Time for a Break

For our third day in Gatlinburg, we decided to take one of the auto touring trails through the park. These trails have guide books that describe the stops on the route. You can take as much time as you like making your way along the trail, stopping and checking out things like this grist mill along the road. The boys spent a lot of time exploring areas near streams that criss-crossed the road all along the Roaring Fork Trail that we followed.

The weather was perfect that day, so we took our time and got out of the car at most of the parking areas. Later, we made our way back to the park office, did a little souvenir shopping, and followed the easy nature trail hike that started at the visitor's center. We bought one of the National Park Passport books so we could start recording our trips. Each time you visit a national park, you take the book to the visitor center and get the special stamp for that park with the date you visited. We were able to pick up two stamps on this vacation.

Our school days are wrapping up for 2015. Today was our last official day until January 12, 2016. There will be some school work during our Christmas break though. JT needs to keep making progress on his Rosetta Stone German 2 since we didn't take it with us on our vacation. He also needs to log some days for his introduction to computer programming class he is doing. We want to count it as a half credit for this year so he will need to log 60 days by the beginning of May. He only has about 20 days at this point, so extra days during the holiday break will be good. EM is in the middle of a chapter in his Thinkwell pre-algebra, so I thought he should probably finish it instead of stopping for three weeks and coming back mid-chapter. Other than those few things, our days should be pretty relaxed. That is a good thing since the wind up to Christmas has really worn me down. I need a few weeks with no planning necessary. Have a Merry Christmas and I'll be back in 2016!