Us folkies went to the Smokies

A couple weeks ago, Kristi led me on an adventure weekend. Before leaving on our adventure, all I knew was, well, nothing! We both blocked off a Friday afternoon through Monday evening and hit the road. She planned the whole trip, and even secretly packed my bag! One hour on the road turned into nine, and I didn't figure out where we were going until a half hour before we got there. My wife of mine is such a secret planner!

Little Ladies and Gentle Giants - Our weekend adventure in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee:

Adventure #1 - The Hotel

As soon as we stepped foot into our hotel room, looking to crash after our nine and a half hour drive, we caught off guard by the stench of smoke. Did we book a smoking room? Negative. But we did find this, which made the whole room smell like campfire.


So, with it not being what we expected, after one night we ditched the Days Inn and went down the road to the nicer, cheaper Best Western.



Adventure #2 - Gatlinburg

Gatlinburg, the city we stayed in, was a sweet touristy town. For those that don't know, it is connected to Pigeon Forge and Sevierville by a 'strip'. On this strip there are hundreds of restaurants and probably the same number of attractions. It's enough to empty your life savings. So, we selected the couple things that we wanted to check out on the strip.

Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede
(Yee-Haw! Horse tricks + 5 course meal (including a whole chicken) - silverware = a spur tappin good time!)



Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum
(Kristi on a normal size chair.)



Legends Restaurant (& Bennetts BBQ)
(Turns out this is the only picture we have from the restaurants we visited.)



Look! We even saw a bear!


Adventure #3 - Smokey Mountains National Park

With this being my first time in the Smokeys, I was amazed at the sites in the National Park.









What a great weekend planned by my wonderful wife! We are so thankful for everything that has been happening in Akron, and we are also thankful for the ability to go on some adventures from time to time. Through all of our searching during our adventures, we were fortunate enough to see one wildlife animal. A dead deer on the side of the road in West Virginia.

Fuddruckers burgers to finish the weekend was just what the mountain man ordered.



**Disclaimer**
If you do not live in the Akron area, you may be thinking to yourself, "Wow self, all the Millers do is work on their house and go on vacations", and probably rightfully so. Perhaps one of these blogs, we will let you in on what's going on with our new jobs.

Three Leaks in a Matter of Weeks!

When we moved into our house, we thought the kitchen would be one of the easiest rooms when it came to projects. We didn't do any painting and our refrigerator and oven came with the house. We were wrong.

Here is an overview of our kitchen projects.

Ceiling: About two weeks after we moved into the house, we had our first unexpected house project. I was driving home from Indiana and received a call from Josh that our toilet had leaked through our kitchen ceiling. I was expecting a small baseball-sized leak, so you can imagine my surprise when I found this!

Josh put his handyman skills to work. He fixed the toilet and, with some help from a friend, sanded the ceiling (I'll leave out the details of the electric sander that left a layer of dust on EVERYTHING in the kitchen, dining room, and part of the living room) and retextured the ceiling. We just triple coated that section of the ceiling today, and although it's not perfect, it looks much better.

Ceiling Numero Dos: About two weeks after we fixed the hole in the ceiling from the toilet leak, we had a shower leak. This time the shower was leaking through the light in the kitchen ceiling. After a few hours of testing, we discovered exactly where the leak was coming from and Josh fixed leak number two.

Faucet: We soon discovered that our kitchen faucet had a leak. Once again, Josh put his handyman skills to use and installed a new faucet.

Dishwasher: This one's my favorite! Before moving into our new house, we decided we wanted to install a dishwasher. The first week of June, we were blessed with a new dishwasher as a gift. The first step was adding switches to our breaker box. My Uncle Rick made the trip to Akron to install a whole new breaker box and rewire our electricity. What a blessing to have an electrician in the family! Step two was finding someone who could make space in our cupboards and install the dishwasher. So after sitting in a box in our kitchen for 4 and a half months, we finally have a working dishwasher!!! (Well, almost working. Sears is coming tomorrow to repair a broken part.)





Our next project is finding a breakfast nook table. Without the dishwasher sitting in the corner, we have a big open space to fill!