Adventure Awaits

We've had passes to the Atlanta History Center for almost a year and since there were a few things we hadn't managed to do yet, we decided it was a perfect day on Saturday to scoot down to Buckhead to check it out and see what we hadn't experienced yet.

There is a beautiful mansion on the property called the SWAN HOUSE that we got to tour, we couldn't take pics inside so I grabbed them off the Atlanta History Center's Flickr acct and made a collage. It was a fairly impressive house, the family apparently made a lot of money off of cotton and a new company called Coca cola.

I have to admit, it was pretty impressive. Not the sort of place you lounge about in your tee shirt and panties while surfing the web but hey, you gotta make sacrifices to get to the top I guess.

Near the house is a rock quarry garden that my oldest boy has always wanted to explore. How could we let the passes expire without climbing down to check it out?

So down we went. It looked really steep from above but wasn't at all. It was a really cool nature walk once we were down there.

There were bullfrogs singing at us that it took us a while to find. 

I have do admit I wasn't all that keen on the Atlanta History Center when we first started going but it's really amazing and full of so much to learn, every time we went I really enjoyed it. I will miss belonging but it's one of those places that once you've seen the permanent exhibits, you've SEEN it. There is usually just one travelling exhibition and eh, there are so many  museums in Atlanta. It's time to move on to another one.

I am really glad we made this one last trip on a warm spring day.

I can't wait to see where we end up with annual passes to this year. 

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Adventure Awaits

We've had passes to the Atlanta History Center for almost a year and since there were a few things we hadn't managed to do yet, we decided it was a perfect day on Saturday to scoot down to Buckhead to check it out and see what we hadn't experienced yet.

There is a beautiful mansion on the property called the SWAN HOUSE that we got to tour, we couldn't take pics inside so I grabbed them off the Atlanta History Center's Flickr acct and made a collage. It was a fairly impressive house, the family apparently made a lot of money off of cotton and a new company called Coca cola.

I have to admit, it was pretty impressive. Not the sort of place you lounge about in your tee shirt and panties while surfing the web but hey, you gotta make sacrifices to get to the top I guess.

Near the house is a rock quarry garden that my oldest boy has always wanted to explore. How could we let the passes expire without climbing down to check it out?

So down we went. It looked really steep from above but wasn't at all. It was a really cool nature walk once we were down there.

There were bullfrogs singing at us that it took us a while to find. 

I have do admit I wasn't all that keen on the Atlanta History Center when we first started going but it's really amazing and full of so much to learn, every time we went I really enjoyed it. I will miss belonging but it's one of those places that once you've seen the permanent exhibits, you've SEEN it. There is usually just one travelling exhibition and eh, there are so many  museums in Atlanta. It's time to move on to another one.

I am really glad we made this one last trip on a warm spring day.

I can't wait to see where we end up with annual passes to this year. 

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Birthdays Southern Belle Style

My own Georgia Peach turned three this past week. I took the day off of work and we did what all good southern girls like to do - we went to the Margaret Mitchell House.

Points of interest. This is just an apartment. She did live there when she wrote Gone With The Wind, but it's a wee one bedroom apartment. It was charming, and I have to admit, the entire tour was totally fascinating to me. I'm a pretty typical Gone With The Wind fan, I'm female, but learning about Margaret Mitchell the WOMAN was pretty interesting. I think my two biggest take aways were her amazing philanthropy to the black community when she started making money off GWTW (I think somehow I always painted her as racist...it's not fashionable nor feminist to love GWTW) but the other thing I was intrigued by was, she wrote the last chapter first.


Ok I admit it. This part of the day was for ME. But, I've never been and the tour was included with our membership to The Atlanta History Center.
The girl got a souvenir though.

She thinks it's a puppet. I like to hold it up and go "YOU AINT SHOWIN YOUR BOSOMS AFORE THREE O'CLOCK!" and other things. 

Hey, her birthday, that's what she wanted.

So that's obviously not a three year old birthday celebration.

So what we actually did for HER was have a cake (made by her big brother Louis and herself) and presents at the house and then jaunt off to that mecca of childhood joy for a proper little party. Where do I mean?

Why, Chuck E Cheese of course!

Interesting side note. Miles went over to the hoops game, and wanted to play. I've never once seen him show an interest in basketball.

Who drained shot after shot? Miles. I never saw him even pick up a ball before. Apparently they're doing this in school because this was amazing. The kid has Hoosier DNA after all!

It was a good day to turn three.

I'm pleased to report she has left the terrible twos behind her. And run straight into whatever the hell tantrum age is next.

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Birthdays Southern Belle Style

My own Georgia Peach turned three this past week. I took the day off of work and we did what all good southern girls like to do - we went to the Margaret Mitchell House.

Points of interest. This is just an apartment. She did live there when she wrote Gone With The Wind, but it's a wee one bedroom apartment. It was charming, and I have to admit, the entire tour was totally fascinating to me. I'm a pretty typical Gone With The Wind fan, I'm female, but learning about Margaret Mitchell the WOMAN was pretty interesting. I think my two biggest take aways were her amazing philanthropy to the black community when she started making money off GWTW (I think somehow I always painted her as racist...it's not fashionable nor feminist to love GWTW) but the other thing I was intrigued by was, she wrote the last chapter first.


Ok I admit it. This part of the day was for ME. But, I've never been and the tour was included with our membership to The Atlanta History Center.
The girl got a souvenir though.

She thinks it's a puppet. I like to hold it up and go "YOU AINT SHOWIN YOUR BOSOMS AFORE THREE O'CLOCK!" and other things. 

Hey, her birthday, that's what she wanted.

So that's obviously not a three year old birthday celebration.

So what we actually did for HER was have a cake (made by her big brother Louis and herself) and presents at the house and then jaunt off to that mecca of childhood joy for a proper little party. Where do I mean?

Why, Chuck E Cheese of course!

Interesting side note. Miles went over to the hoops game, and wanted to play. I've never once seen him show an interest in basketball.

Who drained shot after shot? Miles. I never saw him even pick up a ball before. Apparently they're doing this in school because this was amazing. The kid has Hoosier DNA after all!

It was a good day to turn three.

I'm pleased to report she has left the terrible twos behind her. And run straight into whatever the hell tantrum age is next.

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What If You WEREN'T Being "Tested"

I've been mulling over these thoughts for several weeks after my good friend started talking to me about "disease literature". Mainly, the misconception that, it's ok if terrible things are happening in your life because you're being tested and honed and that makes everything ok, so you  just embrace that suffering. SUFFER. You'll end up better for it.

I've decided, I have a problem with this in a lot of different ways, but mainly because it bothers me that people would live out their lives unhappy holding to the idea that they are supposed to be. 

I say this without regard to anyone's religious beliefs but, I always loved the line from THE COLOR PURPLE when Miss Sophia tells Miss Celie "You oughta bash Mister's head open and think about heaven later."

The bigger message there, more than violence and the afterlife is this - quit living in suffering willingly.

On the day these pictures were taken, we were strolling through a beautiful Federalist garden in Atlanta, enjoying the sights and the peace of the amazing foliage.

The statuary was amazing and graceful, and I was really enjoying snapping pictures of our day, as my children ran and played  up and down the hedge rows.

It was shortly after we discovered the wonder of this solitary elephant, that the sky opened up. Rain and thunder came down on my family as we scurried and hurried back through the garden and down the paths to find shelter back in the main museum.

It rained on our day. It rained with extreme downpour, in fact. It wasn't a trial or a test. If I WERE a religious person, I wouldn't be able to carry big enough ego to presume I'd warrant such a test, or any other kind of test. As I'm not religious, I know this - sometimes it rains.

The trick is, you don't let the rain ruin your day. 

And you don't let your trials ruin your life.

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What If You WEREN'T Being "Tested"

I've been mulling over these thoughts for several weeks after my good friend started talking to me about "disease literature". Mainly, the misconception that, it's ok if terrible things are happening in your life because you're being tested and honed and that makes everything ok, so you  just embrace that suffering. SUFFER. You'll end up better for it.

I've decided, I have a problem with this in a lot of different ways, but mainly because it bothers me that people would live out their lives unhappy holding to the idea that they are supposed to be. 

I say this without regard to anyone's religious beliefs but, I always loved the line from THE COLOR PURPLE when Miss Sophia tells Miss Celie "You oughta bash Mister's head open and think about heaven later."

The bigger message there, more than violence and the afterlife is this - quit living in suffering willingly.

On the day these pictures were taken, we were strolling through a beautiful Federalist garden in Atlanta, enjoying the sights and the peace of the amazing foliage.

The statuary was amazing and graceful, and I was really enjoying snapping pictures of our day, as my children ran and played  up and down the hedge rows.

It was shortly after we discovered the wonder of this solitary elephant, that the sky opened up. Rain and thunder came down on my family as we scurried and hurried back through the garden and down the paths to find shelter back in the main museum.

It rained on our day. It rained with extreme downpour, in fact. It wasn't a trial or a test. If I WERE a religious person, I wouldn't be able to carry big enough ego to presume I'd warrant such a test, or any other kind of test. As I'm not religious, I know this - sometimes it rains.

The trick is, you don't let the rain ruin your day. 

And you don't let your trials ruin your life.

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Christmas Time in Atlanta

We are a little tardier than usual but we started with the Christmas activities finally and went hard yesterday absorbing the family fun and traditions.

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We started out our day at the Atlanta History center which has a great 19th century village where they do blacksmithing and lots of other traditional early Georgia activities. I was surprised to see the cotton was still in the field but it's pretty so I grabbed a pic.

Louis was surprised at the regular socks hanging on the fireplace, and that's why I love doing these sort of things with the kids. I don't think until yesterday he ever made that connection of "stocking" to "sock". When he realized that the big oversized Santa-ready stockings we hung up were not what has always been, he was so surprised. Imagine his horror when we told him that a good present was an orange.

There were crafts set up for kids to do inside the history center and so we made garlands and cornhusk angels for our tree.

Daddy might've been the one who ended up making most of the cornhusk angels. I'm not saying.

We were excited, as we explored the exhibits, to see that the Atlanta History Center was displaying Percival - one of the original Pink Pigs.

Which set the stage perfectly as we transitioned from learning about historical Atlanta and the Christmas traditions of the past, to....THIS.

Since we were already down in Buckhead we drove over to Macy's to ride THE PINK PIG, a modern Atlanta tradition.
It's silly and corny and it's like 45 minutes wait to ride this pig shaped train for 3 minutes. And I don't care. It's wonderful and festive. The twins were ECSTATIC when we got on and started the ride, hearing all about the meaning of Family Christmas from Priscilla, the modern Pink Pig.
I swear to you, it's the same voice as Mrs Crinklesack from The Cleveland Show. That in itself is worth the price of admission.

Christmas Time in Atlanta

We are a little tardier than usual but we started with the Christmas activities finally and went hard yesterday absorbing the family fun and traditions.

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We started out our day at the Atlanta History center which has a great 19th century village where they do blacksmithing and lots of other traditional early Georgia activities. I was surprised to see the cotton was still in the field but it's pretty so I grabbed a pic.

Louis was surprised at the regular socks hanging on the fireplace, and that's why I love doing these sort of things with the kids. I don't think until yesterday he ever made that connection of "stocking" to "sock". When he realized that the big oversized Santa-ready stockings we hung up were not what has always been, he was so surprised. Imagine his horror when we told him that a good present was an orange.

There were crafts set up for kids to do inside the history center and so we made garlands and cornhusk angels for our tree.

Daddy might've been the one who ended up making most of the cornhusk angels. I'm not saying.

We were excited, as we explored the exhibits, to see that the Atlanta History Center was displaying Percival - one of the original Pink Pigs.

Which set the stage perfectly as we transitioned from learning about historical Atlanta and the Christmas traditions of the past, to....THIS.

Since we were already down in Buckhead we drove over to Macy's to ride THE PINK PIG, a modern Atlanta tradition.
It's silly and corny and it's like 45 minutes wait to ride this pig shaped train for 3 minutes. And I don't care. It's wonderful and festive. The twins were ECSTATIC when we got on and started the ride, hearing all about the meaning of Family Christmas from Priscilla, the modern Pink Pig.
I swear to you, it's the same voice as Mrs Crinklesack from The Cleveland Show. That in itself is worth the price of admission.