Smoky Mountain Birthday

We celebrated Sean's birthday on Wednesday with a trip to one of his most favorite places....The Great Smoky Mountain National Park! We are so blessed to live only 45 min. away from one of the most beatutiful places in the world (in my humble opinion!) and given Sean's love of fly-fishing, we spend quite a bit of time there! He took half a day off from work and we headed to the Cade's Cove picnic area so that he could fish and the kids could play. Not sure why Beck and Helen look so washed out in this picture....could be that my camera is finally wearing out, or could be that the operator has no idea what she is doing....especially in low-light situations. Anyhow, here is Sean with the kids right before he set out to fish!

Doing what he loves!
Like father, like son. Beckett is turning into quite a little fly-fisher himself!

Helen isn't interested at all in fishing. She just likes to play in the water and pose for pictures!

And Will liked to crawl off of the "neat sheet" to pick up handfuls of rocks and try to eat them! He keeps me on my toes!

After about an hour and a half of fishing and playing, it started to thunder. We packed up our things and began to head out, but then we decided to drive the Cade's Cove loop. We hadn't done it in a while and thought it might be fun. It was great! The weather cleared up and we were able to see quite a bit of wild-life as well as enjoy the beauty of the mountains!

We saw several deer......

and a bunch of turkeys!

OK, that sounds kind of funny, given that the pics only have one each of a deer and a turkey....but we did see lots of them. These were just my close up shots! We saw a few bears (didn't get any pics of those) and beautiful views like this! It was a wonderful evening!

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Isaiah 55:12