VACAY MANI

Ah, vacation is over, and it's back to normal life. Boo hiss boo.

Let me start by saying that the weather was unbelievable. All of those high percentage chances of rain meant nothing. We saw about 15 minutes of very light sprinkles one evening around dinner time, and that was it. Other than that, they had record setting high temps the entire time we were there, mid to high 90's every day. I spent a lot of time sweating my balls off, and I was fine with that.

The house we rented was completely amazing. Three floors of gorgeous, five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a deck on each floor with a hot tub on two of them. Kev and I took the top floor of the house which consisted of our bedroom, a living room area with a tv, a video game, a pool table and another area that had a 73" flat screen with kind of a movie theatre setup. It was a hoot playing some of the old-school video games like Pac Man, Centipede and Tetris. For the record, I killed it on Centipede, just like the old days. 

Bonus....bears!! I think we had been there for only about an hour when a bear went and stole the garbage can from the neighbor's house because they hadn't disposed of it properly. I didn't see it happen because I was unpacking. I also didn't get a glimpse of the bear that was in the trees as we were riding down the road on our way to go hiking. I'm never looking in the right place at the right time.

The road leading to the house was a complete nightmare. Just right up the mountain on narrow roads that didn't have shoulders but had a whole lot of tight hairpin turns. For some reason I was the only one who owns ears that didn't pop from the altitude. I was actually concerned for my Outback on those steep hills. Luckily my car survived it, but my sister-in-law's Yukon did not. It died on Thursday evening going back up to the house, and I won't even get into what a horror show it was for them to get it fixed and find a way home on Friday. 

Aside from that disaster, there really wasn't too much bad on this trip. One complaint would be the fact that we didn't have a pool at the house. We had to drive to one of the three pools within the area, so that kind of sucked. They weren't far away or anything, but it still made it more of a pain to just go lay in the sun. I did manage to get two good days of pool time, though. I have a peeling left wrist to prove it. Of course I took off my watch to go in the water so that spot burned and has now been completely peeled away by my watch. Not so smart.

We did some fun stuff: riding the mountain tram to the top of the mountain, hopping on a luge-type sled to ride down the mountain on a luge-type slide, riding the tram all the way down to the city of Gatlinburg to eat dinner and wander around the shops, mini golf, a mountain roller coaster, a hike, and best of all, Kev and I went ziplining. Cross one off my bucket list. Since it was just Kev and me going, we went to the best one in the area. It had the most lines, 9, and the mountain views were completely amazing. Best of all, it wasn't even scary. I'm so going to do that again the next time we go somewhere that has it.

This is the mani I decided on for our trip. The picture looks dark to me on this computer. If it appears darker than normal on yours, it may be partly because I did make it a little darker in order to have the colors show up.

I started off with two coats of Cult El Porto and then used Mundo de Unas Lemon Tree, Pink, Peach, Mint and Lilac for the stamping. The design is from the Uber Chic 1-01 plate.

I was so happy to be able to bring a lot of nail stuff with me, but I never did take this off. There were a couple of nights I seriously considered doing my nails, but sitting at the dining room table messing with them didn't sound as enjoyable as sitting out on the deck with the fam. And this one wore very well. I probably could have easily gotten another week out of it if I'd wanted to.

All in all, family vacay was a big success, at least as far as I'm concerned. I'm hoping we'll do it again next year, but it's going to have to be closer. Taking two days just to drive somewhere pretty much sucks, especially when the first leg of the trip home ends up taking 13 hours instead of 10. 

Overall, though, I highly recommend family vacations this way. You get to spend lots of quality time with people you may not get to see very often. This was the most time I've ever gotten to spend with Kev's family and the most even he has spent with them in many, many years. I'm happy to report I still love all of them after cohabiting with them for almost a week.

And on the other hand, if you are not a fan of some of your family members, by all means do it and rent in the mountains. There's plenty of opportunity for you to nudge one of them over the edge.