On day 3 in ATL, our personalized agenda had us heading out the northeast side of Atlanta towards Gwinnett County where the Brown Family history got its start. First, we stopped in Gainesville to hike a certain trail at Elachee Nature Center in the Chicopee Woods Nature Preserve. This was the trail Josh and I took on our first so-called date, not far from where he lived in a little cabin/cottage by Lake Lanier.
This was also the trail where Josh took me 4 months later to propose one cold and wintry morning in January 2002. Awwww. Look at that face! How could I resist? (Noah took this pic; his first with my camera... not bad!)
THIS is the spot where it went down! If you wanna hear the story, check it out in
this post...
From there, we swung by the little church we found to have our wedding and reception in, Zion Hill Baptist Church in Buford, GA. Anna loves any details involved with weddings, so she was more than pleased with this drive-by and talked about her own expected wedding details for hours.
Then, my favorite most anticipated stop of the day was to go here... to the first little house we bought together. In truth, we lived in Josh's first house for our first 9 months, but this little cape cod home at 1025 Tab Roberts Rd. in Lawrenceville is where I feel like our family story really begins. We loved this place where we resided with our three pooches, Jake, Charlie, and Jasmine.
And a visit to Lawrenceville, GA, would not be complete without driving by the place where it ALLLLLL began, Jackson Elementary. This place is where Josh and I worked our first post-college jobs, where we met, where I worked all my 5 years teaching third grade, where I worked through my masters and through the special days leading up to Noah's birth. It was the reason we moved to that pretty little cape cod above. It was just a mile down the road from here.
Around the corner from Jackson is a great shopping spot called Discover Mills where newlyweds Josh and Kim spent many dollars and watched MANY movies. Today, it's home to a Lego Store as well so that was the stop there that was calling Josh and Noah's names. I pointed out a Carter's store to Noah where we bought our very first official baby thing when we finally took the plunge to believe that his adoption was going to come true for us. Noah was less than impressed, but my heart swelled in my chest to be reliving all those vivid memories.
After the morning in Gwinnett, we spent our last afternoon in ATL at a very leisurely pace. Bathing suits were donned and we got ourselves back to Centennial Olympic Park for Noah and Anna to become one with the fountains at last. :}
Not long after we got there, there was a music and water performance scheduled to begin, so we cleared the space and enjoyed the display.
It was really neat! The kids were impressed and I was so glad we got to see it!
Then the kids got back down to the business of flirting with the water til they finally just got plain old wet. :) This is Noah pretending to be mad that the fountain finally got him.
After that, he was all in.
Anna, too!
It was a lovely afternoon and has ended up being Noah's favorite part of our trip to Atlanta.
Then, it was time to cash in on some more swimming before we left town. Straight to the pool it was.
And after the indoor and outdoor pool test swims, we landed back in the hot tub. :)
By night, we'd ordered pizza from around the corner and played iPad and/or Leapsters til bedtime. This night was the night we all slept the hardest. And this spot, the hotel, for the record - is Anna's favorite part of the trip. Who needs Atlanta? Apparently, all we needed was any hotel with a pool.
