To be honest, I was a little skeptical about Gatlinburg for Spring Break.  I have always thought of it as more of a fall/winter destination.  I wasn’t quite sure what there would be to do in the Spring, but boy was I wrong.  We were go-go-go the entire trip!

After the first days’ petting zoo visit, we decided we hadn’t seen quite enough of nature (haha!), so we went to Ripleys Aquarium of the Smokies.  The girls (and the adults, too) breezed right through the first part of the aquarium where they have all the fish.  You’ve seen one fish, you’ve seen them all, right?  They did enjoy the little tanks that they could climb into from the outside.

How ’bout those fish faces?  They also enjoyed riding the moving sidewalk through the shark tank and seeing all the different types (and sizes!) of sharks.

The favorite part though?  The part that just made the whole aquarium trip?  The PENGUINS!

As if they weren’t cute enough to just look at, they were so funny to actually watch, too.  They dove around in the water and waddled up to the glass where the kids were.  They all had little blue name bracelets on their wings and would respond to their names when the trainers came out.  How cool is that?

Sidenote:  I had a moment of star-struck-ness (is that even a word?) when I spotted Jessica Turner as we were walking into the aquarium.  Jessica writes at The Mom Creative and is the author of a new book titled The Fringe Hours.  I didn’t get to actually fan-girl her the way I wanted because we were outside and it was raining and we both had our kids and I decided to be all responsible and stuff, but it was still pretty neat.

We did the go-cart riding thing, of course.  You can’t go on vacation and not do the go-cart thing, after all.

Please overlook the quality of these photos but seriously, check out Libby’s face.  Awesomeness.

We also caught a showing at the Dixie Stampede, which turned out way better than I actually expected.  I’m a very picky eater and I just knew I wasn’t going to like the food, but I did.  They had chicken, pork loin, corn on the cob, creamy vegetable soup, rolls, and garlic potatoes.  And it was all good.  The girls were the chicken chasing queens of the night–they were invited into the arena, in front of thousands of people, to herd a few chickens.  They did great, once Libby got past the fear of getting dust on her shoes!

We did dinners at the chalet and drove through Cade’s Cove and went shopping at the outlets, but our favorite part of the whole vacation?  Spending time with our people.