Gatlinburg Part I

So we flew to Miami, spent about 3 days there, and hopped into my mom's car to go to Gatlinburg Tennessee. My aunt was there with her family already. I couldn't wait to see them! 

Going on road trips with family is always fun, even when they're 14 hours long. I slept most of the time because I was getting seriously sick. I think all the germs in Idaho finally caught up to me. We were making good time on our trip and decided to stop at Cracker Barrel for dinner.

Don't mind my crazy Abuelo...

After dinner, we drove a couple of hours more before we realized something was up with the car. Blaine had heard a low whizzing noise but we thought nothing of it. Next thing you know, the power steering gave out. Luckily, we were close to an exit and made it to a gas station just before the whole car shut down. We were in middle of nowhere South Carolina around 8 o'clock at night with only 3 hours left on our trip. We didn't know what to do. Bruce and Blaine caught a ride with some random guy at the gas station to take them to an auto parts shop to get a new pump. We tried calling several mechanics to see if they could come help us, but it looked like we would have to wait for the next day for anything to happen. Thank goodness there was a McDonald's and a hotel right across the street from the gas station. 

Trying to get things figured out at McD's

Being broken down isn't that bad
when you're in great company :)

So the next day, we were lucky and had a mechanic work on the car even though it was Sunday. It took about 6 hours to fix, but finally we were on the road again. In the meanwhile, Ulises, Tia and the kids came down to accompany us and see what Ulises could help with (he's a mechanic). We arrived in Gatlinburg around 8:00 PM PM, just in time to get some food and watch the Redskins game. 

My favorite little sausage place in Downtown Gatlinburg.

This year, Tia and Ulises decided to change it up a bit and rent a cottage by the river instead of a cabin in the mountains. I loved it! It'd be even more gorgeous in the summer time. 

While we were there, we went to the Smokey Mountains National Park. 

There wasn't much snow, but Mami was determined to build a snowman. 

Abuelo being silly, as always. 

We hung out in the cottage quite a bit. The boys played billiards, we made s'mores (over the fireplace haha), and sad to say, we watched lots of Storage Wars together while drinking Mami's delicious hot chocolate.