Dollywood Day

Every year Paul's work hosts a Family Appreciation Day at Dollywood. We only go on that one day, so the boys look foward to it ALL year. The first Sunday in October kicks off their favorite time of year. This year we decided to go up and spend the night in Townsend to shave 30 min off the drive time to the park. The boys and I went up early and ate dinner and did some fishing. We've been using live bait the past few trips and haven't had much luck around here, but they had a lot of luck up at the campgrounds lake. I left my camera at the camper before we walked down....so of course they had a good catch. Rylan caught 6, Cohen caught 4, and Cale caught 1. That boy is just clueless when it comes to fishing :) He's my one with his head in the clouds. He got a good bite...the bobber went under and he started to reel it in. A few seconds later it popped back up out of the water and he stopped reeling. I was across the lake at the playground with Lakin and Cohen at the time. He yelled and said it let go. I kept telling him to reel it in....he was completely oblivious to the fact that his bobber was 'floating' rather fast, against the wind across the lake. Finally he started to reel, and the fish started to fight. He was so suprised there was a fish on the hook at all. (Of course that meant I had to struggle to get the hook out of the fish, since he nearly swallowed the whole thing). Rylan didn't want to stop until he hit 10, but it got dark so he couldn't make his goal. We are planning on going back up tomorrow afternoon.

On to Dollywood. We got to the park just after 10 am. We are at a frustrating point in heights. Rylan can almost ride everything alone, Cale can ride most things with someone. Cohen can ride some with someone and Lakin can ride the kiddie rides. At least I have 2 that still find joy going in circles....give them a steering wheel and they are happy...

And every so often a big brother would join then to tell them how to work things "the right way"

But over all Rylan and Cale have moved on to bigger and better things like this:

or this:

Cohen, who was a little nervous at first, opened up and rode the kid's roller coaster and even joined me and Cale on the River Rampage (and got the most soaked, but was laughing by the end).

By the time we left at 5:30, they were all soaked to the bone and extremely tired. I think they enjoyed this year more than ever before.