ATL Trip: Day 1

It's about that time; time to sit myself down and retell some highlights from our trip last week to Atlanta and further south.  I'll start with Day 1.  We got a late morning start because Noah was overdue for his allergy shots before we left town.  And then by the time they were back home and the car was packed and we made 13 extra trips inside for "one more thing," it was high time to get in the car and make a bee line for .... Chick-Fil-A, of course, as all successful Brown family road trips are kicked off. :)  The trip was fine and we narrowly avoided several traffic jams.  Little tidbit for ya, though - Josh feels the need to stop at EVERY. REST STOP. we pass whether anyone needs to go to the bathroom or not.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that he's trying to avoid a panicked moment where the kids have to pee by the side of the road, but still.  I may have made a sarcastic comment on one occasion or another at the frequency of all our stops. 

Anyway, we made it to our hotel by late afternoon and booked it over to Imagine It! Children's Museum before they closed.  We did it right away that day for one big reason; that Tuesday was their free admission day for the month.  So, since Josh had his doubts about the worth of this little destination, "free" tipped the scales and we went.  And in nutshell, we are so glad we didn't shell out the $50 it would have otherwise cost us.  For free, it wasn't so bad. It was mostly an indoor play zone on steroids.  And it was crawling with kids (aka, germs!) and it was kinda dirty, but then again, all I could see/fear were the germs.

Anna kicked off the visit by milking a cow.  

Who doesn't love a water play table?  I only had to elbow one kiddo to steal a fishin' pole for my babes.

This was the scene of the crime where Anna pitched an unholy fit (because another girl was using the watering can she had used) and I had to drag her screaming, thrashing body to a bathroom to spank her bootie.  And then when I got there, I didn't go in because another momma was doing the same!  Ha!  We settled for a spank on a little bench in a nook on a wall.  I was so flustered by her outburst and the laughter I was trying to stifle that I could not come up with a SINGLE biblical thing to say to instruct her in that moment.  It didn't help that Josh was snorting with stifled laughter himself.  It was THAT bad of a tantrum.  Tantrums, by the way, are so not really Anna. And it was over like that.  And she did NOT get the silly tattoo she had just picked out at the gift shop.

Noah was mesmerized by this simple machines station.  He probably would have stayed for hours.

I was partial to this little painting station here.  Other fun spots the kids enjoyed for two seconds were the moon sand tables and the mole tunnels.

After this museum we had to walk back to the hotel (just a block over) in light rain, but we didn't mind.  We ate a great little place called Baja Fresh where Josh enjoyed the best Cherry Coke of his life. Just ask him!  Then it was straight to the pool (but really just the hot tub) with us, which as you know was the best part of the trip for the kids.  The hotel and the pool.