It's New Year's Day (or is it Christmas Day?)

 Our Tennessee vacation has been action packed!! Yesterday we headed into Smoky Mountain National Park for a picnic.  Juneau and Aunt Becky at the visitors center....excited to start the day! 

 Fun times with Aunt Becky!

 Uncle Drew takes every chance he can get to snuggle his nieces and nephews....I think Micah is enjoying his snuggle time!

 Kristie is a brave, brave soul. After being engaged to Drew for only about a week, she agreed to come to come along on a family vacation....she totally rocks, and just goes with the flow!!

 Blog authors (rarely seen in a photo together! haha!)

 After the picnic we decided to play a little football...We made a strong team....

 As you can see, Cris was moving about 3x the speed as the rest of us! (as evidenced by the fact the rest of the gang is in focus and Cris is merely a blur!)

 The other team came up with some fancy plays during their extended huddle times....but not enough to beat the shear speed and athleticism of team Cris/Drew/Emilie :)

 Ringing in the NEW YEAR!!! Welcome 2012!

 Nova getting some Aunt Becky time.

 Lately the girls have really been into wrestling. Nova will say "Let's fight sis!" and get into this funny karate stance, and then they will roll around and wrestle on the floor. Surprisingly, it has stayed pretty calm/mild up to this point...i'm sure there will be many years of serious roughhousing ahead, so hopefully we can avoid any major injuries!

 Today's activity was a trip into Gatlinburg to see the Ripley's Aquarium.

 The girls waited patiently for us to buy the tickets.

 The aquarium as really amazing!!! the exhibits were very well done and absolutely beautiful. Nova found the tiniest jellyfish and said "I want this little tiny one to be mine.  Her name is Pua!" (not sure where she got that name!)

 They were mesmerized most of the trip!

 This was my favorite sea creature of the day.  It was called a "Sea Dragon" and really looked mythical!

 The sharks were totally amazing!

 Kristie, Drew, and Em!

 More Shark Photography. It looks like Cris is actually in the tank with this one!

 Up close and personal!

 A large portion of the aquarium was set up as a tunnel, and it was SUPER cool!

 Kaleb goofing around

 More aquarium pics....

 "Look at all those Nemo's!"

 Juneau was the only one brave enough to actually reach into the tank and touch this guy....

 Kristie is quite popular with the under 5 crowd :)  They love her!

And what is a Saccenti family gathering without 5 people squeezed onto one tiny little loveseat (something tells me squeezing onto the loveseat violates a few of my dad's post-op hip precautions!)

We were sooooo happy that dad was feeling up to making the trip to Tennessee.  He had a total hip replacement about 2 weeks ago, and we weren't sure he was going to be up for the trip. We really started to wonder if it was a good idea when we realized we were on the 3rd floor of the condo, and there is no elevator!!! He has done amazing, however, and we are sooooo glad he was able to come!

Drew really impressed Kristie when he showed her how he can puff his stomach out to look pregnant. I am amazed that between Drew's weird stomach, and our entire crazy family, Kristie didn't board the first plane back to Washington....but she seems to be sticking it out :)

After the aquarium we spent the evening opening presents....Hopefully the girls don't think they will get to have THREE huge Christmas Days EVERY year! haha! but we had a great time, and tons of fun, and can't wait to have another fun-filled day tomorrow....if only it would snow a couple of inches so we can use the snowboards we hauled all the way from Colorado!