Final Days of Vacation

Our last few days of vacation were spent lounging! After our busy day in Nashville, we hung out at the trailer for most of Thursday. Nate did take the older 2 swimming while I stayed back with Toby so he could get a nap. But Thursday evening, when it cooled to a lovely 90 degrees, was one of the highlights for the kids when they got to do this...

And make These...


As you can see it was a huge success for this guy...


And This Guy...


I think they all had a good time just enjoying their Smores and "playing" in the fire! (While heavily supervised, I promise)


This is one of Drew's Favorite things... It's a boy thing, I'm sure of it!

We didn't hang out by the fire long, but the kids got to experience making their smores on vacation.

Then on Friday afternoon, again when it was too hot to do much else, we jumped in the car and headed over to Ft. Donelson, TN. It is a self guided tour to about 11 or so different sites from the Civil War Battleground. Lots of history. We saw a very nice video with details of the 3 day battle and then went on our way to visit some of the sights.

Here is the Confederate monument at Ft. Donelson.
Here the kids are inside one of the reconstructed sleeping quarters for the soldiers. The soldiers and slaves built over 400 of these for their sleeping quarters. After the surrender, the Federals burned them all down due to a measles outbreak.



This is a beautiful shot of the Confederates lower river batteries. From this site, the Confederates were able to defeat the Federals as they cruised up in their ironclad boats.
This was one of the most touching parts for me personally. Going to the National Cemetery and seeing tombstones like this one. 670 Union soldiers are buried here, and of them, 512 are unknown. The pictures in my head of the battles, and what remained are just heartbreaking, then to see that there were 512 unknown soldiers buried here, just confirmed what war looked like in the days of the Civil War.

And this place, the Dover Hotel is where the surrender took place. We were able to go inside and they showed a short video of what discussions prior to surrender may have sounded like with General Buckner and his staff, as well as what the discussion may have been upon the surrender to General Grant. An estimated 13,000 Confederate soldiers passed by here as they loaded the boats on the river to head North to the Prisoners of War camps in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Boston. It was said that they suffered greatly because they were ill prepared for the weather (I can relate here in Ohio, we are never prepared!)
Drew did not want to go with us on this outing. But after, when we asked him his favorite part of vacation, he stated it was the Civil War place. He bought a few packages of the little plastic war guys and has been playing with them a lot. I think it had a pretty big impact on him!

After our tour of Ft Donelson, and a stop at SONIC for Limeades to cool off from the 100+ temps, we headed back to start our cleaning up and packing for the trip home!

So Saturday morning, bright and early... well maybe early, it wasn't bright yet at 4AM, we loaded up and headed out! We hit the Ohio border around 11 due to a stop for breakfast, we stopped again for some lunch around 2 and were back home by 3 or so. (there is a one hour time difference, too!)

It was a very nice trip. We made lots of memories and had a wonderful, relaxing time!

God is Good!