posing! Well I dropped off my water camera at Walgreen's today only to forget it on the way home. Hopefully I will get to add more pictures of the other raft crew members on the slide show.

Tennessee Day 2~Smokey Mtn. National Park/Gatlinburg

Our second day consisted of traveling through the Smokey National Park and observing the beautiful mountain scenery. We had heard several people mention along the way that we really need to drive to Cade's Cove in the park because there was a chance we could spot some wildlife, such as a black bear. We didn't think our chances would be good, but thought it was worth a try if the kids could experience seeing a real life bear in it's own habitat.

The setting was beautiful for pictures. I have a funny story about taking pictures in the park. Every year my mom tries to get the perfect picture for her annual Christmas card, so I loaded up my tripod and thought the park would be the perfect place to capture our family picture this year. We had the most beautiful setting you could have asked for to take our picture. I couldn't wait to get home and edit the picture, because I knew for sure it turned out great. Well I edited it when we returned home on Friday night and then emailed it on to my parents. I then received and email back from my dad asking where Corbin was???? What you mean he wasn't in the picture! If I hadn't rode home 10 hours in the car with him I would have been panicked, but sure enough he was no where in the picture and not one person noticed, not even I after I had even edited the darn thing. I even went up to his bed on Friday night and made him come downstairs and explain to me where he was when we were all setting up the tripod, directing kids with force voices, and snapping away. He said he told Chris and Sheri (he was riding in their car at the time) that he was just going to stay in the car and he said they were ok with that???? Anyway, I'm going to try (with hopefully some of my photoshop blogger friends) to piece him into our picture! I didn't want to ruin the surprise on here if we get it to work out.

Well sure enough we spotted a black bear that even ran right in front of our car! It was truly amazing to actually see one in their own habitat.

Beautiful view of the Smokies.

After we returned from the National Park, we then headed into Gatlinburg to take in some of the "touristy" sights.

We took an ariel tram all the way to the top of the mountain and had the most scenic view of Gatlinburg.

Grandma holding on for dear life. If any of you know my sister, she does not do well in the car for extended periods of time so if the 2 1/2 hour round trip drive of the National Park didn't do her in, the climb up on the ariel tram did.

Once we made it to the top of the mountain, several of us hit the alpine slide. We had to take another climb on top of another mountain on a ski lift, another breathtaking view of Gatlinburg.

Since I didn't want to bore you with a million pictures of each daily activity, I will be putting the rest of the photos to a slide show....hopefully sometime this week!