Spring Break 2012

Had a fantastic week with my brother's family. We left the dogs in good hands with one of my high school students, and headed to Atlanta to see Rod's family. It was a pleasant trip down--I graded Huck Finn tests and re-read The Hunger Games.

Highlights of the week:

My nephew Brandon and his girlfriend Laura have built a ferret complex in the basement. The girls were fascinated by these animals--seemed part cat and part dog. They are high maintenance though-- we'll just stick with the dogs.  This one really likes shoes. The other one likes to lick your toes.

We got to see Josh play soccer.  I asked him if I could yell, "Go Stars!" He replied, very matter-of-factly, "People don't really do that." It was a beautiful night. Can't tell if his team won or lost. I can remember watching Brandon play t-ball on my visits when he was little.

The next day we headed downtown to the Georgia Aquarium. The girls had been looking forward to this for weeks. Macy, you know, wants to be a dolphin trainer or something similar.

I really liked how the aquarium was organized--there was a huge open area in the middle, and all the different exhibits were off of that. Made it easy to go in and out of the different galleries.

This is one of the first ones we went in. This scuba diver was cleaning the tank, and motioned to get closer for a picture. We did, then she went back to cleaning. It was pretty cool.

Almost every aquarium we've been to has a tunnel now, but this one had a moving walkway you could stand on. That was pretty cool. Here's the girls and Bobby pretending to surf on the walkway.

The dolphin show was included in our ticket, so we watched that. We were in the 3rd row--got a little wet, but not bad. Had excellent seats! Couldn't take pictures inside the show, which I'm sad about. The dolphins were RIGHT THERE in front of us! It was amazing. Here's one of the dolphins in the tank after the show.

In the penguin exhibit, there was a tunnel you could crawl through. Then there were these pop-up areas where you could be with the penguins.

After the aquarium, we headed next door to the World of Coke. These bottles were from the 1996 Olympics, held in Atlanta.  The highlight of the World of Coke was the Tasting Room, where we could taste samples of coke products from around the world, and we got to take a glass coke bottle with us. Pretty cool.

These are out of order--this is from the first day. We took Moose the dog and the kids up to the Etowah River to play in the river. We forgot to bring towels, and there is a lot of red clay that is gross when it gets wet. 

On Wednesday we hiked up Kennesaw Mountain. We've done this many times before, but this time, instead of turning around at the top and hiking back down, we went down the other side, and went on the trail that runs around the base. We ended up hiking 5.4 miles--not excatly what we'd set out to do. But it was beautiful, and so fun.

It was a fantastic trip. Although it was short and we really didn't do much, I love being able to spend time with my brother's family. We don't see them often enough, so the time we can get down to Atlanta and be with them is priceless to me.